"Since when did I start calling him that?"
Eloise turned the question over carefully. She was almost certain that just yesterday, before leaving the estate, she had addressed him as Sergeant Thornton...
Then it came to her.
"Ryan!"
That moment—stone in hand, the dagger flashing at his throat—
"I called his name when I was about to hit him with the stone."
"Hit him with a—what stone? What does that mean?"
"The deserter was about to kill Ryan, so I found the largest rock I could reach and struck him from behind."
"Oh my God." Mrs. Severton pressed her palm flat against her forehead. "You picked up a stone and struck a man yourself? How could you—do you have any idea how dangerous—"
"My lady!"
Emily caught her just as she began to sway. Eloise looked at Emily and mouthed the words without sound.
*She didn't know?*
Emily mouthed back, equally silent.
*I only just found out myself.*
"Oh no."
Eloise rose quickly. "Actually, there's a constable downstairs waiting to take statements. I really should go."
"Wait, Eloise—tell me exactly what happened—"
"Emily, would you look after Mother? Thank you."
"What—"
Emily turned on her with a look of pure pleading, silently begging her not to abandon her. Eloise pretended not to see it and slipped into the corridor.
"Eloise!"
Her mother's voice followed her down the hall. She pretended not to hear that either, and took the stairs quickly.
If her mother caught her now, she would have to account for every moment of last night in exhaustive detail, and Mrs. Severton would faint at least four times before she reached the end.
Ryan was crossing the entrance hall below and looked up at the sound of her coming down so quickly. He took several long strides toward her, his expression shifting to something concerned.
"Eloise? What happened?"
She heard his voice and remembered what her mother had said.
*You called him Ryan.*
She had—but it turned out he'd been calling her Eloise too. As though it had always been the most natural thing in the world.
"Nothing. I escaped from my mother." She summarized the scene upstairs in a few sentences.
Ryan considered this. "Even so, she was worried. It might have been worth telling her."
"You don't know her. If I begin the story, she'll ask about every detail, and she'll have fainted half a dozen times before I reach the end." Eloise tilted her head. "If you feel strongly about it, I'm very willing to send you up in my place. Shall I?"
He inclined his head with a slight smile and a gracious gesture.
"I thank you sincerely, and I decline."
"You see."
He declines for himself, then tells her she ought to do it.
Eloise crossed her arms and decided to let it go.
"In any case, this whole business has given me grounds to write to my father."
"For what?"
"A gun."
"A gun?"
"I've wanted one for a long time, but he won't agree to it. They say more ladies in the capital are carrying pistols now for self-defense—is that true? You were there recently, and as a military man you'd know better than anyone."
Ryan was the obvious person to ask. He searched his memory and found it less useful than he'd hoped.
The truth was that ladies' self-defense pistols had never commanded much of his attention. They had poor accuracy, limited stopping power, and a troubling tendency to misfire in damp weather. From a military standpoint, hardly worth considering.
"I've seen it, but..."
"Have you ever used a pistol for self-defense yourself?"
He wanted to say yes. He wasn't sure why, precisely, but standing here in front of Eloise, he very much did not want to say no.
He was an honest man.
"No."
"Ah."
The single syllable was heavy with disappointment. He immediately regretted it—he *had* used a firearm; why hadn't he simply said so? He was about to mention the army-issue pistol when she asked her next question.
"Do you happen to know the price?"
He did know this, as it happened—he'd overheard the procurement officers at headquarters complaining about it more than once. The civilian self-defense models cost several times what one might expect. He told her the figure.
Eloise's expression became thoughtful.
"That's rather a lot." She was quiet for a moment, clearly running through some private accounting. "Though perhaps not impossible. Maybe I should put together my savings and ask Father to get one for my birthday. I'll write to him."
"You're going to buy one?"
"I'll send him the money and ask him to present it as a birthday gift. It seems like the sort of request that goes down better framed that way." A small, practical smile. "I'll need to write the letter soon."
At that moment the constable appeared in the doorway of the sitting room, spotted Eloise, and asked if she might also provide a statement. The conversation about the pistol broke off as she followed him inside.
Ryan watched the door close behind her and stood with the thought she'd left him.
*A birthday gift.*
Meaning her birthday hadn't yet passed this year.
Mr. Palmer was crossing the hall at that moment, and Ryan stopped him.
"Mr. Palmer—when is Eloise's birthday?"
"Lady Eloise's? Let me think... October, I believe. I remember we marked it last year quite quietly here in Blissbury—Mrs. Parker had seen something in the newspaper about tiered cakes in the royal fashion and decided she would attempt one. Three layers. The first attempt rather—"
"Thank you, Mr. Palmer."
Ryan left him to his reminiscence and headed for the sitting room, already calculating.
*If I place the order now, October is easily enough time.*
---
The following morning, the holiday preparations that a deserter had briefly interrupted resumed in full.
"A holiday! With those wounds—you ought to be lying down, both of you, and instead you're—"
Mrs. Severton planted herself in the doorway. Eloise pushed up her sleeve, looked at the scraped elbow beneath it, and pulled the sleeve back down.
"Mother," she said patiently, "do I look like someone who needs to be lying down?"
Mrs. Severton looked at her daughter—upright, clear-eyed, color in her cheeks, already thinking about the next thing—and found she had no good answer.
It was impossible to believe this was a woman who had been thrown from a horse and attacked on a dark road the night before.
She let them go.
Eloise, her mother, and Emily returned to Feltham with Ryan accompanying them—*the roads are still unsettled, even by day*—and once home, Eloise went straight upstairs to finish packing. Most of her things had already made the journey back and forth over recent weeks, so it didn't take long.
"Excuse me."
Ryan and the coachman moved steadily between house and cart, loading everything out. Emily, spotting her opportunity, directed Ryan toward a large wooden crate of kitchen equipment with complete confidence.
"It's terribly heavy, I could never lift it alone—though actually, can it be—" Her eyes went wide as Ryan lifted it without visible difficulty and carried it to the cart. She stared after him.
Mrs. Severton watched this with quiet satisfaction.
Eloise came downstairs with a bag in both hands, and Ryan crossed to her as a matter of course and took it. She handed it over without thinking.
"Anything else?"
"No—I've been moving things back and forth for weeks, so most of it was already there."
"Then I'll be at the cart."
He lifted the bag in one hand—the same bag she'd been carrying with both—and headed outside. Eloise and Emily made a circuit of the house, checking windows and latches. The celebration would last a fortnight, and with her father away this year, none of them would be coming back to check on the place. When she'd drawn the last curtain and locked the last window and stepped out into the sunlight—
"Eloise!"
A crowd of village girls had assembled in the lane. They surged forward the moment they saw her, eyes bright, voices overlapping.
"Is it true that foreign spies attacked Blissbury, and Sergeant Thornton led the men against them alongside you? They say there were bodies piled in the road—"
Eloise stood very still.
She needed a moment to trace the rumor back to its origin—last night, the deserter, the whole straightforward business—and understand how it had arrived at *this.*
She felt slightly dizzy.