Leena’s mind was working rapidly, trying to make sense of what he was saying but failing to understand the reason behind the sudden urgency suppressed by his seemingly calm tone. She had already known that they would be leaving Weavingshaw as soon as Percival’s ghost was found, but this new shift—for St. Silas to willingly abandon his plan before its completion—was no less than astounding.

  “Mrs. Van has been given instructions that—unless I tell her otherwise and we are able to await Percival—she will collect you shortly after dawn to return directly to Golborne.” He turned away from the window to look at her once more. “I do not trust Martin. Mrs. Van knows the halls of Weavingshaw unquestionably. She will be able to lead you out and into the pre-arranged carriage without being seen.”

  “Wait—”

  “If I do not meet you in Golborne,” he continued, as if not hearing her interruption, “you will find in the bottom drawer of my desk an envelope. That is yours.”

  “Wait,” she interjected forcefully again. “The way you are speaking, it is as if you’re expecting an execution of some kind tomorrow. What’s happened to make you speak this way?”

  He didn’t respond immediately.

  “My lord,” she insisted, walking up to him. “What has happened?”

  His face was blank. “There will be a duel tomorrow at dawn. I have every confidence that it will end in our favor and we should continue with our plans as before. However,” he said slowly, “I am also preparing for the…unexpected.”

  Leena absorbed his words. “The Tar has been discovered, hasn’t it?” An angry flush crept across her cheeks. “Where is Rami? Allow me to kill him before the duel tomorrow. This is the fault of his rash, impulsive behavior!”

  “He is currently locked away, and he is to have no visitors tonight, but he is in no danger,” St. Silas replied. Then, after another pause, “He will not be fighting in the duel.”

  She reared back. “You are fighting in his place?”

  “I told you from the very beginning to leave your brother behind, but I’ve learned now that telling you anything will result in the opposite happening.” It was not quite laughter in his eyes, but something close to it.

  Leena did not find humor in this.

  A hundred questions filtered through her mind, but the inescapable one was why St. Silas would take the place of her brother, especially as Rami was no favorite of his.

  “Why are you fighting instead of Rami?”

  St. Silas shrugged. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to dispose of Martin.”

  “Why?” she persisted, although a part of her already knew the answer.

  He raised his brows at her. “I do not think you will like the answer.”

  “For Weavingshaw?”

  “For Weavingshaw.”

  The flames were roaring in the fireplace, but in spite of it, Leena felt chilled.

  She nodded once, turning to look at the drifting snow outside the window. “Is the duel won at first blood?”

  Leena, from having Rami as a brother, knew the rules of combat. There were two eventualities, agreed upon before the fight took place: The duel would be concluded either when the first blood was drawn, or when one fighter was dead.

  St. Silas’s answer was swift. “Do I look like the sort of man who stops at first blood?”

  Leena emitted a humorless laugh. “No, you do not.”

  “And so I repeat: If I am slain, Mrs. Van will be one of the first to know the outcome, and all three of you must therefore abandon the search and leave immediately.”

  Leena had an image of St. Silas lying on a patch of isolated moor. The hot blood leaving his body would melt the surrounding snow, until the soil was seen beneath. She gasped at the image and, not for the first time, fought to hold back tears. She wished they were all far away from Weavingshaw.

  He saw the look on her face, and his hard eyes softened imperceptibly. “Upon my return from the duel, which is far more likely, we will have the luxury of awaiting Percival’s ghost undisturbed.”

  Leena’s eyes snapped to him. “If Mr. Martin is slain, would Weavingshaw finally be yours?”

  “It is a start.” The look that came upon St. Silas whenever she challenged him about Weavingshaw was always the same: warlike, blood-filled.

  “Is it swords or pistols?” she asked after some time.

  “Swords.”

  Unease filled Leena’s chest. It was widely known that St. Silas was an extremely deadly shot. His sword work, on the other hand, was nowhere near as exceptional as Rami’s. This would put him at a disadvantage—especially as she knew that Mr. Martin, while he had also been cultivating his boxing career, was also known as a ruthless swordsman.

  Leena started to pace, as she often did when trying to steady the hum of her fears.

  “Leena.” St. Silas watched her turn about the room for a further few moments, finally halting her with a light touch on her elbow. “Do not be afraid. I vow that, whatever happens, you will come to no harm.”

  “It is not myself I worry for,” she replied distractedly.

  “Rami will also be safe.”

  Leena turned swiftly to look at him. Was it not obvious? In her every expression? In the way she now looked at him? Had he, the Saint of Silence, cunning and perceptive, a reaper of secrets, not seen the confession so openly written on her face?

  Her mouth was dry when she spoke, choked with emotion. “For your sake, I worry also.”

  Even that was a sliver of what she felt.

  Suddenly, all the unsaid things between them ignited to the surface, unable to find a home in the choked silence.

  He nodded once, tightly.

  Then, St. Silas did something that she did not expect.

  Slowly, he reached into his hidden coat pocket to withdraw a rectangular object. At first Leena suspected it was the red diary again, and she gasped when she saw A Guide to Botany in his hands. His steady gaze did not leave her face as he handed it to her.

