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He dropped his gaze to his scuffed boots. “I wouldna know, milady.”

Lily clenched her jaw, inhaling through her nose. With no answers forthcoming, she swept past him, the hem of her morning gown brushing the floor as she marched toward the staircase. The old treads creaked beneath her hurried steps, steps that would no doubt have earned her a reprimand from Mama had she been present.

John followed at a respectful but ever-present distance. He moved with surprising grace for a man of his bulk, though the weight of his tread and the faint rasp of his breath made it impossible to forget his proximity.

She checked the breakfast room, the blue salon, and the morning room. Each stood silent and empty. When she reached the study, she paused and placed her ear against the heavy wood. Not a sound. The room was not in use.

Behind her, John waited silently, arms folded across his chest like a sentinel carved in flesh and bone.

Where the blast is my husband?

She turned sharply. “Did Lord Filminster leave me a note to explain?”

“I wouldna know, milady.”

A huff of frustration escaped her lips. It was not even nine o’clock, and Brendan was gone. No note. No word. Just this rough-edged stranger and his promise of protection. Lily wrapped her arms around herself and turned toward the grand entrance hall. The hush in the house was absolute. Without Brendan’s presence, Ridley House felt bleak once more, a grand, echoing shell draped in memories and dust.

Yet the presence of John, silent and solid, reminded her that Brendan had not left her wholly unguarded. Perhaps, in his own frustrating way, this was a gesture of care.

Even so, the ache of his absence had settled in her chest.

Brendan alighted from his carriage to stand at the edge of the teeming road. Pulling out his timepiece, he confirmed the hour to be a few minutes past nine o’clock. He was late. His meeting with Halmesbury, Richard, and Briggs at the club had been set precisely for nine, but the unruly snarl of London traffic had conspired to delay him. The capital was thoroughly awake. Horses jostled in their harnesses, wheels clattered over cobblestones, and the morning rush turned St. James’s Street into a river of motion.

“Brendan?” The dulcet voice halted him mid-step. He turned sharply to find Harriet peering at him from several feet away, one hand poised delicately on the open door of her waiting carriage.

His spine stiffened.

The widow looked striking in striped muslin and a feather-tipped bonnet, her gloved fingers raised to conceal a coy smile. Brendan forced himself to lift his beaver and bow.

“Lady Slight.”

“So formal,” she teased, stepping down lightly from the carriage.

He did not have time for this.

Suppressing a sigh, Brendan offered a polite, measured smile, even as every instinct urged him to make for the door of the club. There were too many eyes upon them, and he had no wish to be entangled in street gossip. That she had dared approach him in public, knowing he was recently wed, betrayed either foolishness or an unsettling boldness.

Still, he was a gentleman. And a gentleman did not walk away from a titled lady on a bustling street.

Harriet approached, her presence wrapped in rosewater and memory. Her gaze swept over him as if appraising the man she might have claimed. That she had once considered him beneath her was a truth that left ashes in his mouth. And now?

“Is it true that you wed the silly chit from my street?”

It was a crude question, asked with the softness of velvet and the sting of vinegar. Brendan’s smile did not waver.

“I married Miss Abbott yesterday. I have found her mind to be remarkably lively.” He paused. “Not so silly, after all.”

“My commiserations,” Harriet murmured.

His smile faded.

Brendan had no desire to discuss his wife—his warm, thoughtful, intelligent wife—with a woman who had stepped aside rather than stand beside him when he had needed her most.

He would have left it there, but Harriet stepped closer. Too close.

The cloying sweetness of her perfume reached him, evoking no warmth, only the jarring sense that she belonged to another time, another self he had shed.

She raised one gloved hand and, with calculated ease, traced her fingers down the edge of his lapel.