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Anthony, you must sit down. That was worse. She tried a dozen openings and discarded each of them, and by the time the lane dipped into the hollow beyond the old mill, she had settled on simply opening the door of his study and letting her face say it.

A farm cart stood across the road ahead. Its near wheel lay in the mud beside it, and a man in a smock was waving his hat above his head.

“Mistress! Mistress, if you please, I’ve lost my wheel, and my lad’s gone for help.”

Leonora drew rein. The lane was too narrow to pass the cart, and there was no way round it. She looked at the man and then at the banks, and some small part of her mind noticed that the mud around the cart was undisturbed. No one had been trampling about. No one had been working at a wheel.

“I am sorry to hear it,” she said, and turned the mare.

The second man was already behind her. He had come down the bank without a sound, and he was close enough for her to smell him, onions and tar. His hand closed on the bridle. The mare screamed and reared, and Leonora threw herself forward over her neck and struck down at the man’s wrist with her riding crop as hard as she could. He swore. A third pair of hands caught her around the wrist and dragged her sideways out of the saddle.

“Let me go!”

She hit the ground on her shoulder and the breath left her. She kicked. Her boot connected with something that grunted. She had time to draw breath to scream. Then something coarse came down over her head, a sack that stank of damp grain, and a forearm clamped across her throat, and the scream came out as a wet sound that went nowhere.

“Hold her still.”

“She bites.”

“Then hold her harder. Mind her face. He said to mind her face.”

Something struck the side of her head, not savagely, but with a short weight. The lane tipped. The light through the sacking went from brown to black, and the last thing she knew was the mare screaming somewhere far away, and a rope being drawn tight around her wrists.

Slowly, Leonora blinked open, trying to adjust to the light of the room.

Her head ached in a way that felt as if it belonged to someone else. There was a small lump behind her left ear, and when she turned her face on the pillow a bright sick pain went through her skull. Her mouth was dry. She lay quite still and let her eyes open by degrees.

A ceiling, high and plastered, with a plain cornice. Curtains of dark green brocade drawn across a window. A fire burning low in a small grate.

She did not know this room. She had never seen it in her life.

She sat up too fast. The room swung once and settled. She was lying on top of a bed with a green coverlet, still in her riding habit, with her boots set neatly side by side near the hearth as if someone had put them there. Her hat was gone. Her hair had come down entirely. When she lifted her hands to push it from her face, she saw the red bands around both wrists where the rope had bitten in.

The pin.

Her hand went to the inside of her jacket, where she had fastened it that morning over her heart. Her fingers found nothing, and her stomach dropped away. Then she found it, caught in the lining where it had slid. She let out a breath that shook. She did not stop to think. She pulled it free, bent down, and pushed it deep into the toe of her left stocking, flat against her sole, and straightened just as a knock sounded at the door.

“Miss Ashcroft? Forgive me. May I come in?”

The voice was familiar.

She had the presence of mind to lie back on the pillow and close her eyes to slits before the door opened. A tray rattled. Footsteps crossed the carpet, unhurried, and stopped beside the bed.

“Thank God. I had begun to think I should have to send for a physician after all.”

She let her eyes open all the way. Lord Brighton stood over her, holding a tea tray in both hands, with an expression of such tender concern.

“Lord Brighton,” she said with wide eyes. “What are you… Where am I?”

“You are quite safe, not to worry.” He set the tray on the table beside the bed and drew a chair close, not too close, and sat with his hands loose on his knees. “This is my house, a mile or so off the lower road. I brought you here because it was nearer than any other door, and because I did not like the look of your head. Do you remember what happened?”

Leonora squinted. “There was a cart.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “There were men. They grabbed me.”

“Two of them, and a third lurking in the bank, the cowards.” His mouth tightened. “I was riding out to see a tenant, and I took the lower road on a whim. I heard a horse scream. When I came round the bend they had you down in the mud with a sack over your head. I fired my pistol over their heads, and they ran, and I will confess I did not much care which way. I only wanted you.” He shook his head slowly. “I have never been so frightened in my life.”

It was a good story. It had a beginning and an end, and it had a little color in the middle. Leonora lay with her head on the pillow and listened to it and began, one thread at a time, to take it apart.

His coat was unwrinkled. There was no mud on his knees, and none on his sleeves, though he claimed to have lifted her out of a ditch. His cravat was crisp, his gloves clean, his boots polished to a shine.