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Sophie read the letter one final time, her thumbnail caught anxiously between her teeth as her eyes travelled over words she had already reconsidered a dozen times.
She could not, in good conscience, allow him to continue searching for a woman who did not exist, not when she had seen for herself how much hope he had placed upon finding her. She watched him speak with Posy, witnessed the concentration upon his face as he tried to fit together the pieces of a puzzle Sophie knew could never lead him anywhere unless she permitted it. Even Lady Whistledown was still remarking upon his quest, turning what Sophie once thought a harmless evening of stolen freedom into gossip discussed across drawing rooms and breakfast tables. It had gone too far.
Worse still, she allowed it to go too far because some selfish part of her liked knowing he remembered.
“Would you give this to Mr. Bridgerton when he departs?” she asked quietly. “Discreetly.”
She found Alfie downstairs in the entrance hall, waiting to escort Mr. Bridgerton to his horse. Somewhere above them came the muffled sounds of movement beyond the drawing room, footsteps crossing a hallway and the indistinct murmur of voices. Sophie found herself glancing towards the staircase despite knowing there was no possibility of seeing Benedict from where she stood. Alfie looked down at the folded letter she offered him, then back at her, his brows lifting with understandable curiosity before he accepted it.
“And... please do not tell him it is from me or to read it here.” She held his gaze, apprehension shining plainly in her eyes. “Please.”
Before Alfie could ask a question or reply, Sophie murmured her thanks and hurried towards the servants corridor, retreating beneath the stairs and back into the life to which she properly belonged.
By the time Benedict descended, Sophie was nowhere to be seen.
He paused in the entrance hall with an unfamiliar unease something escaped his notice. He glanced towards the corridor, then towards the staircase behind him, half expecting to discover some forgotten purpose for remaining at Penwood House, though nothing presented itself. Lady Gun answered his questions, Miss Posy offered the information he required, and there was no sensible reason to linger. Still, as he drew on his gloves, he could not rid himself of the peculiar conviction he was leaving something behind.
“Sir, your horse is ready.”
Benedict nodded and stepped through the front door, drawing a breath of cold air. His hand moved instinctively towards the pocket of his coat where the silver glove remained, as it had for weeks, and he had just begun to withdraw it with the absurd intention of examining the crest yet again when a voice called after him halting his movements.
“Sir?”
Benedict turned and walked back towards the footman at the door. “Yes?”
“Before you depart, I have been asked to give this to you.” The young man held out a folded letter, though he did not immediately release it when Benedict reached for it. “I was also asked to tell you not to read it here, sir. You are to take it with you.”
Benedict’s brows drew together as he accepted it, but his confusion lasted only an instant before hope struck with such force, his pulse quickening beneath his collar. There was only one person whose letter he spent weeks hoping might somehow find its way into his hands.
“Are you...” He stopped, scarcely daring to give voice to the possibility before him. His fingers tightened around the paper. “Is she here?”
Alfie straightened, arranging his features into the careful neutrality. “The letter will answer your question, sir. That is all I have been told.”
Benedict studied him, “What is your name?”
“Alfie Burrows, sir.”
“Mr. Burrows.” Benedict inclined his head before slipping the letter into his pocket beside the silver glove. “Thank you.”
He mounted his horse and set off from Penwood House, though the letter seemed to acquire greater weight with every yard he put between himself and the house. He was told not to read it there, and some instinct warned him to honour the request, yet his mind was already racing ahead of him. If the letter was from her, then she knew of his visit to Penwood House. More troubling still, someone within the household knew how to reach her. Lady Gun assured him there were no other members of the family in residence, no forgotten cousin or visiting young lady who might answer the description he had given. The possibilities multiplied rather than diminished, and with each one came the increasingly tantalising thought perhaps he was finally close enough to touch the truth.
Only when Penwood House was out of view did Benedict rein in his horse and withdraw the letter.
He told himself he would read it calmly. He endured weeks of rumours, false leads, awkward introductions and hopeful examinations of every eligible young woman whose height, colouring or family connections bore even the faintest resemblance to his memory of that night. Whatever this letter contained, surely it could not unsettle him more than uncertainty already had.
He opened it.
Mr. Bridgerton,
You seek a Lady in the silver gown with whom you shared a dance at your mother’s ball. I beg of you, for your own sake, to cease your search.
The lady you met is not the woman you believe her to be. I am not a lady of Society, nor do I belong amongst those circles. For one evening only, I stepped beyond the bounds of my station, never imagining a simple dance lesson upon the terrace of your family home would leave such an impression.
Please, I implore you, do not seek me out. It would bring great harm upon me should my employer discover what I have done, and I fear she would see that I suffered for it. I am merely a maid of all work, Mr. Bridgerton. I am not the sort of person with whom a gentleman of your position ought to associate, nor should I ever have allowed myself to pretend otherwise.
