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Seraphina shut the door and leaned against it. “May I speak plainly?”

Leonora paused and sighed, knowing that she cannot possibly escape the conversation that was coming. “You have never once asked my permission before, Seraphina.”

“Then I shall not begin now.” Seraphina crossed the room and sat on the edge of the little bed, smoothing her skirts flat over her knees. “Leonora, you have been living in this house for the better part of these weeks. I have counted the nights you have slept at Lady Byron’s, and it comes to very few. Lady Byron is complaining too. Every acquaintance I possess has remarked on it, some of them kindly and some of them not. Leonora, it is improper, and you know it is, engagement or no engagement.”

“I am a companion here, Seraphina. Her Grace wished me to stay.”

“You are her companion in every way except the one that matters, which is that you are supposed to go home at night.” Seraphina’s eyes did not leave her face. “That is what companions do. They go home.”

“Not always.”

“Always, when they are unmarried and sleeping under a duke’s roof.” Seraphina drew a breath and let it out slowly. Leonora recognized the pause as the one her sister took before she laid out a list.

“Shall I tell you what is being said? Since no one else will have the courage to say it to your face. It is said that a young woman with no mother and no portion to speak of has installed herself in Glenhaven. That she dines at his table and keeps his grandmother company until the small hours and has the run of his library. It is said that the engagement came out of nowhere, that no one saw a courtship, that no one can say when he asked or what you answered. Lady Carstairs tells me the announcement at the Camden ball was the strangest thing she has witnessed in years, and she was standing close enough to Her Grace to hear every word.”

“Lady Carstairs listens at everyone’s elbow.”

“Then you will understand that she is thorough.” Seraphina did not smile. “Also do not tell me it does not matter because it is not real. I know it is not real. Anthony told me.”

Leonora’s head came up. “He told you?”

Seraphina sighed. “The afternoon I cornered him when he visited William to discuss a shipping contract. He told me how it began, the bargain and the necklace and Her Grace announcing it to several hundred people three glasses of ratafia into the evening.” Seraphina’s mouth tightened, though not unkindly. “I believed him. He was very careful to say that you would give me the rest yourself, and I told him that would happen when pigs flew.”

It was a very good thing, Leonora thought, that she was already sitting down. She filed the matter away to be annoyed about later, and found, rather to her surprise, that the annoyance would not quite form. He had told her sister the truth. He could so easily have kept it back.

“The pretence is not the trouble,” Seraphina went on. “I know what it is. The trouble is that London does not. London sees a duke’s grandmother announce a betrothal in front of the whole of the ton, and then it sees the betrothed move into the house. It counts your carriage outside his door. It watches the callers come, the congratulations, the little performance of it, and it believes every minute. When it ends, as it must, because it was never meant to be anything else, they will not say the duke was careless with his grandmother. They will say you were jilted, or that you did the jilting, and either way it will be your name in their mouths and not his. You know how they treat a woman who is clever and does not soften herself for anyone’s comfort. Anthony said as much himself.”

Leonora took in a deep breath through her nose before she answered, because the easy thing, the old thing, would have been to stand up.

“I know how it looks,” she said. “I do. I would be suspicious in your place. But I need you to believe me when I say it is only for a little while longer. A couple of weeks, no more than that. When everything is finished, I shall sit you down and tell you my side of it, from the first day, and you may be as angry as you like.”

“You can tell me now, Leonora,” Seraphina insisted. “We are here to take Alice home, but it can wait. She loves it here, and William needs to talk to Anthony too, so we have time.”

“Later, Sister.” Leonora met her eyes. “I know it makes no sense right now. I can see that it makes none. I am asking you to let it make no sense for a few weeks.”

Seraphina made a small sound, and turned her face toward the window.

It was just like her to worry. It was just like all of them, if Leonora was honest. Seraphina worried, Lady Byron worried, and Euphemia, she had no doubt, worried by letter from wherever she was.

Worry, worry, worry, from every side, but she could not truthfully complain of it. She was the youngest of them. Whatever else she had become, she would always be the one they reached for first when the weather turned. Not long ago the same words would have made her bristle. Not long ago she would have been on her feet by now, chin up, saying something clever and wounding about being a grown woman who had managed on her own for years.

She did not want to say it. That was the strange part. In these last weeks, and she suspected a certain duke had more to do with it than she would ever admit to him, her temper had stopped arriving ahead of her good sense. She had learned that being helped did not make a person small. She had learned, with some effort, to let someone be kind to her without hunting through the kindness for the insult.

So she stayed still beside the valise with her hands folded and let her sister be afraid on her behalf.

“I am not telling you not to worry, Seraphina,” she said, more gently. “I understand why you do. You, Effie, and Lady Byron. You three worry too much, but I understand. This looks improper. I know it does, and I know what you must hear. But there is a reason I am here, and it is a good one, and I cannot yet say all of it until I am sure of everything.”

“Then say some of it.”

“Some of it is Her Grace.” Leonora searched for the way to put it. “You heard what Anthony told you, that her last several companions fled within the week. If you knew how much help she needs, you would not ask me to leave. She would never say so herself. I am not only filling a chair, Seraphina. I am useful here. I cannot explain it better than that, and I do not expect you to take it on faith, but I am asking you to take my word that I am doing good, and that I will be more careful about how it looks. I shall sit in the open rooms and keep the doors ajar. I shall sleep at Lady Byron’s whenever I can.”

Seraphina turned from the window. For a while she only looked at her. Leonora held her gaze and did not fidget with her sleeves, though she wanted to.

“Whenever you can,” Seraphina repeated at last.

“Whenever I can.”

“I do not like it.” Her sister’s shoulders came down a fraction. “But I shall hold my tongue on the first matter. Now. The second matter is the one that has been giving me a headache.”