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With a sharp bow he turned and was gone, leaving Viola to stare after him. He had not answered her. He had not even tried. Pressed, he had simply walked out, and left her question hanging in the air.

She sank into a chair and let out a long breath, the weakness creeping back into her limbs.

Then her jaw tightened.

“Hannah.” She lifted her head and met her sister’s eyes. “I think it is time I took up residence at Stoneleigh House.”

Hannah’s eyes flew wide, and then a smile broke across her face.

“After Lord Carrington’s visit, and Miss Galbraith’s unkind little remarks, it is time I showed society I mean to do exactly what I told him I would. To take hold of Lady Warrington’s gift, and in doing so to honor her memory and her wishes.”

“Wonderful.” Hannah sat down opposite, her eyes bright. “I confess I did not expect you to say so — least of all after Lord Carrington’s remarks.”

Viola allowed herself a small smile, the knot still tight in her stomach, and refused to let uncertainty rule her any longer. “It is time I accepted the gift entire.” Her chin lifted. “Let us go back there with all haste. We will live at Stoneleigh House.”

That night, in the easy comfort of Cavendish Square, she lay awake and let herself think about what she had done. The ton spoke of Stoneleigh as one spoke of the sights of London — a thing to be pointed out from carriages, named with a hush, admired and envied and never, somehow, simply lived in. A monument. And she had just declared, before her sister and God and her own quaking heart, that she meant to move into it with her four gowns and her father’s watch chain. And what did she know of managing such a household? As much as she knew of commanding a ship of the line.

But monuments, she thought, were for the dead. Lady Warrington had not left the house to the dead. She had left it, deliberately, in her own strong hand, to a living girl, and perhaps there was a reason in that, too. Fires could be lit. Rooms could be aired. A door shut for months could be opened.

She would find out whether a monument could be made a home. It seemed as good a way as any to begin.

CHAPTER 7

The flush had only just faded from Julian’s face by the time he reached home. He handed his hat and gloves to the butler and went to his study without a word. The house seemed unusually still, as if it waited for him to shut himself away with his embarrassment. He closed the door firmly behind him, scrubbed a hand down his face, and let out a low groan.

“For shame,” he muttered, crossing to pour himself a very large measure of brandy. “My arrogance let me believe she would simply hand me the house.”

The memory of her steadiness, the way she had looked at him and spoken plainly, heated his face all over again. Her voice had wavered, yes, and a flush had touched her cheeks. But her resolve to keep all that Lady Warrington had left her was not a thing he could argue against. When Miss Galbraith had laughed and proposed an exchange of houses, he had held his breath. He had wondered, for one moment, whether Miss Trent might yield.

She would not. She had made that perfectly clear.

“I misjudged her entirely,” he told the empty room. “And thought far too well of myself.”

He sat in the leather chair by the hearth and stretched out his legs, loosening his collar with one finger. The brandy burned down his throat, and with it came the plain truth: there was nothing more to be done. Whatever hope he had nursed of recovering Stoneleigh through influence or appeal had gone the moment she declared she would stay. The loss sat sharper now. It was not that he had thought the house his by right — it was that he had imagined a life inside it, years of it, and watched that life dissolve in an instant. He had planned it in the idle, half-conscious way a man plans a future he believes secure: the library catalogued at last, as Lady Warrington had shown him it wanted; the west-wing roof seen to before another winter got into the timbers; which room he would take for his study, and how the light would come into it of a morning. He had even — he could admit it now, with the brandy burning — imagined the day he would carry a wife over that threshold, some faceless, gracious creature who would love the house as he did. For as long as he could remember, Stoneleigh had lived in his mind as the place he would one day make his own. To lose it, and beyond all argument, left him displaced and ill at ease and, if he were honest, a little broken-hearted.

A knock came at the door. With a sigh, he called the footman in.

The man set a single letter on a silver tray, sealed with wax, but bearing no stamp at all. Julian took it absently and waited for the footman to withdraw.

He frowned, and broke the wax, and read the few words written in a neat, deliberate hand.

Miss Trent is not as innocent as she claims.

His jaw tightened at once. The letter went on in vague, suggestive terms about Lady Warrington’s final months — private meetings, whispered threats against an elderly woman whose body and mind had both begun to fail. It never said the thing outright. It did not need to. The meaning was unmistakable: that fear, not affection, had guided Lady Warrington’s last decisions, and that Miss Trent had coerced an old woman into changing her will.

Julian made himself breathe slowly; he had not noticed how fast he had begun to snatch at the air. He rose, folded the page, and set it upon his desk.

“It must be a lie,” he said aloud, ready to dismiss it as the cowardly invention of someone in his own wider family who wanted the house for him. “I cannot believe it.”

And yet he unfolded it and read it twice more. The insinuations were arranged with care; the tone was calm rather than hasty, which was somehow worse. A furious letter he could have dismissed. This had been composed. Weighed. Written by someone who knew precisely how much he had wanted Stoneleigh, and who had judged, coolly, that the want could be made use of.

He ran through the names of his wider family — the aunts who had petted him as a boy, the cousins who wrote at Christmas and when they needed something, in that order. Any of a half-dozen might think to serve his interest by such means and call it loyalty. He disliked every name he arrived at. He disliked more that there were so many to arrive at.

I cannot believe Miss Trent capable of threats, he thought, recalling the quiet way she spoke, the steadiness of her gaze while her voice trembled. I have known her only a few days. But there is a softness in her that would make such cruelty near impossible.

The study door opened a second time. Julian turned, ready to rebuke whichever servant had entered without knocking, and found his brother smiling at him.

“Forgive me, Carrington. I did wonder — ” Brookmire stopped, his smile fading. “Is something the matter?”