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"It has not been without its difficulties," Ashcroft said, to the ground rather than to Benedict. "I will confess I often fear myself unequal to the standing."

"I doubt that is true." Benedict said it warmly, minded to shore the man up. "How does the estate fare?"

Ashcroft gave a quiet laugh. "Well enough, on the whole. I am still learning the shape of it. But my brother was meticulous in his keeping of it, and for that I am grateful."

"A mercy, then."

"Yes. I suppose it is." Ashcroft patted his horse's neck, absent, then looked back. "My brother left ledgers I am still reading my way into — rents, leases, the smallest disbursement, all of it set down in a fair hand." He shook his head with something like rue. "I had been bred to expect a modest sort of life, and to make my own way in some office or other. I had not thought to spend my days reading a dead man's accounts and calling them mine."

"There are worse fates," Benedict offered.

"Oh, a great many." Ashcroft's mouth curved. "Though a head for figures is a poor consolation for the rest of it. Still, it has spared me the worst of the muddle this year, and for that I am grateful." He said it lightly, and let it go as easily as he had taken it up. His gaze drifted to the pale line of the trees. "Forgive me. It is dull matter for a morning ride."

"Not at all." Benedict thought little enough of it. Half the men he knew talked of their estates the moment they were given leave. A man newly landed talked of little else. "You come by the interest honestly."

"I do." Ashcroft inclined his head. Then, after a moment, with the ease of a man making conversation, "I hear the ton has thought of little all Season but your late aunt's will."

Benedict caught the small note of curiosity and thought nothing of it. Half of Mayfair had said as much to him already. "So it seems. I confess I do not understand the appetite for it."

"Nor do I entirely, though I will own to a share." Ashcroft's color rose a shade, and he had the grace to look faintly abashed. "It is not quite proper of me to raise it. Only my curiosity was caught to hear some of the ladies she chose to remember."

"She was a generous woman," Benedict said no more than that. He had received very little from Lady Warrington and had expected nothing. She was his aunt by marriage, not by blood, and he had his own estate and no want of her money. "She left sums to some ladies one might not have looked for."

"So I understood." Ashcroft nodded, unsurprised, as a man might who had heard all of it from a dozen other tongues already. "A generous will can be a complicated one. But I imagine her solicitors will see it all settled soon enough — these things generally come right in the reading of them, whatever the noise at the start."

He gathered his reins. "Which is a good deal more than I can say for my own affairs. I have a tenant dispute that has run to its fourth letter, and I have written the man that this is my best and final judgment on the matter, and still I expect a fifth by Friday." He gave a short, wry laugh. "One never has done."

Benedict laughed with him, easily. "No. One never has."

"Well." Ashcroft touched his hat. "I shall let you have your peace, Your Grace. I meant only to enjoy the morning and set aside the shadows of the year past for an hour, as I think you did. I hope you find the rest of your ride the quieter for my going."

"It has been no trouble at all." Benedict inclined his head. "Good morning to you, Ashcroft. I hope the Season treats you kindly."

"I have no designs on it." Ashcroft's smile turned rueful again. "I come only to enjoy myself, as you do. Good morning, Your Grace."

Benedict watched him ride off into the thinning mist, and felt a swell of plain compassion. Ashcroft had lost a father and a brother inside a single year, and had a title he had never been trained to carry pressed upon him besides. Benedict had lost his own father, and even that — long looked for as it had been — had been a grief unlike any he had known. He could not imagine bearing the double weight the other man carried, and carrying a strange estate's ledgers on top of it.

He turned his horse to continue on, and grimaced at the sight of three riders coming toward him out of the gray. Even at this distance, the way they sat — each side-saddle, each in a habit chosen to be noticed — told him plainly enough what they were. Young ladies, out for a morning ride and, he did not doubt, hopeful of exactly the encounter he had risen at dawn to avoid.

He wheeled his horse about and set it back toward the park gates, and told himself it was the mist thinning, and not cowardice, that sent him home.

The fog was lifting from the cobbles as he came into Grosvenor Square. A footman stepped out to take the reins before he had well drawn up, and Benedict swung down, glad to be moving on his own feet again.

"Your Grace." Franks met him in the hall.

Benedict handed over his hat and gloves. "Good morning, Franks."

"There has been correspondence this morning, Your Grace." The butler waited while Benedict shrugged out of his coat. "One letter in particular, brought round directly from a Mr. Arthur Braithwaite, with his express request that you read it the moment you are able."

Benedict's brows rose. "Urgent, then." He frowned, turning the name over. "Remind me, Franks — Braithwaite is — ?"

"The late Lady Warrington's solicitor, Your Grace." The butler kept his eyes courteously at Benedict's shoulder. "I have set the letters on your study table."

"Bring them to the dining room instead," Benedict said, as his stomach announced with a low complaint that he had ridden out on nothing. "I must break my fast before I do battle with any solicitor."

Franks withdrew, and Benedict went through to the dining room, where a great spread waited on the sideboard. Near to ravenous after his ride, he filled a plate, took his place at the head of the long table, and had made good progress on it by the time the door opened again.

"Your Grace." Franks set a small silver tray at his elbow, three letters upon it, and left him to them.