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Juliet stopped two feet past the threshold. She kept her coat on, her gloves on. “Where is she?”

He blinked as though mildly puzzled by the opening. He turned to the sideboard and lifted the decanter. “You came,” he said, not turning back yet. “Just as I expected.” He poured with the unhurried attention of a man at his leisure and turned with the glass in hand. “And alone.”

“Return the child.” She kept each word clear and separate. “Whatever you wished to prove, it is proven. Return Eloise now.”

He looked at her from across the room. The warmth in his expression drew back one degree; it was still there, but it had changed its use.

“There is an arrangement that serves us both,” he said. “That is why you are here.”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“You.” He said it plainly, without ornamentation. “You are what I mean.”

He walked to the center of the room, the glass loose in his hand. “I have wanted you since the night of your debut. The Hadley ball, spring of ‘13. You came in on your father’s arm, and you had an expression on your face that every other young woman in that ballroom had been trained out of years before their first Season. You were looking at the room as though you had come to form your own opinion of it. You turned when the music changed with no thought of who might be watching you.”

He took a long drink.

“I was married then. I noted the situation, and I waited. My wife died in January. I observed a decent period. I had your father’s blessing in March and a license within the week.” He lowered the glass. “And then you ran.”

“Because I did not want you,” Juliet said. “That is the truth.”

“Ravenlocke came along.” The warmth in his voice disappeared entirely. What replaced it was quieter and more pointed, the tone of a man laying out the facts of a case he has had months to build. “He came with a piece of old paper and a duke’s title, and he took you. That, I might have accepted. I am a practical man; I understand when circumstances move against me. But Ravenlocke did not stop there.”

He crossed to the sideboard, refilled his glass without haste, and turned back.

“Over the months that followed your wedding, your husband spent his considerable influence quietly removing everything else I had. My shipping interests: two ventures, both profitable for twelve years, suddenly unable to find insured passage through three of the major routes. My commercial partners—men I had worked with for fifteen years—were reached, one by one, and persuaded to withdraw their investments. Not one of them would tell me why, because the persuasion came from a place high enough that no one wished to name it.”

He set the glass down.

“My credit. My reputation in the Exchange. The stock your father was to have received… Gone before the ink on your marriage license had dried.” He looked at her with the direct, unblinking attention of a man who has rehearsed this precise inventory many times.

“He took you. And then, when that was not sufficient, he took everything else. Because I had the impertinence to have wanted what was promised to me.”

The room was very quiet.

“I did not know the extent of it,” Juliet said, and she meant it, although she was not sure why she told him.

“No,” Penhurst said. He did not seem angry at her for it. He sounded, if anything, tired. “I did not expect you would. That is the elegant thing about what your husband does: it is never named. It is simply done.” He picked the glass back up. “He is very capable; I grant him that. He is a thorough man.” He studied her from across the room. “And now I intend to be equally thorough.”

“You are a sick man,” Juliet said.

Penhurst laughed. His shoulders went back with it, the sound coming from low in his chest, running long and easy and entirely unselfconscious, until it had finished on its own terms.

“I am a man who has had everything taken from him,” he said, when it had. “There is a difference.” He set the glass on the mantelpiece. “And since Ravenlocke has left me very little, I find I have very little to lose. You will understand, therefore, why I am disinclined to be reasonable.” He took one step toward her. “Besides, look at yourself. You are wasted on a man who is still learning what it means to reach for something. An older man, with experience, and the desire to treat you as you deserve… I could make you considerably more comfortable than he ever has.”

“If you take one more step,” Juliet said, “I will scream until every person on this street comes through that door.”

He stopped. He looked at her, his head tilting back one degree, his eyes narrowing slightly at the left corners.

Then he turned without haste and crossed to the window at the far wall. He drew the curtain one inch to the side, looked out, and looked back at her.

“Come here,” he said. “There is something I need you to see.”

She did not move.

“Come to the window,” he said, patiently, the voice of a man who had budgeted all afternoon for this. “And then we will continue.”

She crossed the room, because not knowing what was on the other side of that glass was a worse position than knowing. She stopped at the window’s left edge, arms at her sides, and looked.