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Two separate investigations, run independently, pointing to the exact same door, was enough certainty for Anthony to act on. That was why he had gone directly to Alderney and asked for the favor himself, rather than writing ahead and waiting on a reply he did not have the patience to wait for.

“I do. Thank you for making the time.” He gestured toward the chair he had declined for himself, waiting until she had settled into it properly before taking the one opposite. “I understand you have been with this household a very long time.”

“The better part of thirty years, Your Grace, since I was a girl barely older than some of the maids under me now. I have outlasted two housekeepers and buried a third.” She smiled. “His lordship did not tell me what this concerned, only that I was to answer whatever you asked, and I intend to do just that.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Not quite, Your Grace, if I am honest. His lordship did not say, only that I was to answer whatever you asked.”

“I am the Duke of Glenhaven. My name is Anthony Sterling.”

Hester’s eyebrows rose, and she glanced, briefly, toward the door through which the Viscount had already departed, as though checking whether this information ought to alarm her. “I cannot imagine what a woman like me could possibly do for a man like yourself, Your Grace.”

“A great deal, as it happens,” He answered. “I am trying to find out what became of a woman who worked in this household some years ago. It is a matter of some importance to someone I care for a great deal.”

Hester stopped to think. “I have known a great many women come and go in all that time, Your Grace.” She folded her hands in her lap, settling in.

“This would have been some years back now. She would have stayed only a few years at most before leaving. Quiet, by most accounts, kept largely to herself, though not unkindly so.” He paused, choosing his next words with more care than the rest. “She had dark hair, I am told, the kind that made people assume she was shy when in fact she was simply watchful. Her name was Rose.... Rose Ashcroft.”

The name worked where the description alone had not. Hester’s whole expression shifted, the searching blankness clearing all at once as she became far more alert.

“Rose. Good heavens, of course I know Rose. Forgive me, Your Grace, I ought to have placed her at once from the description, only it has been a good while since anyone has asked after her, and I am not quite as quick as I once was. It is old age more than forgetting, I promise you that. A person does not forget Rose.”

“You are certain it is the same woman?”

“Rose Ashcroft, yes. That was her real name. I am as certain as I can be of anything at my age. Though I ought to say, we did not call her Rose while she was here. She went by Mary the whole time she worked under this roof, only a handful of us ever learned her real name, that was only because she let it slip once and trusted us to keep it quiet after.” Hester shook her head slowly, something fond and troubled both moving across her face at once. “She had her reasons, I expect, for the name. Most of us assumed as much and never pressed her on it.”

“Was she well liked, in her time here?”

“Well enough, though she kept her distance, and most of us let her. She was a hard worker, when her mind allowed her to be, and kind to the younger girls. She did not call attention to itself.” Hester considered the question further before continuing. “She laughed rarely, but when she did, it was a proper laugh. She was very beautiful, Your Grace with very fair skin. You would think she was the daughter of a gentleman, the way she carried herself some days. I remember thinking, more than once, that she must have been a different sort of woman before whatever happened to her happened. There was a sadness sitting underneath everything she did, even the ordinary tasks, as though she were only half present for most of her own life.”

“What reasons, specifically, do you recall, for the name she took?”

“She did not have any family to speak of, not that she ever mentioned, which was unusual enough on its own that people noticed. But there was someone.” Hester’s voice dropped, instinctively. “Someone hunting her down. That is why she kept to herself the way she did, and why she took a different name in the first place, I have always believed.”

Anthony’s attention sharpened at once, every other thought in his head falling abruptly silent. “Hunting her down? Hunting? You are certain that is the correct word for it?”

“It is exactly the word, Your Grace, and I have chosen it deliberately. Not simply someone looking for her, the way a person looks for an old friend, or a debt they are owed. Hunting. Rose was never merely careful. She was afraid. I watched her jump at doors closing on their own more than once. I do not use the word lightly.”

Anthony’s eyebrows drew inward. “Then how did she come to leave, in the end? Did this person find her?”

Hester sighed. “The fear got the better of her, eventually. It had to. A person cannot hold that kind of watchfulness for years on end and go on performing her duties properly besides, and toward the last, she could not. She grew careless with her work, forgetful, jumping at nothing half the time. Then one day, with very little warning to any of us, she simply left.” Hester paused. “We heard, some while after, that she had died. There were accounts that said she took her own life.”

Anthony tilted his head sideways. “That is not what I was told. I was given to understand she died of an illness.”

“There were different accounts going about, Your Grace, as there generally are when nobody is quite certain of the truth and everyone would rather fill the silence with something regardless. What I heard, and heard more than once from more than one source, was that she had done it to herself.” Hester’s mouth set. “I did not believe it then, and I do not believe it now, whatever anyone else chooses to say on the matter.”

“Why not?” he asked, sitting forward.

“Because I knew her, Your Grace, better than most, and Mary– Rose was not a woman without a reason to live, whatever sadness she carried about with her most days. She had a daughter.” Hester said it quietly, almost protectively. “Only a few of us ever knew that much, and fewer still knew where the girl had gone, but Rose knew. She knew her daughter was somewhere safe, with people this man hunting her would never think to look, and she held on to the hope, every single day I ever spoke with her on the matter, that she would see that daughter again one day, once it was finally safe to. A woman holding on to a hope like that does not simply decide, one ordinary morning, to end everything before it comes true. It makes no sense to me, and it never has.”

“Perhaps the illness, then. If not by her own hand.”

“Perhaps.” Hester did not sound as though she believed it either. “Or perhaps whoever was hunting her finally caught up to her, after all those years of her managing to stay just out of his reach.”

Anthony’s heartbeat had begun to climb in the last several minutes without his quite noticing when it had started, and he found, now, that he could not entirely slow it back down. “If she knew where her daughter was, and knew the girl was safe, why remain apart from her at all? Why not simply go to her, and the two of them disappear together, somewhere this man could never find either of them?”

“I asked myself that very question more than once, Your Grace, and I believe I know the answer, though I cannot swear to it. Appearing at the girl’s door would have led him straight there as surely as a signpost, if he was even half as determined as Rose always believed him to be. Staying away was the only way she knew to keep the girl safe from him at all. It cost her everything to do it, I think, but she did it anyway.” Hester turned to look at him. “Do you know who it was, Your Grace? The one hunting her?”