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“True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils.”

—Baltasar Gracian

C harity was certain that she was imagining things. This was a vision conjured by lingering laudanum and fatigue. There was no way that Sir Nathanial Thorne, the brother-in-law of her best friend, was standing in her front parlour, having made the trip from the very northern edge of the kingdom.

But he had, and was there in the flesh: the elevated bastard brother of Roland Percy, the Duke of Northumberland. A good-hearted man who had loved his brother—and been loved in return. Who had served faithfully as Roland’s servant just so they could be near enough to protect one another.

He was one of the men who had helped search the Fitzroy estate the very night she had been kidnapped, two months before that.

Sir Nathaniel was very keenly recalling that fact himself, to judge by the way he raked Charity’s appearance before pinning Peregrine with a dangerous look, fists balled at his side.

“What am I doing here?” he repeated Charity’s question. “I could ask the same of Lord Fitzroy.”

“I am welcome here,” Peregrine said blandly, crossing his arms. “Are you ?”

“Of course he is—you both are.” Charity cut off the incipient hostility with a wave of her hand, exhausted and confused.

Why was he here? Nathaniel looked like he had been travelling long hours for days, to judge by his wrinkled clothes and stiff posture.

His face looked drawn. The realisation of when it was, and that he might be there to personally deliver bad news from Northumberland, sent her stomach plummeting to the ground.

“Dear God. Has something gone wrong? Is it Grace? The baby?” Charity asked, putting her hand over her mouth.

It was Thorne’s turn to look perplexed. “They are fine, Your Grace,” he assured her, before narrowing his eyes on her hands and the scratches marring her arms. “But you are not. Might I have a private word?”

Now Peregrine’s eyes flared with recognition. “If you have something to say, Sir Valet , you may say it in front of me.”

Thorne gave Peregrine a brief, cool look. “I find that less of an insult than you might imagine.”

“ Stop ,” Charity ordered them both, looking from one man to the other. The cracks on Peregrine’s soul were showing again. In Nathaniel’s fear that she was being mistreated by a man in her house, he had as good as accused Perry of the sins of his mother.

She let her fingers curl around Peregrine’s arm to ground him. “Sir Nathaniel, he is not your enemy.” She let a corner of her mouth curl wryly. “I did most of this to myself. And Perry—he came to the wrong conclusion. Admittedly, to look at me right now, it would be an easy thing to do. ”

Peregrine relaxed slightly beneath her touch, and Thorne ran his hand through his forelock in a nervous gesture that looked very much like his brother’s. “As Her Grace says,” Nathaniel agreed. “I apologise for the misunderstanding, my lord.”

Perry gave Nathaniel a long look. “As do I,” he admitted. “Given the circumstances of our previous acquaintance, I can see how you might… see cause for concern.”

And that was when Charity remembered her last correspondence to Northumberland, warning Grace that Marian Fitzroy was taking actions against the throne—and possibly against her. She let her lashes close for a moment. “My letter to Grace. I suppose you were her response.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up in that familiar, boyish grin. “Her husband’s, actually. Although I am sure you can imagine how that came about.”

Charity shook her head. Grace probably would have suggested coming herself, even if she had been unable to see her feet. “I did not mean for you to become mixed up in our difficulties. I was only warning her to take precautions.”

“They have. Roland will not allow anything to happen to them. He has servants enough and Alnwick Castle is an impregnable fortress—or at least it is now. My presence here is as much of a precaution for them as it is to assist you,” Nathaniel explained.

“The Duke of Northumberland very much feels a debt to you, Your Grace, and right now, if I might be bold, my thoughts are that I am glad that I did not stop for an inn tonight, as I had first intended to. Tell me I am wrong.”

“She might demur, but you are not,” Peregrine said shortly. “In truth, we are stretched too thin, and have too little time to spare. The bulk of my mother’s scheme plays out these next few days, and whether the government survives it depends on our ability to stop each moving part of the plan.”

Peregrine’s face shuttered, but he looked Sir Nathaniel directly in the eyes.

“Charity won’t ask you to take the risk, because making yourself an enemy of my mother is as good as asking for a death sentence.

