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Alistair heard the words come out of Williams’s mouth, but it still took him a moment to understand.

He had just been to Kent. Had just seen Darius and had the conversation he was still trying to unpack in his mind and in his heart. The one about his brother and his father and that long ago summer that had changed everything.

His brother had been as hale as he had always been when Alistair was at Rosehips.

And now he was lying on what may very well be his deathbed.

Williams had given him the details, something about a fever, but his mind had not held onto them.

The world was too busy spinning around his ears for him to remember anything specific.

“When is the first train?” he asked Williams.

“Not until the morning, my lord. We can hire a conveyance.”

“No.” Alistair shook his head. “We ride. We can be there by daybreak if we keep the pace hard and refresh the horses at the coaching inn. Surrey is not that far from Kent.”

Williams nodded. “I’ll go see Pembrooke’s stablemaster now.”

Violet looked up at the stairs, where the Viscount Waverley and his wife were standing, preparing to begin the betrothal announcement. Her eyes flew to Catherine, who stood serenely at Pembrooke’s side.

They made a handsome couple, but Violet still felt a modicum of uncertainty when she looked at the two. Her cousin’s eyes were not smiling as her mouth was. As their mothers were. The two matrons stood side by side at the foot of the stairs, beaming, their blue eyes bright with excitement.

She turned her head back to Alistair and Williams. After Alistair had gone inside to meet his valet, she’d positioned herself close enough to hear at least some of their whispered conversation.

She knew Williams would have sent word with a footman instead of coming himself if the news had not been dire.

She watched Alistair hold himself steady as he absorbed whatever Williams was telling him. To any other passerby, his stance would have looked impassive, but not to Violet. She knew his body too intimately for that.

She could see even from her distance how his shoulders were stiff and frozen, and his head was held at a strange angle.

She recognized the clench of his teeth through the hollow it made of his jaw, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew his pupils had gone nearly black with worry all the same. She hoped he was breathing.

And then she overheard the two words that made Alistair move toward the door as the betrothal announcement began: “Darius” and “fever.”

Every part of her wanted to follow him, but she could not leave Catherine. Not now, when her cousin was on the cusp of realizing the engagement that was the sole reason for Violet to be in England.

Except—it is a fever.

She’d studied fevers, cataloged their symptoms and outcomes. Treated too many in Lower Manhattan who were ill with the diseases that came from overcrowding and poverty, and that soon enough spread outward to others, making even lords like Darius susceptible.

And Violet knew too well what it was like to watch a brother die. She shivered; she wasn’t superstitious, but it felt like she had brought the specter of death upon them when she’d told Alistair about James.

She turned back to Catherine, who was also watching Alistair depart from the dais where she stood with Pembrooke and her soon to be in-laws. Catherine latched her eyes onto Violet’s, the question in them clear.

Violet lifted her shoulder in that small shrug. The engagement was about to be announced. Alistair was to depart tomorrow.

She had to stay.

Didn’t she?

Catherine was frowning at her. Pembrooke reached down and gave her hand a small squeeze, and the frown disappeared, replaced by the bland smile that made Violet wary.

But then Catherine lifted her fingers, just barely, and motioned for Violet to go. Follow him, her cousin was saying. Leave.

It was all the push Violet needed. She edged to the back of the crowd as the Viscount began speaking and all attention was focused on the engaged couple. And then she slipped out the door.