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The last thing she wished to do was become obsessed with what her husband was up to, and controlling his actions.

“Then, fine. I shall come with you.”

“Your Grace. Your Grace.” Mrs. Fairley met them at the door, flustered with the honor of two duchesses arriving at once, and swept them inside. They had scarcely finished it before a small, determined voice interrupted from the doorway.

“Is it true you are to have a concert?” This was Tom. “Joan says we are to sing at a ball. I do not sing, though so do you think I will do a good job?”

“I think you will do a great job,” Phillipa said in agreement and then looked Augusta.

“I think it’ll be a good idea for you to stand someone with who sings beautifully,” said Augusta, “and let them carry the tune, and simply move your mouth. It is a technique I employed myself for the whole of my come-out, and no one was ever the wiser.”

Tom appeared to find this an entirely satisfactory arrangement, and departed at a run to spread the method among the other children, and Augusta, laughing, got to her feet and held out her hand to Mrs. Fairley.

“You are more tough on them than I am,” Phillipa said. “I think I should invite you more often, for you can really give them the dose of reality that I am not able to.”

“Oh, you make me sound much worse than I am,” she smiled. “But I think I can make another visit, surely. I am starting to understand why you like this place so much. There is an odd sense of calm here and it feels more real than most of high society.”

Phillipa nodded. “I will give you a tour of the place.”

“Show me everything,” she said.

“Perhaps Mrs. Fairley can give you the tour,” she said. “It might be better that way.”

“And you, Your Grace?” Mrs. Fairley glanced at Phillipa.

“I shall stay a while with the books, if I may. I have been meaning to go through the last quarter’s accounts properly, and I confess I would rather do it here, where I can ask questions, than puzzle over it alone at home.”

It was not, strictly, a lie. It was only not the whole of the truth, which was that she wanted, very badly, a quarter hour in which no one asked whether she was well.

When they left, she had some time alone.

She had the little office to herself, the door propped open to the yard for the light, the ledger spread before her.

There was a knock on the door then.

“Mrs. Fairley has taken my colleague off on a tour,” she said, still writing. “If you are looking for her, I am afraid you have missed your chance for the better part of an hour.”

“I am not looking for Mrs. Fairley, Your Grace. I believe it is you I have come to find, though I confess I had not looked to find you quite so easily.”

Phillipa’s pen stopped.

She looked up.

A man stood in the doorway, hat in hand, fair-haired and pleasantly made, in a coat that had plainly once been fashionable and was kept, now, with the particular care of a man who could not afford to replace it. He was perhaps five and thirty, with an easy, unhurried smile that arrived a half second behind his eyes, as though it had been sent for rather than felt.

Something cold moved through her, quick and certain.

“Forgive me,” he said, before she could speak, “I have not introduced myself, and I am aware that a strange man appearing in your doorway is not the pleasantest start to an acquaintance. Michael Dornet, Your Grace, very much at your service.”

She kept her face perfectly still but on the inside, she was having a hard time keeping her calm.

“Mr. Dornet.” She set down her pen with deliberate care, buying herself the length of the gesture to steady her own pulse. “You have found me at my work, I am afraid. How may I help you?”

“I hope it is rather the reverse, Your Grace. I understand this house does a great deal of good for children who have no one else to do it for them.” He turned his hat once in his hands. “I was raised in a house very like this one, as it happens. Not so fine as this has become, by what I am told, but much the same sort of place, and much the same sort of people doing their best with very little. I have had some small success in business since, and I have been meaning, for some while now, to do something for a house like the one that raised me. I heard St. Anthony’s spoken of very highly, and thought I might begin here.”

It was, she thought, a very good story. It was told well, with just the right note of modesty.

She wondered, with a calm that rather frightened her, how many times he had told it before, and to whom, and what it had got him.