Page 57

She nodded, and followed him.

The library was cool, with the afternoon sun coming through the tall windows in long gold bars across the carpet. He did not take the chair behind the desk. Instead he crossed to the one by the hearth and gestured for her to take the other, and when she had sat he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His hands hung loose and open in front of him, and she could not seem to stop looking at them. A little ink had dried in a blot along the side of his right forefinger. Above it the skin was warm and tanned across the knuckles, and over the back the veins stood out in long, defined lines that ran up under his cuff and out of sight. She had never noticed before how strong a man’s hand could look when it was doing nothing at all. They were larger hands than she had thought, broad enough that she suspected her own would vanish inside one. She wondered what it would be to take that hand in both of hers. To turn it over, and follow one of those veins to the wrist with her thumb, and feel whether the pulse beneath it kept the same steady time as the rest of him. Her fingers had curled in her lap around the thought of it, and she could almost feel the warmth.

“The last household your mother served was Viscount Alderney’s,” he said. “She worked there as a maid, and left it in the end. I have spoken with the housekeeper, a woman named Hester, who knew her well.”

Leonora realized she had not heard the last sentence. Her eyes had fastened on the shape of his lower lip. She dragged her gaze up to his eyes and found them waiting for her. Her cheeks went warm at once.

“Forgive me,” she said. “The housekeeper.”

“Hester.” He did not smile, but the corner of his mouth eased. “She remembered your mother well. She said Rose was a hard worker... kind to the younger girls, and that she carried herself with poise on her better days. She also said there was a sadness in her that she never talked about. But she knew about you, Leonora. Hester says she held on to the hope of seeing her daughter again.”

Leonora pressed her lips together and looked at the hearth until the stinging in her eyes had passed. “She said that?”

“In so many words.”

“I thought she had forgotten me.” She scoffed and shook her head. “I thought, on the bad nights, that it was simpler for her to forget.”

“She did not forget you.”

She laughed, and it caught halfway into something wetter. She pushed the heel of her hand briefly against one eye and sniffed. Anthony said nothing. He only held out his handkerchief, she took it, and in the small exchange his fingertips brushed her palm. It lasted no longer than a heartbeat. She felt it all the way to her elbow.

She wiped her eyes and held the handkerchief in her lap. “Did Hester say how she died?”

“Only that she heard of it some while after your mother left. She was not there, and she could not say more than that.” He had straightened, and his right hand had moved to the cuff of his left sleeve. He tugged at the edge of it. “That is the substance of it. My men are still making inquiries.”

Leonora looked at the hand on the cuff. Then she looked at his face.

It was strange how readily she could do it now. Not so long ago she would have taken that answer at its word and been grateful for it. She could not have told his calm from his evasion then, and had often guessed wrongly at both. But she had sat across from him a number of times since, and without ever meaning to learn it she had learned him. When he was being honest, his shoulders dropped and his voice ran low and slow. When he was holding something back, he went still, and plucked at his cuff, and spoke in clipped, tidy sentences, as if reading from a page he had written beforehand.

He was doing it now.

“That is not the substance of it,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” He looked up at her.

“There is more. You have a face you wear when you intend to be helpful and give me nothing.” She folded the handkerchief into a neat square and set it on the arm of her chair.

Anthony frowned. “I do not have a face.”

“You have several faces, and that is the one I like least.”

Anthony leaned back, regarding her, and she saw him weigh the options. “Leonora, I have told you everything of use.”

“Everything of use to whom?”

“To you.”

She squinted her eyes. “That is a very careful sentence.”

“It is a true one.”

“I did not say it was false. I said it was careful.” She sighed. “Anthony, you are supposed to be helping me. This is important. If you know something and you’re not telling me…”

“Leonora,” he said quietly.

“Anthony…” she said, waiting.

He was silent. The clock on the mantel ticked through five full seconds before he spoke, and when he did, he spoke to the hearth and not to her. “There are questions still open. I am pursuing them. When there is something solid to tell you, I shall tell you.”