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Lady Byron scoffed. “The modiste would sell you a burlap sack and call it very fashionable if she thought you would pay for it.” She crossed the room and picked up the gown, holding it out at arm’s length as though it might improve with distance. It did not appear to. “You want something with life in it. Something that does not make you look as though you are in mourning.”

“I mean no offence, Lady Byron, but you do not know the first thing about fashion. I say that with the greatest affection.”

“I know a dead leaf when I see one, and that is quite enough expertise for tonight.” Lady Byron set the gown aside and began rifling through the wardrobe, brisk and entirely certain of herself, as she had never once doubted her own judgement in her life, whatever the actual quality of it. “What of the blue? The one Euphemia sent over for your birthday.”

“I don’t want to wear it. The blue makes me look like a drowned woman.”

“Nonsense. It makes you look like a woman who... owns a very fine blue gown.”

Leonora let out a breath that was not quite a laugh, though it wanted to be one. There was something almost comforting in their little argument, the two of them circling a wardrobe, Lady Byron insisting on colors that did nothing for anyone’s complexion and Leonora overruling her by simply wearing whatever she had already decided on before the conversation began.

It struck her, watching her guardian sort through the wardrobe with such determined interest, how new all of this still was. Lady Byron had never once concerned herself with gowns or ribbons when they were girls. She had cared for lessons, and deportment, and the proper keeping of accounts, and had left such frivolous matters entirely to the housekeeper. That she was trying now, however clumsily, to take an interest in something as small as the color of a dress, felt like a kindness in itself, one Leonora had no intention of remarking on and spoiling. It was also, she had to admit, rather entertaining to watch her guardian, usually so composed in every particular, come thoroughly undone over something as simple as bronze against blue.

In the end she chose the deep green, mostly because it was the one Lady Byron had not suggested at all, and dressed while her guardian sat in the chair by the window, watching.

“You have been at Glenhaven a great deal this past month,” Lady Byron said at last, once the gown was fastened and Leonora had settled at the dressing table to have her hair pinned. “More than I expected, when this... arrangement began.”

Leonora glanced at her. “The dowager duchess requires a companion, and I am her companion. It stands to reason I would be there often, Lady Byron.”

“Often is not quite the word I would choose for barely sleeping under your own roof three nights out of seven.” Lady Byron’s reflection watched her in the glass, patient and entirely too observant. “You have not spoken a great deal of the Duke himself either. Only of Marian, and her cats, and whatever mischief the two of you have gotten up to that week.”

“There is not a great deal to say. He is her grandson. He rarely speaks to me, and otherwise keeps to his study.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“Then I wonder...” Lady Byron said, setting down the hairpin she had been holding. “...why you have gone quite pink at the mention of him.”

Leonora kept her eyes on her own reflection and refused, with considerable effort, to touch her own cheek. “It is warm in here.”

“It is not, Leonora, and this room has never once been warm in its entire history.” Lady Byron picked up the next pin, entirely unbothered by the deflection. “I only wish to understand what I am sending you into tonight. A ball is... enemy territory.”

“I am simply attending as his grandmother’s companion, invited along because it would look odd to leave me at home when I am so often at the house.”

“Mm.” Lady Byron did not sound convinced, and she did not pursue it further, which was somehow worse than if she had.

Leonora said nothing more on the subject, and was privately not to have to. She had told Lady Byron a great many things over the years, some of them true and some of them carefully arranged to sound truer than they were, but she had not told her about the fake engagement, and she was not entirely certain she meant to, not until the whole business had run its course one way or another.

It was not that she wished to deceive her. It was only that she knew precisely how Lady Byron would receive it, the questions that would follow, the worry that would settle into her face and stay there for the whole of the engagement’s false little life, and Leonora had no wish to hand her that burden when there was every chance it would come to nothing in the end. Better, she told herself, to spare her the worry until there was something certain to tell her, whatever that certainty turned out to be.

“Well. Whatever the truth of it, you look very well tonight. I shall take some small credit for the gown, though you did choose the one I did not suggest, which I have noticed you always do.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“You never do.” Lady Byron patted her shoulder once, briskly, the closest thing to open affection she generally allowed herself, and left her to finish the last of her preparations alone.

Leonora was still fastening her gloves when a maid came to fetch her, announcing that the Duke had arrived, and by the time she made her way down the stairs, Anthony was already standing in the entrance hall, hat in hand, speaking with Lady Byron in the low, formal tones of a man being politely interrogated and doing his best not to show it.

He looked up as she descended, and whatever he had been saying to Lady Byron simply stopped.

Leonora had seen him disheveled, seen him irritated, seen him wearing the smug, satisfied look he reserved for moments when he had gotten the better of her in an argument. She had never seen him look quite like this, his expression caught somewhere between surprise and something he was plainly trying very hard not to let show on his face, his gaze moving over her with a thoroughness that made her acutely aware of every seam of the green gown.

“Your Grace,” she said, when the silence had stretched on rather longer than was polite.

“Miss Ashcroft.” He recovered himself with visible effort, offering a bow that was a beat too late to be entirely smooth. “You look very well this evening.”

“Thank you.”