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Impossible. He had said he was George Bannerman. Not Matthew.

Her mind went quiet and very cold as she tried to think of a way to get out. The wardrobe. She flung it open and found nothing but a row of empty hooks. Behind the hooks the back panel stood a little proud of the wall, and a thread of cooler air came through the gap. She pressed her palm flat to the wood, and it gave inward with a dry click.

A servants’ stair. Narrow, steep, and dark, winding down into the body of the house.

She went back for her boots and carried them in her hand. She took the pin out of her stocking, closed it in her fist, and stepped into the dark.

The stair was cold and smelled of dust. She counted the turns under her breath. At the bottom was a short passage and a door standing slightly ajar. Through the gap came the clink of a spoon against crockery and the rumble of two men’s voices.

“The money, then? He said it was triple.”

“When she’s out of the county. Not before. He wants it done right this time.” There was a pause, and the scrape of a chair. “Don’t ask me what he wants her for. I don’t ask.”

Leonora stood against the wall and did not breathe.

There was a second door at the end of the passage, a plain one, with daylight showing at the sill. She moved along the wall on the balls of her feet, past the kitchen, and put her hand on the latch. It lifted. The door opened onto a kitchen garden, a brick path, and a wall with a gate in it. She could see the gate. It was fifty paces away. She could hear a bird singing in the espaliered pear.

She ran.

She made twenty paces, thirty, with her boots banging against her hip and the gravel biting through her stockings. At forty a hand closed on her arm, swung her around, and she was pulled up against a coat that smelled of bay rum.

“Oh, my dear,” said Lord Brighton, very softly. “I did so hope you would not. How did you even get out of the room?”

“What are you doing, Lord Brighton?”

He was stronger than he looked. He caught her wrists in one hand, and the raw places where the rope had been burned like fire, and she cried out. He pulled her into the house by the side door causing her boots to fall. The pin did not. She had it clenched so hard that the clasp had cut her palm.

“Let me go! You said you were helping me!”

“I was trying to.” He marched her through the passage and up the main stair, past a gallery of portraits that she did not look at, and into the green room, then shut the door behind them both with his heel. “I did try, you know. I told you it was only a simple rescue. I wanted it to be easy for you.” His voice was still gentle. “You are making it very hard.”

“You hired those men, did you not?”

“I paid them, yes. It is a different thing.”

“It is you.” She panted. “You are Matthew.”

“Matthew George Bannerman.” He smiled at her. “Your mother knew me very well. If she were alive, she would tell you to cooperate because I will treat you well.”

“You know nothing about my mother,” she rasped.

He turned her around and held her in front of him by the shoulders. For the first time she saw his eyes properly. They were pale and wide. There was nothing behind them that she recognised as sane. “You know I mourned her for years. Do you know what that is like, to wake every morning and remember? Then I walk into the Camden ballroom, and there she is. Her face, right there in the room.” He laughed, a shaky, disbelieving sound. “I thought it was a cruelty at first. To be reminded of her like that. But then I thought it was a gift.”

“I am not my mother.”

“No. You are worse. You have her whole look and none of her sense. She at least knew when she was beaten.” He let go of one shoulder and seized a handful of her hair, not hard, almost reverently, and let it slide through his fingers. “I wanted to be kind. I did try. I have been ever so patient. But you are too much like your mother. You pull and you pull and you will not stay where you are put.”

She went for his face with her free hand. He caught it. He was no longer smiling. He dragged her backward, and her calves struck the edge of the bed, and she went down onto the coverlet. He pulled the silk cord from the curtain with a single sharp snap and wound it twice about her wrists. The tassel swung. She screamed then, as loudly as she could, and he did not even flinch.

“Scream if you like. The nearest cottage is two miles.” He knotted the cord, tested it, and fastened the other end to the bedpost. When he straightened, his breath was coming a little fast, and he smoothed his cravat with both palms, as if he had only been pressed for time. “I am not going to lose you too.”

Leonora went still. “Lose me? You have never had me.”

“No.” He looked down at her, and something moved at the back of his eyes. “I shall not make that mistake twice.”

The silver pin was still in her fist, biting into her palm. She did not open her hand. She lay with her wrists bound over her head, knowing that it was best for her to stay silent else she might give away the fact that Rose was alive.

That was the only weapon she had.