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Benedict felt the thought land in him with a weight he had not looked for, and understood, in the same instant, that she had reached it before he had.

"He is not delaying my endowment to be paid," she said, and her hands had gone tight together. "He is delaying it because when it is paid, the accounts must first be closed and studied and signed off as sound — and they are not sound, and he knows they are not, because he is the one who made them so. The audit will lay him bare. My endowment is the thing that sets the audit going." She drew a breath. "Whoever placed those debts is not waiting for his money, Blackwood. He is racing a clock. Every day that study draws nearer its end, he comes nearer to being found. And I — I am the one who will set the last of it in motion, the day I press to have what is mine."

For a moment Benedict could only look at her. He had come at the thing sideways, thinking of creditors and recompense, and she had gone straight through the middle of it to the true and frightening shape beneath. Fear drove the man. He did not want to be paid. He wanted the accounts kept silent before they could speak against him. And the terrible neatness of it was that the very machinery meant to protect her — the careful third study, the will's own demand — was the thing the villain most feared, and the thing he was working, from the shadows, to hold back or turn aside before it could reach its end.

"Harriet." He said it low, and with a respect that had no flattery in it. "That is the truest reading of this that either of us has yet made. You have gone to the heart of it." He rubbed a hand across his jaw, following her down the path she had opened. "It is not a debt he wants collected. It is an audit he wants stopped — or slowed, or muddied — before it closes over him. And your endowment is what starts the clock."

"Then we must reach the end of that study before he does," she said, "and be ready for what it shows."

"We must." He rapped the roof. "Braithwaite Solicitors," he called up, and to Harriet: "If Lady Warrington's accounts are where the proof lies, then Braithwaite is the man conducting the very study our friend so dreads. I should like to know how near its close he stands — and to set him on his guard for what he may find in it."

She nodded, and made to settle back, and then her eyes flew wide, and she came bolt upright again, her hands reaching out to close hard on his. "Blackwood — if you had not come. If your aunt's note had not sent you to me. I would have signed whatever paper was put before me, and thanked them for the trouble —"

“And they might well have found the accounts wanting," Benedict said, "and ruled the endowment could not be given, and never told you why."

Her hand pressed his. "How glad I am that you did not step aside from your aunt's charge," she said, her voice gone hoarse, her eyes bright. "I dare not think what would have become of me."

He looked down into her face, and the words rose in him again, and again he let them wait, not cut off this time, not stolen, but held back by his own hand, kept for a better hour than his own carriage racing between two solicitors' doors. It was enough, for now, to have her hands in his, and to know the wanting was answered in her look. There was time. He meant there to be a great deal of time.

The carriage came to a sudden stop, and Benedict frowned, and turned to the window.

They had drawn up outside Braithwaite Solicitors — but the pavement before the door was in an uproar. A knot of men had gathered in a rough circle, and within it two others stood squared off and shouting, coats already half off their shoulders, the crowd pressing and jostling and egging them on. As Benedict watched, the first blow was struck, a roar went up, and the whole seething mass of it heaved and surged directly across the door of Braithwaite's office, so that no soul could have reached the threshold without going through the middle of the brawl.

He rapped the roof sharply, his jaw set. Something in it sat ill with him even as he did — the too-convenient placing of the thing, hard against the one door in London he had meant to knock upon that hour, at the one moment he meant to knock upon it. Brawls were common enough in the streets. But brawls did not, as a rule, arrange themselves so exactly across a man's path. As the carriage lurched into motion, a second roar followed them, and beneath it, sharp and deliberate, the bright shatter of a windowpane going in.

"Another time, perhaps," he said, low, watching the crowd close over the doorway behind them as the carriage bore them off. Harriet's eyes had flared at the sound of the breaking glass. "Let us hope Mr. Braithwaite's people can keep his door and his windows whole."

She nodded, and drew her hand slowly from his, and settled back. Neither of them spoke again for a while. But Benedict watched the last of the disturbance shrink away behind them, the men still churning across the solicitor's step, and could not rid himself of the sense that they had been kept from that door as surely as if a hand had reached out and turned their carriage back — and that somewhere behind the shouting and the smashed glass, in the confusion so neatly made, some quieter business he could not see was being got quickly done.

Chapter Twelve

Harriet ignored the twisting nervousness in her stomach as the carriage drew up outside Lord and Lady Hawkley's townhouse. The invitation to dinner had been a very pleasant one, but her thoughts had been so unsettled of late that they would light on nothing but the trouble that surrounded her: the salted debts, the study that must close before her endowment could be given over, the clock she now knew was running against a man she could not name.

Stepping out, she paused a moment at the stone steps and looked up at the lit windows, wondering who else might be within. She had very little doubt that her friend would have contrived to have the Duke of Blackwood there, knowing as Sara did that Harriet's connection with him had grown ever stronger.

Climbing the steps slowly, she let her thoughts return to him despite herself: to his steady voice, to the warmth in his face when he had praised her reasoning in the carriage the day before. She thought, too, of the park, of how near they had come beneath the trees before the still figure across the road.

That had not been spoken of since. It hung between them yet, unfinished, and each recollection of it stirred a quiet flutter that told her plainly enough of her delight in his company, whatever she pretended otherwise.

"My dear Harriet!" Sara was waiting at the door, and gestured for the butler to take Harriet's things before embracing her warmly. "I am very glad indeed to see you. I was quite determined that you should not spend another evening alone, brooding over solicitors and mysteries you cannot yet solve."

With a smile, Harriet slipped her arm through her friend's. "I am grateful for the invitation. Though I fear I may not be the most entertaining guest this evening."

Sara laughed and shook her head. "Not at all. You are always excellent company. Besides, I am quite sure you will find the rest of my guests particularly agreeable."

Harriet suspected at once, from the brightness of her friend's eyes, that the one gentleman she had hoped to see was already present, and her suspicion was confirmed the moment she stepped into the drawing room.

The company was modest but lively, to judge by the level of conversation and laughter. Lord Woodley stood near the mantelpiece, engaged in animated talk with a young lady and an older one Harriet took for her mother. Lord Ashcroft leaned forward a little in his chair, listening to Miss Hannah Yarmouth, her aunt Lady Knightbridge seated placidly beside her. And, standing not far from the center of the room, was the Duke of Blackwood.

When her eyes found him, a thrill ran straight down her spine, and heat came up into her cheeks, and she was obliged to bob a quick curtsy in his direction before drawing her gaze away.

"You and I," Sara murmured, nudging her lightly as the flush darkened, "shall have to speak of certain things. Later, when we ladies are alone over our tea." She said it with such open delight that Harriet could not tell whether to be grateful or alarmed.

She managed a nod she did not altogether mean, and stepped back to let Sara take command of the room. Within a few minutes they were all conducted through to the dining room and seated at the table.

Her place was set opposite the Duke, and she pulled her gaze from him at once, knowing that in company so small every glance would be marked. It was no easy thing. The conversation flowed pleasantly enough, turning over the Season, the newest offerings at the theater, and the latest small scandals. And yet time and again her attention was drawn back across the table to him, and each time their eyes met, her breath caught and would not come evenly again until she had looked away.

"I understand there is some difficulty as regards Lady Warrington's will, Your Grace." It was Lady Knightbridge who spoke, and Harriet dropped her head over her soup, praying the lady would not turn to her. "Society has been full of whispers of it, has it not? A most surprising state of affairs, I think."