“I do not know.” She pulled the shawl close around her shoulders.

Carriage wheels rattling broke the street’s silence. The footman ran beside a hackney coach, and he smiled with ruddy-faced pride at his work when both he and the vehicle stopped in front of the house.

“The missus isn’t going to need that.” Meg deflated the footman’s satisfaction. “She’s ill, and must have rest.” Realizing her presumption, the maid turned to Anne. “That’s right, isn’t it, madam?”

Anne did not feel sick in the slightest, yet she must be, to believe she had conversed with people who were not truly there. And she had had that peculiar incident earlier in the drawing room, that sense of being watched. This morning had been a collection of eldritch moments. “Yes. I think I will lie down.”

The footman looked crestfallen as Meg led Anne up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, before going inside, Anne glanced back out to the street. Movement near the mews caught her eye, yet when she peered closer, all she saw were shadows caused by shifting clouds. Shaking her head at the strange convolutions of her mind, she went inside.

Meg lit candles against the onset of darkness. Yet as soon as the maid left Anne’s chamber, the same thing happened. One by one, the candles went out. Not wanting to summon Meg for something she could easily accomplish on her own, Anne tried to relight the candles, but they continued to extinguish themselves. She checked the windows. They remained secure. The door to her chamber stayed closed. There were no drafts, no gusts. Again, she had the oddest sensation that something, someone blew the candles out. Yet she was completely alone.

On the third try, the candles stayed lit, as though whoever had blown them out either left or grew weary of their labors. She gazed around the room, uneasy.

Full dark fell by the time Anne heard Leo’s footsteps on the stairs. She set her book aside as he entered the bedchamber, looking slightly windblown yet striking nonetheless.

Seeing her reclining in bed, he took long strides until he stood beside her.

“What ails you?” He sat down and, frowning with concern, took her hand between his.

“Nothing. A momentary complaint.” Indeed, after spending the remainder of the day in bed, with the walls of the chamber—of the house itself—close about her, restlessness danced through her. She barely remembered the incident outside the house, and now began to wonder if all of it had been some strange, momentary folly brought about by too little sleep and too much idleness.

Yet Leo was solicitous. “I’ll fetch a physician.”

“It isn’t necessary. Truly, Leo, if there was a crisis, it has passed.” He looked skeptical, but she could be as obstinate as he, when required. She tried for a diversionary tactic. “I hope your day of trade and commerce proved fruitful.”

If she had not been studying the angles and contours of his face, she might have missed the slight movement of his gaze—the barest flick to the side. But her husband was at all times a subject of fascination, and so she did see this tiny movement, and could only wonder what it meant.

“A hectic day.” He smiled, and pressed her hands closer within his.

It was not precisely an answer, but she decided not to push for specifics, since she did not want an accounting of her own actions today. They would maintain a mutual blindness.

As they gazed at each other, realization crept over them both. The last time they had been in each other’s company, he had kissed her. The kiss resonated now like unheard music, the beat of a drum steady and compelling beneath the silence. Her gaze drifted to his mouth, just as his did to hers. Both of them wondering, each asking themselves, Did that truly happen? Could it happen again?

Beneath his hands, the pulse in her wrists quickened.

He released his clasp of her hands. As if to distract himself from the potential of his wife in bed, he glanced over to the small table beside the bed. Extending his long body so that he stretched over her, he took hold of some of the squares of thick paper piled there. His body spread warmth through hers as his torso brushed hers.

He straightened, his cheek darkening beneath golden stubble. Riffling through the cards, he read aloud. “Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bingham. Sir Frederic and Lady Wells. The Lord and Lady Overbury humbly request the honor of your presence.” He looked up at her, baffled. “What are these?”

“Calling cards. Invitations. Sending them is rather a mania for Society. The cards arrive every morning, especially after a wedding. Have you never received them?”

“Some requests to dine from business associates but not this. Never anything so ... reputable.” He seemed unused to speaking such a word.

She laughed. “My nefarious respectability. I am afraid you may have caught it from me, like fever.”

“Have you responded to any of these invitations?”

“Not as of yet. I wanted to consult with you first. I did not know if you would want to attend such ... reputable entertainments.”

He stared at the cards as though he held messages from beyond the grave. Cautious, curious. “This world,” he murmured. “It’s strange to me.”

It touched her that this man, so proud and forthright, could feel even the slightest whisper of trepidation, and that he trusted her enough to reveal it.

“What you need,” she said, “is a guide.”

A separate world existed in the respectable hours of evening, one with which Leo rarely rubbed shoulders. Lit by hundreds of candles, it was brighter than the world Leo knew, and yet more obscure.

He and Anne stood at the side of a large chamber, watching the complex convolutions of human relations— the subtle gestures, the layered discourse with more gradations than shale. The room itself showed signs of recent remodeling, for Leo noticed plaster dust collecting against the ornamental baseboards, but the interactions within its walls bore the weight of history.

A small assembly at the home of Lord Overbury. There were refreshments and mannerly games of ombre and a girl in the corner picking out a pretty tune on a fortepiano. The guests were rich, genteel, powerful, and far, far from the company Leo normally kept. He had attended a few events like this with the Hellraisers, but he had paid such gatherings little heed, his thoughts on wilder sport later in the evening. Now, he finally observed that the movements of the aristocrats were even more cunning and artful than anything he had witnessed or engaged in at the Exchange.

By angling his body just so, one guest indicated that he refused to acknowledge another’s presence. A woman whispered into another woman’s ear as they both watched a laughing female guest. Three men stood in a group, their conversation as portentous as their waistcoats. The very air buzzed with influence.

“I feel like a naturalist accompanying a Royal Society expedition.”

Anne smiled over the rim of her glass. “There’s more treachery here than in the jungles of Suriname or Guiana.”

“Spoken as one having experience with both places.”

“Not personal experience.” She glanced away. “Barons’ daughters are seldom taken on Royal Society expeditions.”

He suddenly found her much more fascinating than the tangled encounters of the assembly. His gaze traced the slim line of her neck as she kept her face averted. “But you want to go. To Suriname or Guiana.”

She shrugged. “Having never been on a ship in my life, especially traveling somewhere over four thousand miles away, I couldn’t say if I would find the experience enjoyable.”

Interesting that she would know the distance between England and the distant northern coast of South America, when few men let alone women could locate Portugal on a map.

“There is no way to know until you try,” he said.