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Escape seemed the best plan, but he could not abandon any of his wards, especially this one. The one he found equally compelling and frightening.

No matter how much he was attracted to Lenora, and the fever coursing through his blood was evidence of his unfortunate desire, hers was a mad request.

To marry Lenora, he would need the Lord Chancellor’s permission, and gaining permission would require him to disclose his financial records. Records that, following his recent investments in his stables, did not balance. Yet.

At the very least, the Chancellor would assume Asquith wanted Lenora for her dowry. At worst, he’d assume Lenora had been compromised. The public disgrace would be ruinous for both of them.

Moreover, she did not truly know him. Nor did he know her.

Who was Lenora, really?

He didn’t know because she could act with uncanny skill.

Her unsettling presence was coupled with a probing perception, and she used her insights to become anyone she chose.

Changeling.

His old, private nickname for her arose, chasing him down arteries of memory until he reached his unhealed wound, a wound that proved he was neither kind, nor decent, nor wonderful.

Two months prior to his introduction to the Wainwright girls, he’d shattered his little finger in a school privy.

The brutal fight had ended a year of misery—privy dunks, pantaloon pulls, and a thousand other humiliations. But the humiliations were not what haunted him.

What imprinted on his soul was the image of his white knuckles stained with the blood of his by-then unconscious opponent.

Even now, when Asquith’s mind quieted too much, he heard those deep red droplets thudding against the barely-breathing boy’s nightshirt. And unless Asquith was careful and precise, the sensation of his friend Neville jerking him back to sense would rattle him anew.

Luckily, his tormentor had survived. But Asquith’s guilt also thrived.

He didn’t regret standing up for himself. But he had lost control. He had not stopped even after that dormitory demon had dropped to the floor.

He had to live knowing that he might have killed the other boy, if Neville, staunchly moral Neville, had not, by chance, opened the privy door.

Because of that guilt, he had kept the evidence of the brawl wrapped beneath layers of linen for the eight weeks leading up to his first visit to Willowhurst, the Wainwright’s former family home.

Then, on the morning his mother was to introduce him to her twin goddaughters and their three younger sisters, he’d ceased binding his shattered pinky.

The ugly scars had shocked him.

And though gloves could not hide his twisted finger’s hook-like shape, he’d taken extra care to conceal the scars. One should not scare young girls, after all.

When presented, he’d tucked his hand behind his back and bowed.

In Eliza, one of the two eldest, and in Millie, the third, he sensed kindred spirits. Scornful glances at their father suggested a simmering bitterness and a fever to fight. The second had been quiet. The fifth, at the time, a mere baby. But the fourth...

Ah, the fourth—a silent, dark-eyed, six-year-old waif. Even then, that child invoked a shiver of dread.

“Did you hurt your hand?” Lenora had asked, though none of the other girls had noticed.

“No,” he’d lied. Try though he had, he’d found himself unable to meet her elfin, witch-like, and far too perceptive gaze.

Changeling.

In the present, he could not look away.

There were a million reasons he should refuse her demand. Whole worlds filled the few feet between them. He was a man past his majority. A viscount. Her guardian.

She was a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old on the cusp of her first London Season—the precipice of a secure and tranquil life. Even if he had been in a financial position to provide her that life, he couldn’t trust that something else would spark uncontrollable violence in him again.