  She stared wide-eyed at it for a moment, disbelieving. She had thought it burned, fed to the fire, another past memory cremated.

  The blue cover, still so familiar to her heart, was intact, and she could see no sign of missing pages. Without the book, the sound of her mother’s voice had been extinguished to a faint murmur, but now it roared back to life—a beloved and much-missed melody.

  With slightly shaking fingers, she reached for it.

  His voice was low. “I restitched the first three pages.” His eyes were dark with repressed emotion. “I wish I had never taken it from you.”

  Leena opened the cover reverently, and almost let out a peal of laughter when she saw the pages St. Silas declared to have burned in the days of their first confessions.

  She traced the bumpy but small stitches over the spine that kept the first three pages intact. They were not sewn like a seamstress would sew a garment, in continuous stitches, but as a surgeon would sew a wound, with urgency, with precision, battling to keep the blood within.

  “You did this yourself?” she asked softly.

  The muscle in his jaw worked. He gave a brief nod.

  With her heart in her throat, Leena had sudden images of St. Silas in his study, setting aside the endless tasks always demanding his attention to do this. His brows would have been furrowed in concentration as he bent over the pages of A Guide to Botany, weaving the small needle in and out with his large hand, before cutting the thread with his teeth.

  “Where did you learn to sew?” she asked through the lump in her throat.

  He gave her the first smile of the evening. “You and your questions.”

  She smiled back. “You and your non-answers.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “If you must know.” He stepped back and did yet another unexpected thing. He removed his jacket and began to unbutton his waistcoat. As he did so, Leena’s eyes widened with his every movement, unable to tear her gaze away.

  “What…?”

  He freed his white linen shirt and pulled it from his trousers, revealing the rigid expanse of his abdomen. He seemed carved from stone, all hard, brutal muscles, causing the long and irregular scar that stretched across his right ribcage to appear more startling. “Before Mrs. Van, there was only Arthur and I. There were some fights that did not require any suturing. And some that needed to be done in the darkness, with nothing but a small candle and a sharp needle to stem the flow.”

  “You did this yourself?” She found herself asking the same bewildered question twice, almost reaching out for him, barely stopping herself in time.

  His eyes followed her hand, and it took him a long moment to answer. “Yes.”

  “You are a man of many talents, Lord Avon.” It took all Leena’s self-control to place her hand back in her dress pocket, where she clenched it into a fist.

  His eyes moved from her face and landed on the large bed behind her. His color heightened, and he tore his gaze back to the falling snow outside the window.

  Fire scorched her veins.

  For the first time since knowing St. Silas, it was a marvel to realize that, here in her bedchamber, they both saw the same thing, imagined the same thing, and were caught in the same impossibleness of it.

  He did not say anything further as he righted his clothes.

  “Do not give yourself cause,” Leena finally said hoarsely, “to bleed again.”

  His only answer was silence.

  Then St. Silas took out his pistol. “One last thing.”

  Her nerves caught in her chest; there was too much uncertainty tonight for Leena to be able to reason her way through it.

  She remembered the last time she had held his pistol and what the result of that had been.

  So much had changed since the Festival of Demons. In regard to Leena. In regard to him.

  “You remove the safety like this. Be mindful of the jar to your shoulder when it fires. Hold your stance firm so you do not fall back. You have two bullets before you have to reload.”

  Her mind swam at the surreality of the night—at the fact that St. Silas was teaching her how to shoot.

  “I will not need—” she began, but he grasped her hand and clasped it firmly around the pistol, holding it tightly there for a moment. Lightning coursed through her at his touch, almost painful in its intensity, but she did not pull away. “When you aim, make sure you aim two inches above your target for best accuracy. If you can, toward the heart.”

  Next time—if you ever desire to kill someone, not merely deliver a flesh wound, aim here.

  She tried not to sound afraid. “It is as if you’re saying goodbye.”

  He gave her another slow smile. “Don’t aim the revolver at me.”

  Reluctantly, he let go of her hand.

  Another heartbeat between them, reverberating through the walls of the chamber. She understood what he was doing even if he did not speak it. He was ensuring she had a chance—a safe passage home.

  Instead of turning to go, St. Silas reached out and carefully unfastened the pins holding her hair, letting them clatter to the floor one by one. He watched the curls tumble to her back, and for a moment, under the glimmer of the candlelight, there was no mistaking the look in his eyes.

  She could not say or do anything to stop him; tears obscured her vision.

  He did not deny it. It was a farewell.

  Roughly—as if having to extricate himself from the image of her standing before him, hair unbound, the unsaid goodbye flickering in her gaze—he turned toward the door.

  “My lord, I ask you again: Do not bleed and do not give me a reason to use this. Come back so that I can return it to you in person,” Leena said to his retreating back.

  He exited the room quietly, leaving her to the silence of the gun.

  On the night before the duel, Leena did not encircle her bed with salt.

  She understood the risk, felt the fear of being possessed curl in her stomach, but her desperate need to find any means to help outweighed the consequences. Especially on this night, above all others, as her brother and St. Silas readied themselves to face the sword.

