Page 21

That much was true, Benedict knew. Before the elder brother's sudden illness had passed the title down to him, Ashcroft had a name for a steady head with a tangled account. A friend or two had gone to him over the years with a knot they could not pick loose, though Benedict had never had occasion to do so himself.

"If ever there is any assistance I might render," Ashcroft went on, "in a matter of figures or accounts, you have only to send me word. I am forever telling my friends they leave such things too long to the lawyers, who are paid by the hour to be slow. I should be very glad to be of use, to you or to any friend of yours who found himself in a tangle of that kind."

It was said easily, without flourish, the offer of a clubbable man with a hobby-horse he was fond of riding, and Benedict felt the tension in him ease a fraction at the ordinary decency of it. "That is generous of you," he said. "It may well prove useful. I shall bear it in mind."

"But of course. Whenever you should wish it." Ashcroft inclined his head. "I am at your service."

Benedict rose in earnest now, and gave his thanks with a nod. "Perhaps we might take this up again this evening, Woodley — once you have had more time to turn it over?"

"At White's, then. This evening."

"Capital." With a word of farewell to them both, Benedict made his way out into the square and toward his waiting carriage. He handed himself up with a sudden lift of hope beneath his ribs. Between Woodley's counsel and Ashcroft's expertise, it might be that Lady Colbourne's difficulty could yet be brought to some end, and that she might have, at the last, the peace and the plenty he wanted for her more than he had any right to want.

He did not, as the carriage pulled away, spare a thought for whether Ashcroft had heard the earlier part of the conversation, the part that touched Wells and his letters. It seemed to him a small thing, and he let it go.

* * *

"Your Grace."

Benedict blinked as he was shown into the late Lord Colbourne's study, and stopped upon the threshold. It was not the room that arrested him, though the room was in a state, but the sight of Lady Colbourne herself, standing in the midst of it, ringed about with documents of every kind, her dark curls tumbled loose about her shoulders as though she had put her hands through them a hundred times that afternoon. A kick landed low in his stomach: the sudden, unruly wish to cross the room and take her into his arms, to thread his fingers through that fallen hair and feel the softness of it against his skin.

He swallowed it down. He inclined his head instead, and by the time he had lifted it she was already pulling the hair back into some order, binding a hasty braid with a single blue ribbon.

"You must forgive me." A flush of pink stood in her cheeks. "I was not expecting you, Your Grace."

"Blackwood, please." He was suddenly weary of the wall of formality between them, wanting instead the plain strength of the understanding they had begun to build. He glanced back at the footman who hovered at the door. "Your man sent word there had been some difficulty this afternoon."

She nodded, and dismissed the footman with a small motion of her hand, so that they were left alone together — a thing he had not expected, and one that made him abruptly, keenly conscious of the closed door and the empty room and the absence of any other soul in it.

She trusts you.

The thought stopped him where he stood, and would not let him look again at her hair, or the color in her face. "Might I ask what has happened, Lady Colbourne?"

"If you will have me call you Blackwood, then in private you may call me Harriet." She said it with a tired smile, and there was a weariness about her eyes that had drawn shadows beneath them. "It seems a poor time to stand on ceremony. Forgive my state — there has been a commotion this afternoon that has left me quite unsettled."

"Commotion." The word sent a streak of alarm through him, and he took a step nearer. "What has occurred?"

"A man." Her eyes closed briefly. "A man who came into my house under the pretense of being a footman, with a letter in his hand — a letter carrying particular instructions, he said, that must be given to the butler directly. The maid went to fetch him. When they returned to the hall, the man was gone. And so was the letter."

Benedict's heart struck hard against his ribs. "Gone where?"

"Here." She turned, her arms opening to the wreck of the room. "To my late husband's study. Everything you see was pulled from the drawers and the shelves and cast about, so — I can only think he was searching for something."

"Indeed." Benedict looked at the paleness of her, and the tremor she was holding so carefully in check, and felt his own alarm sharpen into something protective and cold. "Were you at home when it happened?"

She shook her head. "I was at the modiste."

"Sit for a moment. Please." He came to her, and when she did not move, he took her hand and drew her toward a chair by the fire. "You are exhausted. I cannot imagine the fright of coming home to this."

With a nod, she sank back against the chair and let her eyes close. "I keep wondering," she said, "whether this is the very thing your aunt feared — whether this is why she asked you to come alongside me in it."

He had no answer that would serve, and so gave none. He satisfied the need to do some small thing by laying his hand over hers, and felt her fingers cold beneath his palm.

"I do not understand any of it." The words came faster now, tumbling. "I believed the delay a matter of papers, of a will read too carefully — nothing more. But someone has followed me from the solicitors, and now someone has been in my house, through Edward's papers, seeking heaven knows what — and I cannot even tell you whether anything is gone, for I never once looked at Edward's affairs while he lived. I did not think to do so."

She rose again, restless, and crossed to the desk, taking up a sheaf of papers only to set them down again one by one. When she turned back to him, her eyes were bright with tears held hard in check. "I do not know what I have been drawn into. What am I to do?"

She did not say I am quite undone. She stood very straight against the desk, her chin lifted, and let the tears stand unshed in her eyes and did not let them fall — and it undid him far more than weeping would have.