But I will ask, as one soldier to another.

I have to go stop the evidence of her crimes from being hidden, before they discover Charity fled their custody.

But Charity’s escape meant our friend was left behind.

If you would be willing to help retrieve the Marchioness of Normanby, I will owe you a large debt.

And if you also ensure that Charity is protected while I do what I must tonight… I will owe you everything.”

Sir Nathaniel’s blue eyes widened with each word, and he glanced Charity’s way more than once to see whether Peregrine spoke the truth. She nodded, and Nathaniel’s eyes hardened to flint.

“If another is in trouble, there is no question. Of course, I am at your service.” Thorne said instantly.

Perry nodded distantly. “Thank you. Duchess Atholl can tell you everything else you need to know. Sir Nathaniel—would you please give us the room for a moment?”

Thorne divided a look between them and went back into the hallway without comment. Charity followed just long enough to speak with the footman. “Please get him whatever he needs,” she said, closing the door behind him.

And then they were alone.

“Go with him to Kensington,” Perry told her simply.

Charity’s breath stuttered out. “I admit, I thought I would at least have to argue.”

“No. He will need your guidance to find her. With the assassin free to move, I don’t know if you’ll be safer here at Atholl House than you will be in a carriage. And I would rather entrust your safety to him than another who might be Chandros’s creature.”

Peregrine looked at her as though committing her features to memory, letting his hand cup her jaw and his thumb trail along her lower lip.

“Don’t,” she said abruptly. “Do not look at me like we might never see one another again. Because I refuse to envision any other outcome.”

He smiled teasingly. “A bold claim from a woman who believes in the whims of fate.”

“Maybe we cannot control what is to come. But you were right; we can refuse to let it divide us. I will come back to you, Peregrine. I will choose you. Choose us . And if we always look for one another, then nothing can keep us apart. Not this life, or the next.”

Peregrine seized her face in both hands, kissing her with all the desperation of a man condemned.

And when they both finally parted to catch their breath, he pressed another kiss to her forehead.

“It is hard to think about tomorrow when we’re always fighting to survive the day.

I don’t know what the future looks like, Charity—but I know I can’t picture any version of it without you in it. ”

He rested his fingers over the flutter in her chest instead of his. “My heart is here,” he said softly. “I’m trusting you to guard it.”

Travel weary, Thorne was glad he had washed and changed clothes at the coaching inn.

He was gladder still that he had decided to visit the taproom despite the late hour instead of falling directly into bed.

Because if he had gone to sleep as he wanted to, he would have missed the furious gossip that the Tory Party was nearly in shambles following the riots and scandal.

He had a feeling then. And as he asked about other gossip from the ton , the innkeeper had been too happy to tell him. The Duchess Atholl had saved the princess from a poisoner, and Atholl House had been sporting Royal guards now for many days, and what did one suppose that was about?

At that point, Thorne had abandoned his luggage at The Angel except for his weapons and purse, searching for someone to rent him a horse.

It had taken precious time to wake and placate the grumpy ostler, who had finally, grudgingly, rented him a swaybacked gelding—the only animal he was willing to part with, seeing as Thorne didn’t know if he could have it back by the morning.

It was one of the few times he had been glad of the coin Roland had given him for this journey.

Thorne thrust more money than the horse and tack was worth at the man just to get him to cooperate.

And he set out close to midnight to make the four-mile journey from The Angel to Atholl House, only to find the house ablaze with lights, tense servants, a battered-looking duchess, and Lord Fitzroy.

Not only was there no love lost between his family and Lady Fitzroy, Thorne still had a set-to with the man who had deliberately gotten his brother drunk enough to shame him in front of the ton with that stupid wager last year. No matter how that had turned out.

But that grudge could wait for another time. While justice sometimes had a long memory, to look at Lord Fitzroy, it seemed she had decided to call in her due. And even if it hadn’t, right now, a lady in trouble had to come before all other considerations.

The son had all but confirmed Roland’s worst fear—that the Fitzroy matriarch was settling some unfinished business of her own. Of course, Thorne would help in any way he could.