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What nonsense was this? He was not one for elaborate planning, let alone long-term emotional strategies. The idea of orchestrating her entire future as though she were a pawn in some well-meaning scheme made him queasy. Audrey was not a woman to be managed, and heaven forfend, he did not want to be parted from her.

This is a bleeding disaster.

Slipping his arm out from beneath her with practiced care, Julius rose from the bed. The room was cool, the fire now embers. He pulled on his linen shirt and lit the oil lamp from the bedside, his stockinged feet making no sound as he crossed the floor. He did not look back.

He could not.

It was time to focus. Time to clear his head. There were greater dangers afoot than the mess he had made of his heart. There was still the small matter of murder.

Julius made his way downstairs, the flickering lamplight throwing shadows across the corridor. As he entered the library, a sense of purpose returned. The scent of old paper and beeswax was oddly grounding. The room had become his haven over the past few days, a place of study and reflection.

He set the lamp down, its golden light illuminating the familiar spines on the shelves and a portrait that caught his eye.

Aunt Gertrude.

This one was a more recent work. Her silver hair was tucked into a fashionable turban, her gown of muted mulberry silk. She peered down with a expression of thin-lipped disapproval, as though she might speak at any moment.

Julius sighed, shoving a hand through his disheveled hair.

“I will wed her,” he muttered under his breath. “She shall have my name. My protection.”

It was a start, at least. And for now, it had to be enough.

Lady Hays continued to stare.

“I swear it,” Julius whispered into the lamplight, his voice tinged with a boyish earnestness that surprised even himself. “I will take care of the young lady. She shall not want for anything.”

He glanced up at the portrait again, half-expecting a quirked brow or a dry retort to be painted across her lips. Instead, Lady Hays’s moss-green gaze remained fixed and unmoved, reproach etched in every precise brushstroke.

It might have been his imagination, but Julius fancied she looked disgusted.

Egad. The woman would flay him alive if she knew the full extent of his disgrace. That he had spent time alone with a young lady of good birth, under her very roof, and without even the decency of a betrothal contract in place. Not even a proposal. What manner of scoundrel did that make him?

The worst kind, he admitted grimly.

Julius dragged a hand through his hair, the gesture more penance than habit. This was getting him nowhere. He could stew in his guilt for days, but it would not help Audrey—not now. He needed to focus.

Crossing the room, he reached for the worn, calf-bound volume that had served so many generations of the nobility, Debrett’s Peerage. He heaved it off the shelf with a grunt and set it down on the table, the sound echoing like a gavel through the quiet room.

“Right,” he muttered, sitting down. “Let us make sense of this mess.”

He bent over the pages, flicking through the fine cotton-rag paper, the familiar musty scent rising with each turn. Lineages, marriages, ancient estates—he scanned the names and titles with increasing speed until he reached the one that sparked his memory.

He and Abbott had spent weeks observing the suspects, attending a wearying string of dinners, soirées, and musicales. He had taken note of every careless word, every guarded glance, every discarded invitation or gesture.

And now … now he recalled it.

One evening, at a soirée somewhere off Mount Street. He had been leaning in the archway, nursing a glass of claret, trying to endure the caterwauling of a soprano whose ambition far exceeded her talent. Out of the corner of his eye, he had noticed the footmen. Their livery had caught his attention, not the colors themselves, which were the usual deep blue and gold, but the linings.

When one of the servants had rounded the corner, the tails of his coat had flicked upward, catching the light and revealing something unusual, a flash of green and blue in a distinct checkered pattern.

It had struck him then, but without context, he had filed it away. Now, with Audrey’s recent observation of the tartan fabric worn by the assailant …

He turned the page and paused, tapping the paper lightly.

There it was.

The entry was detailed, unassuming at first glance. But the family’s heritage? Tied to a Scottish viscounty.