If you still possess the glove, I ask you to destroy it and allow the memory of our evening to be the only keepsake remaining between us.
Please accept my deepest apologies for whatever distress or confusion my actions have caused you. I never intended one foolish and reckless decision to become a burden upon you, and certainly never upon your heart. I hope, in time, you might forgive me.
With sincere regret,
Your dance student.
Benedict remained perfectly still when he reached the end, his eyes lingering upon the final words before returning immediately to the beginning. He read the letter again, more slowly this time, pausing over certain phrases as though a second examination might alter their meaning, and when it did not, he read portions of it for a third time.
A maid of all work.
Of all the possibilities he entertained during the past weeks, this never once occurred to him. He searched ballrooms and drawing rooms, examined family connections, studied guest lists and endured introductions to young ladies he had no desire whatsoever to know, all because he assumed the woman in silver must belong to the world in which he found her. It never occurred to him she might have entered that world only for a single evening and then vanished back into another entirely.
Yet the letter itself troubled him almost as much as its confession. He knew enough of household servants to understand that this was not the ordinary hand of a maid of all work. The writing was elegant and assured, the language careful, the sentiments expressed with a refinement suggesting an education far beyond what her position ought to have afforded her. She had spoken to him that night with the same ease, had understood his teasing and returned it, danced beneath the moonlight without the slightest awkwardness beyond that which came from learning unfamiliar steps. Benedict had mistaken all of it for evidence of birth and breeding. Perhaps he was wrong about the former, but he could not believe himself entirely wrong about the latter.
His thoughts began racing through the possibilities once more. A Governess seemed the most obvious explanation, except neither Rosamund nor Posy had any need of one. A Ladies maid was possible, though that did little to explain the education evident in every line before him. Perhaps she had once occupied a better position. Perhaps she had been raised in a household above her station. Perhaps her father had been a tutor, a clergyman, a gentleman fallen into poverty. He knew he was grasping now, constructing entire histories from nothing more than handwriting and a handful of sentences, but desperation made a detective of him weeks ago.
Then, quite unexpectedly, Benedict laughed.
The sound startled even him. He lowered the letter and stared ahead along the road, unable to decide whether the laugh came from disbelief, frustration or the sheer absurdity of what he had been doing with himself. Weeks. He spent weeks attending parties he had no wish to attend, speaking to mothers determined to marry off their daughters, studying every young lady of the Ton who might conceivably have attended his mother’s masquerade, while readers of Lady Whistledown gleefully consumed his desperation.
And all the while, the woman he sought was a maid.
“Of course you are,” he murmured, another helpless laugh escaping him, though there was little amusement in it now.
He looked down at the letter once more, his thumb passing over the final line. Your dance student. Something tightened painfully behind his ribs. She asked him to destroy the glove, to forget her, to accept that whatever existed between them belonged to one stolen evening and nowhere else. She even apologised for becoming a burden upon his heart, as though the heart in question had not been entirely his own responsibility.
Benedict folded the letter with considerably more care than was necessary and slipped it back into his coat, placing it beside the very glove she asked him to burn. There was no possibility of that now. If anything, the letter had ensured he would guard the ridiculous scrap of silver fabric more fiercely than before.
His horse shifted impatiently beneath him, but Benedict made no effort to move. Instead he turned in the saddle and looked back along the road he had travelled, towards the distant trees concealing Penwood House from view. She knew he was there. She was there. Whatever she claimed about wishing not to be found, she was close enough to know when he departed, close enough to arrange for a servant to intercept him before he left.
Perhaps she was still there.
The thought arrived so simply Benedict almost laughed again. His hand tightened around the reins as he stared back towards Penwood House, every instinct urging him to turn his horse around and demand the answers he had been denied. He could be back at the front door within minutes. He could ask for Alfie Burrows, question Lady Gun again, refuse to leave until someone told him precisely which maid possessed handwriting better suited to a gentleman’s daughter than a servant below stairs. It was an appalling plan, intrusive and entirely contrary to the request she just made of him, and for several long moments Benedict was sorely tempted to do it anyway.
He remained upon the road, caught between the promise he never made and the woman he could not bring himself to abandon.
And while Benedict Bridgerton sat upon his horse wondering whether to turn back, the young maid in question was already pulling her small travelling bag from beneath the bed.
She packed quickly, taking only those things belonging to her and leaving behind anything that might give her an excuse to return. She did not know where she would go, only that remaining had become impossible. Benedict had come too close, and the letter would not keep him away for long; some instinct told her asking Benedict Bridgerton not to pursue a mystery was very much like asking the wind not to blow.
So while he lingered upon the road with her letter tucked beside the silver glove he had no intention of destroying, Sophie closed her bag and prepared to disappear once more, this time somewhere beyond Penwood House, beyond London, and, if she could manage it, beyond the reach of Benedict Bridgerton altogether.