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“You don’t have a message from the Spinsters?”

“No, should I have?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Are you getting in?”

“I honestly don’t know that either.”

A fleeting smile came and went, softening his stern features, but only for a moment. “Lady Clara, I cannot let you go to Eastbourne’s alone.”

“Priya did send you!”

“No, but she did predict that you would argue with me. But I felt certain a lady of such impeccable manners would not argue with me out on the street.”

He was teasing her. Just a little. In a way that brought her in on the jest and did not make her bear the brunt of it. Still, she crossed her arms.

“I can handle a house party, even one of that nature. They’ll barely notice me.” A galling thing to admit to him, but true nonetheless.

“You are not going to that house alone,” he repeated. He did not sound angry, did not raise his voice. He did not even sound impatient. Just certain, as certain as he would have been proclaiming the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Facts were facts.

He was so handsome—the rough stubble on his cheek, the sharpness in his gaze. The line of his jaw and his shoulders under his coat. He took up space quietly, unapologetically. With nothing to prove. She envied him that. He was confident.

And stubborn. She supposed she ought to have expected that from a military man.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” she asked.

His gaze was steady, direct. “What do you think?”

She sighed and took his hand when he offered it. Letters were tattooed across his knuckles: HOLD FAST.

She spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about those tattoos.

And there was no sense in turning away assistance, not if it helped Sybil. “Fine,” she said. “But this is my mission.”

“Aye, Captain.”

His fingers were warm and strong under hers. She suddenly wished she was not wearing gloves. He was near enough to block out the sun and the passing of strangers.

It occurred to her that climbing into a carriage with a man—shortly after receiving a threatening note, no less—was probably a bad idea.

What could she say? Some bad ideas were better than others.

*

They rode in silence for the better part of an hour, until even Clara could not stand the respectful, excruciatingly polite nothingness.

Not from a man who took up most of the seat opposite her and all of the air in the carriage. It was extremely difficult to keep pretending that he did not affect her, that she did not regularly sneak glances at the breadth of his chest and the thickness of his thighs, when he was right there. There was nowhere else to look. Reading in carriages made her queasy, as did admiring the scenery outside the rocking window.

Trying to distract herself only resulted in very detailed daydreams of what it would be like if he were to seize her in his arms and kiss her. Would he be gentle, licking into her mouth? Would he overwhelm all of her senses, demanding and skilled? Would he take his time? She would wager that he would, methodically taking her apart.

Ridiculous spinster daydreams, and not the right kind of spinster for this particular moment. She should be going over strategies, questions to ask, whom to ask them of, interrogation techniques. All things she had very little to no experience with. Not making herself blush, the pink creeping down her chest. Another reason she wore fichus, even when her gowns were already depressingly modest without them. Splotches of red did not improve on her paleness.

Doubt crept in again. What if she could not do this? What if Sybil and Heloise were doomed because Clara really was better suited to posting flyers behind the necessity at fancy soirees?

“I’ve never seen someone tense every muscle in their entire body at once,” Bram said. “If you blink wrong, you might crack down the middle.”

“What if I can’t do this?” she blurted out, and then instantly regretted it when Bram’s sea-blue eyes found hers. “Never mind.”