  “Lady Hargreaves,” she whispered into the empty room. Theo Daye had not re-emerged and, for the first time, Leena ushered in her own haunting. “Return. Finish your story.”

  It took some time before Leena’s restless mind fell asleep, the copper coins nestled in her hands.

  When sleep finally took hold of her, she dreamed of Lady Hargreaves.

  * * *

  —

  It was only a few months into the marriage when Lady Hargreaves felt the first inklings that something was not right.

  Her husband was often busy. This was not unusual; he was an important man, with estates and lands to oversee. It was the host of men who entered his study at all hours that bothered her—some of them of the undesirable sort that made the skin crawl on her neck. There was that loathsome Orley, with his long, trailing fingers and expanding eyes. And, almost always, there was Lord Avon.

  Lady Hargreaves disliked him most of all.

  Lord Avon had a way of speaking that was designed to smooth and manipulate any obstacles from his path. She had seen him twist the truth, threading wrong into right, turning water into wine. She’d seen the influence he had over her husband.

  Oftentimes, she’d catch the tail end of their conversation.

  “…if His Grace is to continue business with us, we must provide him with more boys. He won’t take prisoners; says that their emotions are tainted.” That was Lord Avon.

  Lady Hargreaves stopped in the stairwell to listen. Frightened, she wondered who these boys were. A shiver overtook her spine.

  “I do not like this, Percy.” Her husband’s tone was uneasy. “We are walking down a path of no return.”

  She heard the disappointment in Lord Avon’s voice. “Hargreaves, these boys are from the workhouses. They are half starved, the refuse of society. We are giving them a chance…”

  Their voices began to drift down the hall, and Lady Hargreaves could hear no more.

  Later that night, as Lord Hargreaves prepared for bed, she asked him about the conversation she’d overheard. While it was custom for husbands and wives of the nobility to sleep apart, her husband never followed that rule. She’d heard some of the servants remark upon it, but she paid no heed, preferring the way her husband’s body felt cradled by her own.

  He looked momentarily taken aback that she’d overheard them, then his voice turned mild as it always did when he tried to hide something. “It is nothing, my dearest Gemma. Do not trouble yourself over such petty matters.”

  Lady Hargreaves shook her head, putting down the brush she’d been running through her hair. “Be wary of Lord Avon, my love. He cares about nothing save Weavingshaw and begetting an heir. The way he keeps his wife all alone…”

  “Do not speak of what you do not understand.” It was the first time her husband had spoken sharply to her, and Lady Hargreaves halted, her fingers still clutching the handle of the brush.

  When her husband saw the hurt on her face, his expression softened, and he leaned across to brush a kiss over her hair. “I apologize for speaking to you in such a boorish manner, my love. It is only that Percy is my oldest friend, and he has had some unfortunate luck.”

  “How so?” Lady Hargreaves asked tentatively. She’d heard rumors, but she’d often dismissed them as idle gossip.

  Her husband reached for her wrist, his eyebrows furrowed as he concentrated on unbuttoning the cuffs of her nightgown. Goosebumps pebbled her skin at his touch. “Excuse the vulgarity of my frank speech, but Percy married his wife for the money her father had promised him. He owned a shipping company.” He took her other hand, undoing those buttons as well. “A few days into the marriage, it was revealed that all of the money that had been promised to Percy was gone. The girl’s father had made some bad investments, and a ship he’d been counting on to restore his wealth had sunk in the Westin Ocean a day after the wedding. When the girl’s father learned of this, he suffered a heart attack, leaving all his debts to poor Percy.”

  “That’s terrible,” Lady Hargreaves said, as her husband moved on to the ribbon at her neckline.

  “It is worse than terrible. If Percy does not find a way to restore his wealth, he will lose Weavingshaw. He will die before he allows that to happen.”

  “What about those boys Lord Avon was speaking of? The ones that His Grace wanted?”

  Her husband paused, the white ribbon caught between his thumb and index finger. Once more, his voice turned mild. “A Duke has offered Percy a few coins to find him some suitable servants, that is all.” He leaned toward her when he saw the worried notch on her brow, tucking her neckline lower. “Come, let us forget all of this. Percy already has a wife to content himself with. Let me content myself with my own wife tonight.”

  * * *

  —

  The boy was motherless.

  Lady Hargreaves held the babe in her arms, fascinated by the dark wisps of hair that fell over his brow. She hummed to him, the young master Bramwell Avon, relishing the way his tiny fist held her finger.

  “He grows well.” Her husband had paused at the threshold, watching as she rocked the sleeping baby back and forth. “He’s a handsome lad.”

  “Takes after his father.” Lord Avon was steps behind him, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Lady Hargreaves watched him covertly beneath her lashes. There was no grief on Lord Avon’s face, no remnant of feeling from his wife’s passing only a few months prior, during childbirth. Not a single mention of her name. Even the black he wore did not resemble mourning attire, cut impeccably in the latest fashion.

  She gripped the baby tighter to her chest. “I think he takes after his mother.”