Instead, he felt lost.

After a moment, she’d collected herself enough to draw away and wipe her eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Perhaps you can tell me what it is we’ve found.”

She smoothed the rectangle of ivory flannel. “I’ve had this all my life. It began as a blanket in my cradle. When we left our home, it came with us. From as far back as I can remember, I wouldn’t be parted from it. Once I’d turned . . . oh, seven or eight? . . . Mama threatened to burn the thing, it was so dirty and threadbare. I cried, she complained. We compromised. She helped me cut it down and bind the edges with ribbon. I used it to practice my first stitching. See?”

She showed him a few misshapen figures embroidered on the flannel. A slanting house, a lopsided Tudor rose.

“Is that a dog?” he asked.

“A cow, I think?” She gave him a rueful look. “I’d like to say my needlework has improved since, but it really hasn’t.”

“What can I say? I look forward to tablecloths and handkerchiefs embroidered with scanty blossoms and three-legged cows.”

She smiled, and the sweet curve of her lips unknotted the tightness in his chest.

“I told you I don’t have any memory of my father.” She ran her thumb over the flannel, stroking in an idle rhythm that must have been ingrained habit. “But when I hold this I can recall his presence, at least. The comfort of knowing myself to be safe, and surrounded by love.” She looked at him. “Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know that I do.”

He couldn’t even imagine it. For as long as he could recall, his home had been a place filled with tension and fear.

Charlotte carried a scrap of flannel. He carried lies, shame, and a haunting echo of despair.

I can’t, she’d wept. I can’t bear it.

“Then you’ll have to take my word for it,” she said. “I just know that feeling exists, and not only in the past. I need to believe it can be my future, too. All my life, I’ve been trying to get back to a home I can’t even remember.”

Drops of water spattered his shoulders and the slate garden path beneath their feet.

“It’s raining,” he said.

Her gaze didn’t waver. “You could have that, Piers. With the right person. One you love. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to untangle this misunderstanding we’ve landed in. It’s why I won’t give up on solving it now. It’s not only for me anymore. The more I come to know you, the more I believe you deserve love, too.”

God. She was killing him.

“We should go inside.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms to warm her. “The house will be waking soon.”

She nodded.

“Go on ahead,” he told her. “I’ll follow in a few minutes. I know you don’t want to be seen together. Not like this.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think you cared.”

He shrugged. “I’m too fatigued to invent excuses this morning.”

She kissed his cheek before leaving. “Thank you again.”

After she was gone, Piers paced the garden alone, letting the rain pelt his back as he turned three simple facts over and over in his mind.

Charlotte wanted love.

He wanted her to have it.

He couldn’t offer it himself.

An honorable, decent gentleman would find another way out of this. A way to let Charlotte follow her heart.

But here was the fourth fact that made all the rest ring hollow.

Piers wasn’t that kind of man.

Chapter Eleven

It rained for two days straight.

On the second night, Charlotte lay awake in bed, listening to the patter of raindrops and staring at the well-creased paper on which she’d written her list of suspects.

Cathy, the scullery maid—eliminated at once for lack of opportunity. She would have been hard at work preparing the supper, and she wasn’t at all likely to be wearing expensive scent. It would have drawn notice.

Lady Canby—too thin. The garter would have slipped straight off her leg, like a barrel rim placed over a lamppost.

Miss Caroline Fairchild, the vicar’s daughter—highly unlikely, given her dearth of romantic imagination.

That had left only two: Mrs. Charlesbridge, the doctor’s wife; and Cross, the lady’s maid. Both of whom had been ruled out by the perfume merchant. Neither had dark hair.

Charlotte sighed. There were only two possible reasons for this stalemate. Either her deductions had gone wrong somewhere, or she’d overlooked a suspect.

Perhaps there was another female guest at the party . . . Someone with a C that she’d missed. Maybe one of the ladies had a maiden or Christian name that hadn’t appeared on Lady Parkhurst’s list of invitations.

It seemed a stretch, but at least it gave her another avenue to investigate. To follow that path of inquiry, she needed a book. The one book her mother actually urged her to read, and the one Charlotte had stubbornly refused to ever peruse.

Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage.

The list of everyone who was anyone in Britain.

Once the idea had seized her, there was no chance she’d be able to sleep. She rose from bed and wrapped herself in a dressing gown before gathering a candle. Then she quietly ventured out into the corridor.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. The library was to the right, but she felt certain she’d seen a copy of Debrett’s in the drawing room. It was the sort of book certain families liked to have close at hand. How else would Frances keep all those venomous rumors straight?

She turned left—then paused.

The doors to the drawing room were open, and a faint wash of yellow lamplight spilled out into the corridor. From within, she heard a light rustle of paper and the scratch of a quill.

Perhaps she ought to retreat and save this errand for the morning.

However, even Charlotte—poor investigator that she’d proved to be thus far—could deduce that there was only one soul in this house who would still be awake and working at this hour.

A peek around the doorjamb confirmed it.

Of course it was Piers.

He sat at the escritoire, his back to her. And what a fine back it was—his strong shoulders defined by a crisp linen shirt, and a buttoned waistcoat tapering his torso to a trim waist. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and a tower of half-opened correspondence loomed on the corner on the writing desk. As he sliced open a sealed envelope, his physicality was palpable. He might have been a stonemason, settling down to build an empire with bricks of paper and mortar made from ink.