Shaldon sat down heavily.

“Bolted.” Kincaid leaned a hand on the desk.

“She said she was visiting Cecilia Broadmoor in Yorkshire. But Cecilia married some time ago and the couple were posted to India. And the Broadmoors’ estate is in—”

“Lincolnshire.” Shaldon’s dark gaze dropped to the sheaf of papers in front of him. “How careless of her.”

Careless? Did he not mean thoughtless? Or reckless?

He sighed. “Well, we know where she’s gone.”

“I can leave in less than an hour,” Kincaid said.

Shaldon shoved the papers into a file. “I’ll go also.”

Her heart accelerated. He had important obligations here. Perry must indeed be in danger. “You have the coronation, my lord.”

His dark eyes gleamed. “Matters of state, Jane. The King will understand.”

“Carriage or horseback?” Kincaid asked.

“Horseback, I think.”

“I’ll meet you in the stables.” Kincaid left.

The rapid-fire arrangements made her head spin. She turned to follow Kincaid.

“Jane.” Shaldon’s voice stopped her.

“Tell me. You seem to know everyone. I recall that you mentioned the name of a baronet from near Scarborough?”

A baronet. Near Scarborough. She frowned and then immediately caught herself. Frowning only deepened the lines between her eyebrows.

She did recall a baronet with an estate near Scarborough. “Sir Richard Fenwick.” A tall fellow with an ancient holding rumored to be falling down. A bit of a hermit, he was. She conjured up a face from a ball many, many years ago—dark hair, sullen eyes.

And she’d mentioned him when Lady Perry asked Jane to share all she knew about Charley and Graciela’s prospective neighbors.

Oh dear. “Seldom in London, but I heard he was up from the country a few months ago.”

His gaze held hers.

Fenwick. The Baronet was of an age with Shaldon, but as far as she knew he only moldered along on his estate near Scarborough and…

An old rumor came to her: Fenwick had offered for Lady Shaldon, back when she had been Felicity Landers. Felicity’s grandfather had spotted him for a fortune hunter and sent him packing, and a short while later, the match with Shaldon’s elder brother was announced. When the brother died before the wedding, the title and the fiancée passed to the current earl.

A fluttering started in her chest, just like the one she’d felt the morning Sirena had disappeared. She eased down into the chair. “How may I help, Shaldon? You might as well put your bothersome house guest to good use.”

“You are not a bit bothersome, Jane. Would you fancy a trip to the coast? Or are you desperate to attend the coronation parties?”

The pomp and ceremony of the crowning had only been an excuse for her to come up to London last winter. She had business in London to settle, and soon.

And yet, and yet…Shaldon’s hospitality had allowed her much needed economies, and she was in truth, grateful. Plus, in the past months she had grown fond of Lady Perry, and the young woman might truly be in danger.

“I fear I’m not up to travel by horseback. Might I take one of your traveling chaises, Shaldon?”

The smile lighting his face took years off him.

And, more worrisome, that smile sent a buzz of warmth through her. She’d not felt such buzzing in years, not in many, many, many years, not since Reginald.

And that memory was like a dash of cold water. She was no longer that foolish young girl.

“I’ll send men with you,” he said.

She put a hand to her heart. “I shall go pack. Safe travels, my lord. I will be close behind you.”

When he finally accepted that sleep would not come to him, Fox rose, dealt quickly with the mocking, incomplete canvas, dressed, and departed the cottage through the kitchen. All had been quiet on Perry’s floor. She and her maid were both sleeping.

His fingers itched with the memory of curling around her shoulder and legs. She’d had a hard, worrisome journey from her brother’s place. There was no telling when she’d last slept, for not even his manhandling her up the stairs to her bed last night had awakened her.

Lovely Perry. He needed it to be the last time he touched her. Touching her made him want her. Touching her made him rethink her ghostly usefulness.

All was quiet in the stable. MacEwen had either gone back out or was bedded down here after his late night.

Fox hurriedly saddled his horse. These locals were not stupid—they would see that Perry was flesh and blood, that she was a real woman, young and beautiful and very much alive, no ghost. He needed her to leave before danger found her. As soon as he could, he’d get a message to her brother Charles to come get her. She would despise him for it, but then, her dislike for him had always been his best defense—and hers.

For now, a bruising ride was what he needed, and then he’d pay a midday visit to the inn in Clampton.

It was well on in the morning when the tapping began in Perry’s dream. Her mother was tapping at the door, and she had a pillow over her head. She was a great big girl, too old to throw herself onto a bed. Too old for tears. Too old to say what was wrong.

She sat up, heart pounding, and rubbed her eyes.

Charley had come down to her portrait sitting and said she must have legs under her skirts like the girafe pictured in one of Mama’s French travel books. Fox had kicked him out. Fox hadn’t laughed, nor even smiled, but she’d seen the effort it had taken him to resist. Even so, he’d coaxed her to stop frowning. He’d teased her about leaving him a great glowering subject, tried to make her smile, and finally, put away his brushes, disgusted with her.

