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“For whom?” Leonora asked. “I am beyond confused. There are several accounts that you are dead. Dead in many different ways. What happened?”

“There was a man I knew when I was young.” Rose turned the cup slowly in its saucer. “His name was Matthew. Our families were close. Our parents were friends, and we were thrown together from the time we could walk. When we were both young, I thought of him as a brother. I do not know when that changed for him. I only know that by the time we were grown, he would not let me out of his sight.”

“Matthew?” Leonora repeated. It meant nothing to her.

“He asked me to marry him. Not once. I lost count after the sixth, and each time I said no, as kindly as I could, and each time he seemed to hear only that I had not yet said yes.” Rose’s voice shuddered. “Then I met your father, and it was not even a decision. I simply loved him. We were married quietly, and I was happier than I knew how to say. I thought it was finished.”

“It was not?” Lady Byron said. “Is this the man that is chasing you?”

“It was not. Matthew wrote. At first only at holidays, then more often. Cheerful letters, full of old memories, as if nothing had changed. I answered the first few, then stopped, and he did not seem to mind. He kept writing.” She swallowed. “The last letter came the winter before... before everything. I have never forgotten a word of it. He said he could not do this any longer, and that if I would not come to him, he would have to act.”

Leonora felt the room tilt, very gently, like a boat.

“The next thing I knew, your father was in debt.” Rose’s mouth twisted. “He was a careful man, Leonora. He read every paper twice. But one by one, the investments went wrong, and a note he had never signed was called in by a man none of us had ever met, and within weeks there was nothing left. I could not make sense of it. Then the night he went out and did not come home...”

“They found him in the park,” Leonora said. “Frozen to death, with Effie and Seraphina’s fathers. They had all gone into business together.”

“I have never believed it was all a coincidence, Leonora.” Rose’s hands closed over Leonora’s, they were warm and rough, and gripping hard. “I cannot prove it. I have no witness, no name written anywhere. But I knew in my bones that Matthew had done this to us, the debt and the ruin, and I do not know how far it went. I am afraid, God forgive me, that it went to the end.”

Leonora sat very still. “That doesn’t make any sense. How powerful can one man be?”

Lady Byron shook her head. “I looked into that after the funerals, because I wanted someone to blame. I had my man of business go through every paper he could find. The venture was a shipping partnership, and the three of them were answerable for one another’s debts, as partners were then. When it failed, it failed for all three at once. A cargo was lost, and the underwriters who had insured it went under in the City that same month, taking a good many other houses with them. Dozens of men were ruined that winter. No single man, however much he hated them, could have arranged that.”

Leonora’s hands tightened around her mother’s. “What does that mean?”

“The debt could not have been premeditated,” Lady Byron explained. “But I will not tell you he had nothing to do with the rest. Your father’s accounts showed trouble that the others’ did not. A note called in early, by a lender no one could trace. An agent who left his post without a word. A contract that fell through in the very week your father needed it. At the time I took it for ill luck. Having heard Rose, I am no longer certain.”

“There, you see.” Rose’s voice shook. “Even before the collapse, things were already going wrong for him. That was Matthew. I know it was.”

“I can believe that much,” Lady Byron said slowly.

“So is that why you left?” Leonora asked. To hide from this man?

“I knew that with your father dead, I had no protector. My parents had passed away years before, and I had no family to turn to. So I knew he would come for me next, and then for you.” Rose’s eyes were wet as she inhaled sharply. “I could hide myself. I could not hide a child.”

She turned toward Lady Byron. “Then I heard what Amanda had done for Euphemia. Her father died the same night as yours, and her mother was already gone, and she took her in. I had known Euphemia’s mother well, Amanda. Better than I ever knew you.” Her mouth bent. “You and I were hardly friends. We were... acquaintances, in the years before you left it. I would not have said you much cared for me.”

“I did not think you knew of me either,” Lady Byron said.

“Back then, I knew that your door had opened for someone in need. In the same circumstance as my Leonora.” Rose looked back at Leonora. “I hoped you would take her in while I tried to work out what to do. But I could not tell anyone I was alive. So I carried you to Amanda’s door in the countryside, asleep, in your good coat. I meant to say goodbye. I stood there a very long time, and I could not make myself wake you.”

Rose sat back. “I called myself Mary in most houses that would take me in as domestic staff. I scrubbed and I mended and kept my head down, and I thought that if I stayed small enough for long enough, Matthew would forget all about me. Think that I was dead. But he found me. He kept…finding me everywhere I ran to.”

“My goodness, what kind of man is this? To torment you so?” Lady Byron said.

“At the last house where I managed to find work, I received a note one day, with no name on it, only the handwriting I would know anywhere. It said that he would find my daughter, and that when he did he would not be so patient with her as he had been with me.” Rose’s fingers tightened. “I could not run any longer. Running only taught him my habits. I think a part of him enjoyed hunting me. So I let it be said that I had taken my own life. That I had passed away.”

“Heavens above...” Leonora’s voice shook.

“I wanted him to believe it, so he would stop looking.” Rose’s head bowed. “It was the cruelest thing I ever did. I knew you might hear of it. I decided I would rather you grieve than be taken, and I have never forgiven myself for the choice. I just needed him to believe it long enough for him to stop looking for me. So I could see you again.”

Through the window the light had begun to turn amber. A bird called twice and was quiet.

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“I do not know.” Rose looked up. “I believe he is still in London.”

“What is his name? His title? The rest of it. Who is he?”