Chapter 4 #2
Pritchard’s man seen near the mews at dusk.
City. St. Paul’s. Before six.
C.
Eleanor looked up. “Colin Westcliff, Lord Highwood.”
Graham’s expression gave away nothing, but his voice went quieter. “Yes. He’s confirming what I suspected.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened around her pencil. “You trust him.”
“I trust his information,” Graham replied. “Not his enjoyment of being right.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved faintly despite herself.
“Now,” she said, tapping the torn catalogue page, “we solve what we can before the men outside decide to solve me.”
Evening came early, folding shadows into the corners until the mews house felt smaller.
Graham had gone out briefly, with Colin, to post men and to ensure the street looked ordinary.
Eleanor did not waste the time alone.
She copied the remaining entries twice, once in her own hand and once in her father’s shorthand, as if mimicry might summon him back long enough to advise her.
She listed every district letter her father had ever used in his notes.
She underlined Withdrawn until the ink threatened to tear the page.
By the time she had finished, Graham had returned.
When the streetlamp flared outside and banished the last blue of dusk, Eleanor rose to draw the curtain. Habit made her glance out first. The lane was nearly empty. There were no carriages, no strolling couples, only fog softening the far end of the street.
And then she saw it.
A figure lingering just beyond the edge of lamplight, pressed near a stoop as if he belonged to the stone. Not moving, not obviously watching. Not one of them.
But there.
Eleanor’s breath hitched. She closed the curtain with steady hands but did not turn around. “Lord Rathbourne,” she said, keeping her voice level.
The gentle patter of his footfalls crossed the floor too quiet for a man who wished to be heard. Graham appeared her side and lifted the curtain a fraction. “What did you see?”
“Left,” she whispered. “Third stoop.”
He looked, then a muscle jumped once in his jaw. “Yes.”
“Does he know we see him?”
“Not yet,” Graham said. “But he expects to be noticed. That is the difference between a watcher and a thief.”
Eleanor’s gaze remained fixed on the seam of the curtain, as though cloth could keep danger out.
“He is too clean,” she murmured. “No local would polish boots for this street.”
Graham’s mouth tightened. “Very clean.” He let the curtain fall. “We go before six,” he said.
Eleanor turned to him. “To the City. St. Paul’s Churchyard.”
“Yes,” he replied.
“And tonight?”
Graham’s hand came to her elbow—brief, steady, undeniably real. “Tonight,” he said, “you sleep.”
Eleanor let out a short laugh. “That is an order.”
“It is a plea,” Graham said quietly.
The words landed differently, and Eleanor’s throat tightened. “You do not know me well enough to fear for me.”
Graham’s gaze held hers, unblinking. “I know you well enough to understand that you will walk into danger with your eyes open and call it principle.”
“And you will follow,” Eleanor said.
“Yes,” Graham replied, and the certainty in his voice was not strategy.
Outside, a soft cough sounded. Polite. Deliberate.
Not the throat-clearing of a passerby, rather an announcement made by someone who expected the door to be opened.
Eleanor went still.
Graham was already moving, silent as a thought. He did not reach for his knife. He positioned himself beside the door, out of sight, and lifted two fingers in a small, spare gesture.
Let them speak. Learn what they believe you are.
Eleanor’s pulse hammered once, hard, then steadied.
She opened the door a careful span.
A footman stood on the step in the palest blue livery, holding an envelope on a silver tray. He wore Lady Mordaunt’s livery, too pristine for this lane and too deliberate to be mistaken for chance. Too clean for a mews. Too perfect.
“Miss Eleanor Hargrove,” he said, handing her a velum.
The address was inked in elegant script.
Miss Eleanor Hargrove
Thirty-four Cavendish Mews
Immediate
Eleanor’s fingers closed around the envelope.
The footman bowed and withdrew without a word, leaving behind the faintest whiff of lavender pomade and that peculiar chill of being summoned.
Graham eased closer, his shoulder nearly brushing hers as he watched the retreating figure through the crack.
“He knows I moved,” Eleanor said softly.
“He knows you moved,” Graham agreed, voice low.
“How?”
“We may never know, but adjust,” he answered.
Eleanor broke the seal.
Inside was stiff white card stock, the wording polished into harmlessness.
Lady Mordaunt requests the pleasure of Miss Eleanor Hargrove’s company tomorrow evening for a musicale and supper.
The words were faultless. That was the problem. Invitations were meant to feel like open hands. Yet this one felt like a gloved finger beneath her chin, tipping her face toward the light.
Eleanor lifted her gaze.
Graham’s expression had gone cold in a way that was not quite anger.
It was recognition.
“Social surveillance,” Eleanor said.
“A pivot,” Graham replied. “And a trap dressed as velvet.”
Eleanor’s pulse quickened with fear, yes, but also the sharp, illicit thrill of a pattern clicking into place.
“Then we go,” she said.
Graham’s eyes snapped to hers. “You do not even know what you will be walking into.”
“I know enough,” Eleanor said, and her voice did not shake. “If Lady Mordaunt is reaching for me, my father expected it. Which means the catalogue is already doing what it was designed to do.”
For one suspended breath, they simply looked at each other—two people standing over a desk of paper that could get them killed, with rain still in their hair and the city pressing against the door.
Graham’s hand came to her elbow brief, steady, undeniably real. “At Lady Mordaunt’s,” he said, and it sounded like a vow disguised as instruction, “you will stay close.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved, sharp and bright. “Careful, Lord Rathbourne. That sounds dangerously like preference.”
His thumb tightened once against her sleeve, then released. “It sounds like survival,” he said. But his gaze stayed on her a beat too long.
And Eleanor, infuriatingly, felt it.
She tucked the invitation into her reticule as though it were merely another card to be answered. In her chest, her heart beat faster. Not from fear alone. From the certainty that the next room she entered would be full of music, and knives.
And this time, she would be listening for both.