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“Only if you want to. I would rather hear of it from you than from your neighbors.”

She sent him a wry glance. “Yes. I think it is better to hear things directly from those involved rather than secondhand, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“Very well, then. It was dark and late, and Hermes and I were tired from a long, cross-country run. He was a bit lame, and I was leading him along the road. We were nearly home when a carriage came around a corner fast. Its lanterns flashed in Hermes’s eyes. He reared and came down hard on my foot. When I reached for his lead, his head hit mine, and I was knocked into the ditch. I must have fainted. He stayed with me until Snell found me in the morning.” She gave a dismissive little shrug. “Old history.”

It was his turn to offer a wry smile. “I’m guessing that your physician’s attention was directed at the head injury.”

“It was. My foot had swollen in the boot, and when they cut away the leather to examine the break, it was decided to wait for the swelling to subside. Then the bones fused.”

It did not surprise him that she spoke in her usual matter-of-fact way. He was curious about the foot whether anything had been tried to repair it, but he sensed that her revelations were at an end. They walked on toward the stable courtyard where he was used to waiting for the dowager’s permission to enter.

He had first learned to recognize steadiness under fire as a boy in Wenlocke’s gang, and he’d come to value it more as he worked with firefighting crews in London. Lady Cassandra’s steadiness had impressed him from the beginning of their acquaintance. Seeing the Montford boys on the crumbling wall, he had reached for her hand instinctively, sensing that she would be of more assistance than the distraught father or the scolding neighbor.

They reached the stable courtyard and halted. “Thank you for telling me.”

She nodded. “You’ve got me off track. I came to meet you in the lane to tell you something quite different.”

“I’m listening.”

“I have a confession to make.” For once, she did not meet his gaze.

“You? A confession?” It was the last thing he expected from her.

“Yes. Before you left for London, before … the ceiling fell, I met your friend Mr. Kydd.”

Raven stiffened and hardly knew why. Jay had not mentioned meeting Lady Cassandra, but why should he? Raven was conscious of an instant surge of male jealousy, to which he was not entitled. He had no claim on her. She was merely his landlady, one of them, at any rate. He could not claim to have discovered her, this unusual woman hidden away on an obscure estate who fit her surroundings so perfectly.

“There’s more,” she said. “I didn’t give him my name. I let him call me Bluebell and encouraged him to think I was a girl from the village.”

She was Jay’s village girl. The one Jay enjoyed flirting with. “You met him more than once?”

“Twice,” she said. “I meant to tell you on the day of the picnic, but we were occupied with other concerns.”

“Was there something between you and Kydd that you felt you needed to confess?” He used her word.

“Not at all. Your friend is a flirt and a tease, but I doubt his heart can be won by any two-legged creature, least of all one like me. Of course, I owe him an apology for the deception. I believed he would change his manner to me if he knew my true name, or perhaps he wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

Raven thought she had an odd opinion of herself not to recognize the nature of Jay Kydd’s attentions to her. “He didn’t offer you any insult, did he?”

“Never. But I must tell you—”

“What?” He spoke too quickly, too sharply.

She gave him a puzzled look. “He told me that you were, are, Raven. And,” she said, “I confess, I think the name suits you. Is that impertinent of me?”

She stunned him. Whatever name he’d had as a boy before Wenlocke called him Raven was lost along with the memories of that dark time that only haunted him in dreams. Raven was the name that had given him courage and friends. Yet his grandfather never used the name, and Raven himself had not told it to Amabel. The name was a part of his old self that he put aside in his new life as a gentleman until Lady Cassandra spoke it and brought it into the present. She had some quality that his grandfather and Amabel lacked. Raven could not name it, but it was there in her defense of Dick Crockett and in her defense of ravens at the picnic. She had called them clever, cheeky birds. She saw in the name the courage it was meant to inspire.

The clop of hooves and the sound of boys’ voices brought him back to the present. “So, you knew. That day you knew?”

“Yes, I hope there will be no awkwardness between us.”

“That’s why you told me about the accident, isn’t it?”

“I admit that I was inclined to think Mr. Kydd’s tales of your youthful exploits on the rooftops of London were fanciful, until I saw you climb that ruin.”

“You still think I am an acceptable tenant for Verwood?” He had seen nothing in her manner to indicate that his old name had changed her opinion of him, but he had to ask.