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She caught her breath. Beneath the panicked roaring in her ears, some other emotion sang. The truth—uttered at this late stage—would not redeem her. And yet, as she opened her mouth, the pain in her stomach began to relent.

“No, my father was Finch,” she said. “Jack’s father was Reeve, the man who died in the carriage factory.” She exhaled shakily. “Jack is my half brother.”

Alan’s expression grew cold and masklike. Did rage churn beneath?

“Christ,” he swore.

She went rigid. His body seemed larger, the compartment too small for sudden movements. A punch directed at the shutter was liable to bring an elbow near her face.

She wouldn’t flinch. She was already retracting into herself.

He saw it. A new light flared in his eyes, pure horror.

So slowly he seemed scarcely to move at all, he leaned forward. She watched his hand extend toward her, her mouth as dry as sand.

When his fingertips touched her wrist, the rigidity streamed from her. She went watery and weak. There was no defense against this tenderness.

“Jack didn’t steal that inkstand.” She sagged, looking down, watching his thumb slide into the tiny hollow above her wristbone.

She wished she hadn’t said it, spoken as though the inkstand were the linchpin, and without it the whole case against him fell apart. Both of them exonerated of their falsity, their falsifying, by that one false accusation.

I’m sorry, she might have said instead, the apology as meaningless as the excuse.

She forced her head up. He’d slid to the edge of his seat, his knees a whisper from hers. Everything about his face was hard. Yet his thumb still stroked her skin, the pressure light.

She understood. It wasn’t forgiveness, but a promise.

He wouldn’t handle her roughly.

Paradoxically, she felt more breakable, or newly aware that she was already broken.

“How do you know he didn’t steal it?” he asked, and his faint smile mocked her faith. That was what it was, after all, not knowledge, but faith. Jack had said he didn’t do it, and she’d believed him.

She had no direct answer to give.

“My father left when I was four.” She closed her eyes. “Went out for milk and never came back. I remember staring at the door, willing him to walk back through it. I can picture that door more clearly than I can picture his face. The door, and the drawing tacked up beside it, Jack’s. Of Kipper, our cat.”

She opened her eyes. Alan’s face was still hard. But he turned her hand, and his hot thumb pressed into the dip of her palm.

“Our mother couldn’t sit and wait.” She cleared her throat. “We lived for a time with Mr. Farrar, then Mr. Nelson. Then there was . . .” She pressed her lips together. She wouldn’t list the serial evictions, each brought on by the whim or waning interest of the next Mr. Such-and-Such.

Alan considered her, silent. The heat of his thumb in her palm was spreading through her body.

The contrast unbalanced her—his hard, cold, withdrawn watchfulness, and simultaneously, this point of contact, equally devastating.

It loosened her tongue.

“Jack is older,” she continued. “By the time he was sixteen, he’d gone out on his own, and he was doing well for himself. He’d started studying at the Academy Schools. But he always called, wherever we were. He’d bring me pomegranates. His friends bought them by the crate, to put in their pictures. But no one ever ate them. Too much of a nuisance.” Her chest was rising and falling, fast. She really was going to be sick.

“They weren’t a nuisance to me.” Her voice grated. “I loved to uncover the seeds. I shared them with Mr. Mucklow’s parakeets.”

“Of course you did,” murmured Alan, and she saw what she’d thought she might never see again: a warm, amused light in his eyes.

“When our mother got sick . . .” Her throat had clogged but she pushed on. “When she died, Jack swore he’d keep me with him, and he did, even though it meant letting little rooms with bad light, missing his lessons and lectures. Falling out with all of those lily-sniffing friends.” The lump in her throat had a sharp edge. “Not one of them stood up for him at the Royal Academy.”

“You stand up for him.” Alan’s gaze became piercing. “And stand by him. A loyal sister.” The muscles in his jaw leapt. “But at what cost?” His thumb skated over her palm, trapped the racing pulse at its base. “Why were you in Umfreville House?”

“To recover a letter Sleaford wrote to Jack.” The truth emerged, unvarnished and instantaneous. “He mixed up the envelopes. If his grace had read the letter carefully, remembered who Jack was . . .”