Ryan dropped onto the sofa and dragged a towel through his damp hair.
Two days until the holiday, and Blissbury had not offered a moment's stillness since dawn. The sound of pruning shears had been coming from the garden all morning. Carts arrived in a steady procession—ordered provisions, hired linens, the orchestra's instrument cases. And then, that afternoon, the drinks.
Fifteen barrels of beer.
He hadn't quite believed it until they were rolling off the wagon. The barrels were twice the size of anything he'd seen in the capital, and getting them to the cellar had required every able-bodied man on the estate. Ryan, as had become entirely routine, was called on without ceremony the moment heavy lifting was involved.
He didn't mind. He'd spent the last several hours hauling barrels and crates of wine between the ground floor and the cellar, working up a proper sweat in the summer heat.
Mrs. Parker's reward had been considerable: a keg cracked open, beer poured into pewter mugs that had been sitting in cold well water. The chill came through the metal instantly. The first mug went down in one long pull, and the sound that followed from the assembled men was unanimous and heartfelt.
They pleaded for a second. Mrs. Parker relented. The second went the same way as the first.
"We'll drink ourselves half into the ground at the party this year," someone said with great satisfaction.
"The beer's good this year. Everyone will be pleased."
"I wonder who'll have the most fun."
Ryan had listened to them and let the picture form in his mind—the way these things apparently went, here in Blissbury. The evening would begin properly: formal dances, an elegant orchestra, people on their best behavior. But the music would quicken as the night went on, and the wineglasses would quietly become pewter mugs, and feet would be moving faster than manners strictly allowed, and the whole thing would become something genuinely good.
He supposed he'd be expected to be there. The new manager of Blissbury wouldn't be permitted to stand in a corner.
It wasn't that he couldn't dance. He could—quite well, in fact. Physical discipline was physical discipline, and he'd learned ballroom dancing as a practical skill, useful for certain kinds of work in certain kinds of settings. He'd attended banquets and formal evenings in the capital. He'd simply never danced at any of them, because there had never been a reason.
He hung the towel over the chair back and began, without thinking about it, to hum.
The orchestra had been rehearsing the same tune all day, and it had settled into his head without permission. His fingers found the rhythm against his thigh. The steps arranged themselves in his mind with the automatic clarity of trained memory—*step, step, step, turn*—and without quite deciding to, he imagined himself in it. The music quickened. He kept pace.
At these celebrations, partners rotated. You moved from one person to the next as the figures demanded, touching hands briefly, separating, moving on. But at the final figure, you always returned to your first partner. The one you'd begun with. You could take both their hands, draw slightly closer—
The music in his imagination reached its end.
Ryan went still.
Eloise was looking back at him. Flushed and bright-eyed and laughing, slightly out of breath.
*—Ah.*
He pressed both hands over his face and exhaled slowly.
He was not a stupid man. He understood immediately what his own imagination was telling him.
"Eloise Severton."
He said her name aloud, as though testing it. The feeling it produced was immediate and entirely distinct, and that only confirmed things further.
He thought back to the first time he'd heard it—the name of the woman who had screamed at him in the dark, mistaking him for a vagrant. He'd been annoyed. Nothing more. He'd dismissed it easily enough and assumed he'd never think of it again.
And now, some months later, here he sat.
Ryan opened and closed his fist for no particular reason. He had said her name once, and his palms were prickling. The back of his neck was warm. He couldn't settle.
He stood and began to pace, and his eyes landed on the stack of correspondence Mr. Palmer had left on the table that afternoon. He sat down at it with something close to relief.
*I need something else to think about.*
Most of the letters were addressed generically to *the new manager of Blissbury*—summer greetings from merchants in Cambon, reports from tenants working Blissbury's lands, invitations to meetings, requests for contributions from neighboring towns.
And then, near the bottom: a letter addressed to *Sergeant Ryan Thornton*, in the hand of *Sergeant Stanley*.
Ryan went very still.
He looked around the room. The house was quiet—late evening, everyone long since retired. He checked the door, checked the window, and then drew the curtains before sitting back down.
Sergeant Stanley was Baron Stanford's operational name.
The postmark was not from the capital. It had been sent from a smaller city some distance away—which meant the Baron had traveled specifically to send it, under a pseudonym, rather than simply writing from home.
Ryan opened it carefully.
His eyes moved through the lines quickly. After a moment, he set the letter down and allowed himself a slow breath of relief.
Not a summons. Not a challenge.
Strange, how much that mattered to him now—when until quite recently, returning to the capital before autumn had been the only thing he'd been counting toward.
He read it again, more carefully.
The letter began with ordinary pleasantries, then a mild reproach: Ryan had left for Blissbury without sending a single letter, which the Baron found characteristic and irritating. Then, in the middle of the page, the reason for the precautions.
*...Lately I've had an odd feeling. As though I'm being watched. Last week I noticed a carriage following me on my usual route—subtle, but consistent. I'm accustomed to surveillance, as you know, but something about this one is different. I don't believe it's directed at me. I believe they're looking for you.*
Ryan set the letter on the table.
*They're looking for me.*
The first candidates that came to mind were, inevitably, the Disciplinary Council. They had made something of a personal crusade of finding fault with him—monitoring him, picking through his record, waiting for a stumble. Their commitment had occasionally crossed from professional into something that resembled obsession. The newspaper incident was a useful illustration: when Richard had dragged Ryan into a tavern in a side street during one of the summons hearings, the following morning's edition had him wandering alleys in search of prostitutes. Richard had stormed the editorial office and extracted an apology, but the original article had run on the front page in large type, and the correction had appeared in the corner of an inner page in print so small it was nearly decorative.
They would certainly want to know where he'd gone.
But surveillance of Baron Stanford suggested something more considered. Journalists looking for a story would have approached the Baron directly, not trailed his carriage.
Ryan pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.
There was one other possibility. The one he'd been turning over in the back of his mind since he'd read the letter the first time.
Gilia.
The enemy—defeated, now, but not without memory, and not without people who had particular reasons to want accounting.
He looked at the letter lying on the table in the lamplight, and the comfortable noise of Blissbury at festival time felt, suddenly, very far away.