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A knock rapped on the bedchamber door.

Ellen Marlow rolled over in the bed she shared with her husband Edward. He laid stretched out beside her. They had dined and retired early. As they were at John’s estate, they had reverted to country hours. The break from London’s late hours was a welcome relief.

The knock struck again, this time a little more determined.

Ellen sat up. The room was dark. It was surely nowhere near dawn.

‘My Lord! My Lady!’ Mr Finch called through the wood.

Ellen shook Edward’s shoulder. ‘Something is wrong.’

His opening eyes shone in what little moonlight there was in the room.

‘Mr Finch is knocking.’ Ellen slid from the bed and picked up her dressing gown. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and wrapped it about her as she walked to the door. She opened it slightly. ‘What is it, Finch? Is one of the children ill?’

He held out a letter. ‘No, Lady Marlow. A servant delivered this a few minutes ago. I’m told it is from Lady Eleanor.’

‘Eleanor…’ Her niece? Ellen took the letter.

Edward’s fingers rested at Ellen’s waist. ‘Why would Eleanor send a message in the middle of the night?’ He leaned past Ellen and from the flame of the candle Finch held he lit the candle he had collected from the bedside.

‘I was not advised of the content, Lord Marlow.’

Ellen broke the seal and unfolded the letter as Edward held the candle close.

Dear Aunt Ellen,

I am writing because I thought… Oh, there is no way to say this to you with any ease. But I am sure you told me, Mary was not going with you to Pembroke Place but staying in town with the Smithfields. Only, I saw that family tonight at a ball and she was not with them. When I asked after Mary, they looked at me as though I were mad, saying she was not staying with them and that there had been no intention for her to do so. I hope I misheard, or that Mary changed her mind. I thought it best that I write, though, in case she is not with you…

An ice-cold sensation flooded Ellen’s chest. ‘What has she done?’

‘What is it?’ Edward asked.

‘Mary,’ Ellen breathed her daughter’s name, as tears clouded the words of Eleanor’s letter. ‘She did not stay with her friend.’

Edward took the letter and read it.

* * *

Edward’s heart clenched. Mary had hugged him and cried when she said goodbye. ‘She must be at John’s. There must be a misunderstanding. We will go back now. She would not have done anything silly.’

‘What about the children?’

‘We will leave them with John and Kate and return tomorrow.’

Ellen nodded, her eyes mirroring the emotions he felt.

He turned to the bell pull. Ellen would need a maid, and he did not want to wait for Finch to fetch someone. ‘You dress. I will tell John.’ He looked at Finch. ‘Have the grooms ready a carriage immediately. We will leave as soon as we can.’

He walked along the hall to John’s rooms, fear spinning in his stomach.

Was this an elopement? The words whispered in Edward’s head. He refused to believe them. Yet his mind’s eye saw her speaking with Framlington only days ago.

Mary had said, with blooms of colour in her cheeks, ‘ It was nothing, Papa. He stopped me that is all, and I argued with him and told him to stay away .’

But there had been the day she’d said she’d seen him in the park too. The day she had acted out of character and ridden alone early one morning. She’d never gone out at that hour before and she’d never gone again.

Yet Mary was sensible – level-headed… She would not. Lord, I pray she would not have been fooled by a fortune hunter.

He knew elopement was Ellen’s fear too. But Mary had been fixed on Lord Farquhar and hurt by him… had she not?

She would not have…

Or, was her distress caused by something else, someone else?

He knocked on the door of John’s rooms.

‘What have you done?’ Edward whispered bitterly as he pictured his first child in his mind’s eye as an infant in his arms.

‘Come in!’ John called for Edward to enter.