Lady Perpetua, if you would but understand your brother is jealous that his sister is taller than him, you wouldn’t be so missish. You’re as sensitive as a raw egg. You’ll grow up and take the ton by storm. For now, it’s impossible to find your portrait in all of your frowning, and I am not going to waste another minute today trying.

And then he’d spent the evening flirting with one of the local squire’s daughters who’d come to dinner. The hurt still stabbed at her.

“Miss.” Jenny stuck her head in.

She pushed back the blanket, confused. Gray light streamed through the windows. Not a fine day, but she couldn’t hear rain either. The green room was her mother’s and—

She’d been in the kitchen. It was the last thing she remembered.

Jenny twisted her hands. “We’ve slept half the day away. Sure, and he must’ve carried you up, miss.”

Up two flights of stairs.

She shoved back the covers and leapt from bed, searching her memories. “Did MacEwen come back?”

“Yes, miss. He carried me up. I remembered that, lessen I dreamt it.”

“We don’t know what MacEwen learned. What he did.”

“No. We don’t.”

“I’m going to wake them.” She searched for her robe.

“Do you not want to dress first? We’ll hear them if they try to leave while you’re dressing.”

Jenny had thrown on her plain brown gown and tucked her hair under a cap, rather hurriedly from the way pieces stuck out. She had a pale morning gown draped over her arm, the stays in her other hand.

And she had a point.

“Yes. No stays though.”

“None, miss? Well, I’m thinking you don’t need them a bit.”

The saucy girl tossed the stays aside, laid out the dress, and started helping Perry out of her gown, biting back a grin. “And also, there’s the matter of that painting upstairs and getting your shape just so.”

Heat crawled up her neck. Until her brothers married, she’d had no girls to share naughty jokes with. And she knew, such familiarity with a maid was not proper, but she couldn’t help laughing. “You wicked girl,” she said, and let Jenny settle the chemise over her head.

And wondered, not for the first time whether she would have survived a childhood in Seven Dials as well as Jenny had.

Perry stepped into the kitchen and the house rattled as the door slammed to.

The fragrance of bacon and toasting bread wafted to her, making her stomach rumble.

“His horse is gone.” She went to look over Jenny’s shoulder. “Eggs too? You’re a fast learner. You’ve done a bang-up job.”

The girl smiled. “And MacEwen?”

“In the stable, tending to his horse.”

Expertly tending to it. There’d been no need for her to concern herself.

“He could use a bit of a grooming himself.” She’d told him so herself in her best Lady Perpetua of the ton voice.

Jenny’s face was tinged with more pink than the fire would induce. She’d noticed the man’s scruffy beard. “Traveling, he was. Will you eat upstairs, my lady?”

“The kitchen is fine.” The kitchen was wonderful. In fact, in the mix of all of this freedom, she’d like to one day try her own hand at cookery.

Jenny set a plate of food on the table. “Shall I fetch him for breakfast when you’ve finished eating?”

“Fetch him now—or, better, take a plate to him. I doubt he’ll come in. He’s lingering in that stable to make sure I don’t take Chestnut out.”

Jenny pulled another plate and began filling it. “He’ll need to wash and have a shave.”

“Can you shave a man, Jenny?” she asked around a bite of bacon.

The girl laughed. “Fergus MacEwen wouldna let me near his neck with a razor, miss.”

“You take him that plate. I’ll pump out a fresh bucket and put it to heat.”

A short while later, the mare sidestepped, nervous about the extra stirrup hanging at her other side, and Perry shushed her. Chestnut had been trained to the sidesaddle, and the one Perry had brought along with her had mysteriously disappeared.

Never mind. There’d been tack and saddles enough in the stables—her mother’s stables, she reminded herself, and she could saddle a horse as fast as any groom. She rucked up her skirts and swung her leg over the man’s saddle, moving as softly as possible out of the yard, so as not to disturb MacEwen’s shave.

She’d ridden this way many a time with a groom pacing behind, clucking, or Charley racing her, laughing. It was damn liberating. The next time she’d don the breeches she’d brought with her.

If Fox could steal her saddle, she could wear breeches. She could do dratted well anything she wished.

She reached the end of the short drive where the treacherous cliff road merged with the lane that led from Crampton and continued on south to Scarborough across the high moorland.

She pressed a knee to Chestnut and headed south.

The papers in Father’s study showed that the path cut into the cliff had been the one to choose if she wished to dodge any neighbors, and that road was also on her property. It was hers.

Or would be hers when she married. She mentally kicked aside that small rock in her plans and followed the path through the gorse. Whether this wild parcel went with the house, she couldn’t remember. The wild summer grasses stretched tall, this land unplanted and undeveloped. Perhaps it was too rocky to be under cultivation else her mother would have seen to it, like she’d seen to Cransdall.

But Mama had been dead for ten years. Enough time for wild plants to take hold of the earth again.

Perry brushed her eye and clucked at Chestnut to proceed. It was hard to believe that such a desolate landscape could be teeming with men and women sneaking about with goods brought in from the Continent.

Her nerves tingled and Chestnut’s ears swiveled. She drew the horse up. There, in the brush, something or someone dark had moved.