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The line. Always about the line. Justin closed his eyes and shook his head, though it did nothing to make the awful truth go away. Never once had Father hinted to Justin that he had been forced into fatherhood. Even when Justin had all but accused him of being less a man than Uncle Edward—he winced now at the thought of those words—Father had merely grinned and said how glad he was that Justin had inherited all the best traits of the family.

“But he loved her.” That was a truth he couldn’t question even now. “And she him.”

Aunt Caro folded her hands before her. “A blessing that happened quickly. It could not erase in your father’s mind the injustice we had all forced upon him, but he was a good man, Justin. He held it against us, but never you. Never your mother. He loved you both more than anything in the world.”

Justin pushed to his feet and turned toward the window again, twisting the signet around his finger. In the silence that crept in, he sent his mind backward. Through the years, through the trips to England and home to Monaco. Trying, in retrospect, to find any flicker in Father’s eyes. Any unexplained shadows.

All he could see was the way Father had drawn Mother into his arms and danced with her when a band of street performers below their window had struck up a waltz. The way they had both drawn him close—he an awkward boy of ten—to cradle the tiny form of Amalie, how they had whispered in his ear that he would be the best brother in the world. How, when his mother and sister died, Father had pulled him closer instead of pushing him away. “
We still have each other
,” he had said. “
We at least have each other
.”

He didn’t know that he was that strong. Didn’t think he could be like his father, not in the ways that mattered.

Aunt Caro touched a hand to his arm. “Don’t shut us all out, Justin. Don’t be like Edward, please. It would break your mother’s heart. Break your father’s. You’re better than that, better than him.”

Was he? He didn’t feel it just now. He didn’t feel anything, not even the promises he had stared at in his Bible last night, willing the black words to lighten his spirit. Maybe his mind knew the truth, but his heart was too raw. It had gone numb.

He pivoted, shrugging off her hand, and headed for the door and the spiral stairs beyond it.

Aunt Caro scurried behind. “Justin!”

He ignored her, hurrying past one landing, down toward the next. Maybe Brook would still be inside somewhere. Maybe he could find her and . . . and what? When she had come upon him in the library last night and wrapped her arms around him, it had taken every ounce of strength he had not to press his lips to hers and beg her to love him. Beg her to make him feel alive again.

She deserved better than that. She deserved to fall in love, not to be forced to marriage for fear of hurting him . . . and he suspected she loved him too much to say no if he asked. Just not for the right reasons. Not for the reasons he needed.

Aunt Caro sighed behind him. “Do you intend to follow the duke’s instructions on where and when to travel?”

It would mean leaving almost immediately. Fixing things. Building things. Shoring up the holes inside. “I should be back by the start of the Season.”

His aunt slowed his step with a hand on his elbow. “What of your Brook? Have you considered how it will hurt her if you leave her now? I thought you meant to court her. But if you leave—you could lose her.”

“No.” The oath whispered out, more prayer than denial. “Never. She is my very heart, Aunt Caro.
Mon
âme
.” His soul.

Her smile softened, lost some of its sorrow. “You have more of William in you than you suppose.”

He prayed she was right.

The silence resumed as they wound down the rest of the turret and joined Cayton and Aunt Susan in the foyer. Together, they stepped outside, into the masses.

The sun was too hot. It seemed today, of all days, England’s skies ought to have been grey and low and menacing. Instead, summer had pounced on them for one last hurrah, scorching all the mourners in their dull black frocks and coats. Justin’s eyes scanned the crowds, looking for the gleaming golden head that would soak in the warmth so happily.

She was there with her father, her eyes already on Justin. She didn’t offer him a smile—she’d know he didn’t want one. But she nodded. And it gave him strength enough to straighten his spine and head for the coach.

The services passed in a blur. The church, the graveside. The mourners passed in an even hazier one. Faces he didn’t know,
names he wouldn’t remember. He shook hands, nodded, and even managed a strained smile now and again. Even when they called him
Duke
or
Stafford
. When those without a title of their own called him
Your Grace.

Perspiration trickled down the back of his neck by the time the line had shrunk to a bare two dozen left to greet. That was when Brook appeared before him, on her father’s arm.

Whitby shook his hand and gripped his shoulder in one strong, quick move. He said nothing, just moved on to Justin’s aunts and cousin.

Brook’s fingers somehow became tangled in his, though he couldn’t be sure which of them had reached out. He held on and used them to pull her closer. Not as close as he would have liked. And then whispered, in Monegasque, “Say my name.”

She squeezed his fingers back. “Justin Wildon.” Soft J. Long U. Silent N. As it was meant to be said.

One knot of the pain loosened, and he felt his shoulders relax. “Brook. I will have to travel.”

The shadows in her eyes belied the understanding nod. “I thought you might. To where?”

The names had been swirling around his head incessantly. “Canada and the Caribbean to start, so I can make it home again for Thate’s wedding.” His friend had looked almost apologetic as he shared his good news yesterday. “Then Africa, India.”

Her eyes emptied of emotion, the way they did when she fought for composure. Her shoulders seemed to have absorbed the tension that left his. “When will you be back for good?”

His throat ached. “In time for your debut.”

“Seven months.” She drew herself up taller, donned the invisible cloak of the Grimaldis. “It has never been so long.”

