Page 95

He was standing with his back to the locked door, hands at his sides, the key in his waistcoat pocket, and the full length of the room between them.

He was smiling.

The Runner on the left was accounting for the Bloomsbury end of the street, twice canvassed, the post boys questioned at both corners, no child observed in either direction.

Adam heard footsteps in the entrance hall moving at the wrong speed for the hour.

He was already turned toward the door when it opened.

Griffiths, the youngest footman from the mews, came through from the hall at a near run. He was flushed from the cold. He stopped and stepped immediately aside without saying anything.

Eloise walked through the door behind him.

There was no space between one moment and the next. Adam crossed the room and went down on one knee in front of her and put both hands on her face.

Her cheeks were cold. Her hair was fully out of its ribbon. The yellow dress had the grass stain at the knee it had earned this morning, and a second mark on the left sleeve in a different color. She had a cloth rabbit tucked under her arm, its left button eye a different shade from the right.

“Let me look at you,” he said.

“I’m not hurt, Papa,” Eloise said. She submitted to the inspection with the patience of someone who had been through this procedure before and knew it would continue regardless. “You don’t have to look like that.”

He turned her hands palm-up and checked her forearms, her jaw, the back of her neck. There was a faint red mark at her left wrist where her glove band had worn into the skin throughout the day.

Nothing else.

“The man was very kind,” Eloise said. “He gave me cake in the morning. And the rabbit. The rabbit’s eye doesn’t match. I think it was repaired,” she said, examining it briefly, “but I think that’s actually better.” She looked up. “And he gave me tin soldiers. Lots of them. I arranged them three times.”

Adam looked at her. He looked at the rabbit. He looked at the mark on her wrist.

“He told me I was going home soon,” Eloise continued. “He said it first thing in the morning, and then again right before the hackney came.” She looked at Adam with the direct attention she reserved for things she wanted to make sure he was following. “He wasn’t surprised when it came. He knew it was coming.”

Adam held that in his chest for the length of two full breaths.

He drew her in. She allowed it; both arms locked around his neck with a firmness she did not usually apply to such things, and she held on past the point where she normally pulled back. He pressed his mouth to the top of her head and stayed there.

She did not say anything, and neither did he.

“Where is Mama?” Eloise said, into his collar.

He released her slowly. He stood. He looked to Mrs. Priscilla, who had come to stand in the doorway, and her eyes had already moved to his coat pocket before she raised them to his face.

“Please bring Her Grace down,” he said.

Mrs. Priscilla drew a breath. “Your Grace.” She stopped.

Adam’s brows furrowed at the woman’s tone.

“I think,” she said, choosing each word with the care of a person selecting tools for a task she had not trained for, “that you should speak with Mary.”

Juliet’s maid appeared at her shoulder before he had finished turning. Mary was young; she had been with Juliet since before the wedding, and she stood very straight with her hands clasped in front of her apron, the expression of someone who had made a decision she could not unmake and knew it. She was holding an envelope.

“Her Grace left at a quarter past two, Your Grace,” she said. She did not drop her eyes from his face. “She left this for you and said, if she was not returned in one hour, I was to put it into your hands directly. She said your hands, Your Grace. No one else’s.” A beat. “It is now quarter past three.”

He crossed the room and took it. He broke the seal and unfolded the single sheet inside.

Four lines. The hand was steady throughout; no wavering in the script, no place where the ink blotted and betrayed a pen held too long over a word.

He read it.