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“Is everything well with them?”

“You saw how they are now, April. They’re happy.”

“Forgive me, Gussie, but financially...?”

Gussie blinked. “That too, since they stopped gadding about London and—"

April swung back to Haggs. “Were you at White’s last Thursday evening, when Piers dined with Jeremy?”

“Sir Jeremy Gadsby?” Haggs looked bewildered by these sudden changes of topic. “No, I wasn’t, but I knew Piers was there. They didn’t stay late. Changed days for Gadsby, leaving so early, as several people remarked to me. When he lived in town, he was so often the last to go home.”

“Were other acquaintances of Piers there that night too?”

“Bound to have been. Why?”

“Did any of them try to speak to him, do you know? Perhaps while he was in a hurry to leave?”

Still confused, Haggs at least seemed to think about it. “Darcy was there, as he just reminded me. He called to Withy and got no response. Why?”

Darcy... April felt sick. She had welcomed the man into her home, listened to his half-serious attempts at reforming his life, laughed with him. That he could betray her and Piers in such a vile way, spoiling their joy in the baby’s birth and hurting Piers... She had never felt so violent toward anyone.

Her fists clenched in her lap. She heard her own breath come out like a snarl, which at least startled her into covering it with a cough and a half-laugh.

“Oh, just curious,” she said vaguely. “It all helps.”

But Piers was right. They had no proof, and she wanted Darcy punished for what he had done, so badly that every muscle ached to inflict the damage herself.

Abruptly, she became aware that Haggs was kneeling in front of her while Gussie still perched on her chair arm.

“April, you’re not alone,” Haggs said urgently. “Whatever you are doing, we’re here to help. Piers would expect me to help.”

Her throat closed up all over again. There was Darcy in the world, to be sure. But there were also good people and the best of friends like Haggs, and Gussie, and the Parks and Stewart, and even Mr. Pepper who knew nothing...

She couldn’t speak, so perhaps it was as well that the baby began to cry and she didn’t need to.

***

“WELL?” GUSSIE DEMANDED in a low voice as they stepped into the street. “What do you make of all that?”

Haggs knew that one was supposed to soothe the ladies with comfortable platitudes and little white lies if necessary. A gentleman never caused a lady to worry. So his sudden urge to speak the truth to Gussie took him by surprise.

Then he made the mistake of looking at her, at her bright, anxious eyes, so afraid for her cousin and trusting in Haggs’s honesty. She was a gently bred girl with very little experience of life, but it came to him suddenly that she was also an intelligent person with a right to be treated as such. And that her insight into this business would be at least as helpful as his own.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that Piers is in trouble and that she is trying to deal with it alone.”

Gussie nodded. “She does that. Though I don’t really know why.”

“Because she’s used to it. And her life before Piers found her was unspeakable.”

Gussie flushed but didn’t drop her gaze. “I’ve guessed that much. So let us not speak of it. But is there really nothing either of us can do?”

Her carriage had reappeared. The footman jumped off his perch at the back, opened the door and let down the step.

“I suppose we could go and speak to the people she asked us about—Cauldwell, Dangerfield if he’s still in town, Darcy...”

“But she seemed very certain we should not! What if we only make things worse in some way? I am certain that is what she fears.”

Haggs chewed his lip. Gussie was undoubtedly right, though whether or not April was justified in the first place, he could not tell. He was in the dark. April was not. Inactivity, trusting anyone else over himself, both went against the grain with him. But for Piers’s sake, he surely had to give April the benefit of that doubt?