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And yet it was not the house that followed him into the carriage and would not leave. It was her face — the white shock of it, the cracked voice, the gloved hands pressed flat as if she were holding herself in one piece. The inconvenient, unwelcome suspicion that Miss Viola Trent had been as wronged in that office as he.

He would have his answers. He told himself the house was his reason — and almost believed it.

* * *

Pendleton called the following morning, before Julian had broken his fast.

He came in with the slight, apologetic stoop he had always had, as though forever conscious of taking up more of a room than he was entitled to, and he waited to be asked to sit before he sat. Julian had not seen him in five years, perhaps six. He was a spare, narrow man, a little grayer at the temple than Julian remembered, his moustache neatly kept, his dark coat well cut but not new — the dress of a man who spent carefully and meant it to show as economy rather than want. Everything about him was quiet: the voice, the movements, the way he set his hat upon his knee as though it might disturb someone were he to put it down too hard. It was the manner, Julian thought, of a man who had spent thirty years in other people’s troubles and learned never to startle a client.

For that was Pendleton’s trade. He kept a small solicitor’s practice in the City — estates, wills, the quiet untangling of family money — and had done since he was a young man with no fortune of his own and a mother’s connection to a marquess that fed him nothing but the occasional grudging invitation. He had made his way by being useful where his betters were careless, and by never once forgetting which of those two things he was.

“You will forgive the hour, cousin. I would not have come so early, only I heard the news, and I confess I could not rest easy until I had come to say — well. To say that I was sorry for it.” Pendleton settled his hands on his knees. “Stoneleigh was always spoken of as yours. The whole family understood it so. To learn it had gone elsewhere — and to a stranger, no less — I felt the wrong of it keenly on your behalf. As, I think, did everyone who knew what was intended.”

“It is kind of you to call.” Julian heard the stiffness in his own voice and could not soften it. He and Pendleton had never been close; the cousin belonged to his mother’s side, and to a branch of it that had had to count its shillings. “Though I am not certain there is anything to be done.”

“No. No, perhaps not.” Pendleton said it readily, as a man agreeing that the weather was poor. And then, after a moment, with the air of one venturing where he was not sure he would be welcome: “Although — you will tell me if I overstep, cousin, for it is hardly my place — there are sometimes paths to redress in these matters that are not at first apparent. Where a will surprises a family. Where its terms run contrary to long and settled expectation.”

Julian looked at him. “You mean to contest it.”

“I mean nothing so crude, nor so costly.” A small, deprecating motion of the hand. “A contest is a public thing, and an uncertain one, and it does the family’s name no favors whatever the outcome. No. I meant only — ” He paused, as though selecting the gentlest possible word and not quite finding it. “A young woman, suddenly possessed of a great house and a fortune she did not look for, and with no very firm footing in society to steady her — such a person may, in time, come to feel the weight of it. May come to wonder whether she would not be easier, and happier, with the matter quietly settled and herself comfortably provided for, in exchange for relinquishing what was never truly hers to expect.” He spread his hands. “It wants only a sympathetic intermediary. Someone to put the case to her gently. A solicitor with a steady hand, perhaps, who understands the family’s wishes and means her no unkindness at all.”

The room was very quiet. Somewhere below, a door closed.

“You have given this some thought,” Julian said.

“I have given you some thought, cousin.” The correction was mild, almost wounded. “We are not close, I know it — the fault is as much mine as anyone’s, and the years have a way of widening these things. But family is family, whatever the distance. And I should be a poor sort of relation indeed if I sat by and said nothing, when I have spent my whole career in just such tangled matters, and might be of some small use to you at last.” He rose, gathering his hat. “I shall say no more of it. I only wished you to know that I am at your service, should you wish to understand your position more fully. There is no harm, surely, in understanding one’s position.”

“No,” Julian said slowly. “I suppose there is not.”

“Just so.” Pendleton smiled, and for a moment something in it did not quite reach his eyes, but it was gone before Julian could name it, if it had been there at all. “You know where to find me. Whenever you should wish it. There is no hurry in the world.”

When he had gone, Julian stood a while at the window, turning the conversation over. It had been kindly meant, he told himself. A cousin’s concern, clumsily offered. And yet some part of it sat ill with him, like a meal taken too fast — though when he tried to fix on what, precisely, had troubled him, he could not. The man had said nothing wrong. He had offered help, and only help.

Julian put it from his mind, and thought no more of it that day.

CHAPTER 4

They did not speak much in the carriage. It was not until they arrived at Manion’s house in Cavendish Square that Viola felt able to speak at all. The door shut upon the noise of the street; a fire was coaxed from the embers in the small sitting room Hannah favored, and a tray was brought: tea, and a seed cake of Cook’s, though neither of them touched it at first. Only then did the things turning in her mind since the solicitor’s office find their way to her tongue.

“I keep waiting,” she said, “for someone to come and tell me it was a mistake after all.”

“No one is coming.” Hannah drew her down onto the sofa beside her. “You read the letter yourself. She meant it, every word.”

“That is the part I cannot comprehend.” Viola turned the watch chain over in her fingers. She had taken it from her pocket without noticing, as she did now whenever her thoughts ran ahead of her. “A woman I met perhaps twice has given me a fortune and one of the great houses of London, and left me a letter that explains nothing at all, and the only person who seems to understand any of it is a gentleman who looked at me as though I had picked his pocket.” She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes. “I do not even know his name.”

“You will. London is small at the top, whatever it looks like from below.” Hannah said it gently. “We shall learn who he is soon enough, and a great deal else besides.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, we do the sensible things, one at a time, until the rest stops feeling like a dream.” Hannah ticked them off lightly, as if they were nothing to fear. “You must write to Papa, tonight, I think, or he will hear it from some other quarter and be hurt. We must let it be known, quietly, that you are in town. And we must get you properly dressed, because you cannot meet London in a gown made over from Mama’s, however well you have kept it.”

The mention of her father stilled Viola’s hands. “What am I to tell him?”

“The truth. That you are well, and astonished, and that you love him.”

“He will be so glad.” Viola’s throat tightened. “He will read more into it than there is. He will think I am happy, and safe, and settled, and he will be so glad of it that I shall not have the heart to tell him I am frightened half out of my wits.” She looked down at the chain. “He has had so little to be glad of. I cannot take this from him too.”

Hannah was quiet a moment. “Then do not,” she said at last. “Let him be glad. There will be time enough for the rest, if it comes. Tonight you may simply tell him the good part, that his daughter has been remembered, and well, by a lady who saw something in her worth remembering.” She covered Viola’s hand with her own. “That much is wholly true, you know. Whatever else is tangled in it.”