No, even when he was at school, he’d taken his holidays in Monaco. “I will be home for the wedding though. And I’ll write. Tell you stories of my adventures. ‘Justin Crusoe,’ perhaps.”

“‘Around the World in Two Hundred Days.’” Her smile was but a flutter, quickly gone.

He lifted their hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “Pray for me?”

“Every morning. Every night. Every noon.” She raised up on her toes and kissed his cheeks as she always did.

How he wished it were hello-again instead of good-bye. He gave her fingers one more squeeze. “Save your first dance for me.”

“
C’est la tienne
.”

He smiled and let her move to his aunt. Someday, God willing,
she
would be his, not just a dance.

The smile faded when Pratt stepped up. Neither of them extended a hand. Pratt smirked. “No worries, old boy. I won’t let her get too lonely in your absence.”

Justin bit his tongue. Someday, he would level in a fist in the reprobate’s nose—and enjoy every bruised knuckle he earned.

Darkness blanketed the house. It had been late when they got home from Ralin, later still by the time Brook bade her father good-night and retired. She had tried to sleep, tried to rest, tried to put aside the fear that nothing would ever be the same again between her and Justin, though she couldn’t think what had caused the distance between them. Why he kept pushing her away.

She wished her mother were here, to give her advice.

Instead she had found only thunder behind her closed eyes. The lightning had flashed, the panic had nipped. The darkness had overwhelmed her.

What was it about that infernal dream? A storm, but never any other details. Just impressions, fuzzy and vague and all the more frightful for it.

She shivered and pulled her dressing gown tighter, holding the candle out before her so she wouldn’t wake the house with the flip of electric switches. She had already tiptoed past Whitby’s door. At her mother’s, she paused. But no, if she went in there, her father might hear her. No reason to wake him.

There were other places in the house to find her mother.

Usually at the end of the corridor she turned for the stairs leading downward. Toward the outside, the dining rooms, the library. But according to her father, Mother’s favorite room had always been her upstairs salon. And so Brook took the stairs going up, her candle providing scanty light in the dark stairwell.

Shadows flitted to and fro in the room she let herself into. Tree limbs swaying before moonlight, night creatures in the skies. Despite herself, she shivered again and headed directly for the oil lamp, ornate and feminine, sitting upon the well-worn desk. Once she’d lit it and its cheery yellow glow illumined her corner of the room, her shoulders relaxed.

The chair was small and dainty, woman-sized. Its padding had worn thin, evidence of how often her mother had sat just here, where she now did. Perhaps she had even brought Brook up with her when she was a babe, let her lie on the Turkish rug and coo while she attended her correspondence.

Perhaps they had been together here, before it all went to pieces.

She trailed her fingers over the embellishments carved into the edge of the desk. This, much like her Mother’s bedroom, had been left unchanged aside from cleaning. She’d already poked around enough to know that the top center drawer contained pens and ink, wax, a seal. Paper was stored in the bottom right, correspondence she had saved in the left.

Brook bent down and pulled open the deep right drawer—
and realized she’d been wrong. What she had thought was a stack of paper was actually old letters.

Well, she didn’t know what she would have written to Justin yet anyway. She reached for the stack and pulled them out, thumbed through.

The name Henry Rushworth was on enough of them to catch her eye, so she flipped one open at random. The handwriting was bold and bare.

Well, Lizzie, I’ve arrived in India, and it’s hot as blazes. You would hate it, I daresay . . .

She scanned through descriptions of heat and insects, of the throngs in the marketplaces and the spice in the food. Of finding a bungalow to set up house in and locals to staff it.

I’m fortunate to have O’Malley with me—I’d never trust the locals to fix my tea.

At that, she looked up with a start. A different O’Malley, or was he related to Deirdre? She had said her uncle had recommended her here, had she not? Was this he? More scanning seemed to indicate he was Rushworth’s valet . . . No, batman, he called him. The military equivalent. She read on.

You should see the fabric they make here, Lizzie. Stunning, simply stunning, with beadwork that would put Paris to shame. I’ve got some to send home to Mother and Rush’s wife . . . would send some to you, too, if I didn’t think that husband of yours would dash around the world to put a fist to my nose in thanks.

I hope you’re happy there, Liz. I do. Though if ever the northern climes grow too harsh . . .

Brook shook her head and flipped to another letter. Apparently her father had reason to remember this Henry as he did. The tone may not have been that of a man trying to lure a woman away from her husband, but it was certainly that of one with regrets, and whose affections were no secret. She glanced through a few more before she came to the last one by date. Just a few months before her mother’s death.

The locals have stories that would make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Ancient curses, angry gods, marauding tigers . . . Perhaps when I’m home for leave, I’ll tell you a few. I hope you’ll see me, if only for tea. If he’ll let you. I miss you, Liz. I know you’re happy with your choice, that you’ll have his babe any day now. But I miss you.

Brook touched a finger to a telltale dried water drop that smeared the last word and wondered if her father had allowed a reunion.

With a sigh, she gathered the letters to take with her to her room and stood. She had to rest, somehow or another. Tomorrow she intended to put her weight on Oscuro and see how he responded.

Perhaps a wild horse could take her mind off all the things she couldn’t change . . . and the ones she wished with all her might would stay the same.

Fifteen