Mary reached the cottage at dusk. She had ridden hard, the ledger tucked against her side. She left her horse at the stone fence and pushed the door open. "James," she said. No answer came. The room was cold. A dead fire sat in the grate. One chair lay tipped on the floor. She walked through the small rooms. A bed, unmade. A basin with clean water. A crust of bread left on the table, hard as wood. James had been here. Days ago, not today. She touched the ash. It was cold through. Whatever he had done, he had already gone somewhere else. She had ridden all this way to an empty house. Mary stood still and made herself think. A man did not vanish from his own land without a track. She searched for it. On the table she found a paper folded small, pushed under a candle stub. Not James's hand. A short line, hurried: the writer would wait at the chapel until Sunday. No name. The chapel. The grey stone chapel stood at the estate's edge, where the old pastor kept the Grey family graves. If James meant to hide, he would not go to a church. Unless he had gone there not to hide, but to be found by someone he trusted. Mary folded the paper into the ledger. She rode back through the dark. Light burned in the chapel windows. She tied her horse at the low stone wall and went in. The pastor knelt at the front, his worn Bible open on the rail. He rose slowly when the door creaked. He was old, white-bearded, calm as still water. She had shared this man's chapel for years and never once his confidence. "Countess," Reverend Whitfield said. He did not seem surprised. "You have come a long way tonight." "My husband is missing," Mary said. "He was at the cottage. Someone left him word to meet here." She held out the paper. "You know where he is." Whitfield looked at the note but did not take it. His hands stayed folded. "I have prayed for James every morning for eleven years," he said. "He came to me two nights ago. He asked me to tell no one." "I am not no one. I am his wife." "I know what you are," he said gently. "That is why I will not lie to you. He was here. He is not here now." He closed the Bible. "He said he had signed something he could not undo. He said a man was coming who would ruin the Grey name, and he would not let it touch his children. Then he left before dawn." "Where." The old man met her eyes. "He did not say. But he took the London road." Mary's hand tightened on the ledger. James was not hiding on his land. He had run toward the very thing she feared, to face it alone. And now he was a full day ahead of her.

Roth's words settled over Mary like cold water. Go tonight, or lose him. She looked down at her grey silk travelling dress, still stiff from days of dust, and understood it was the last thing standing between her and the door she needed to reach. In these streets, the dress spoke before she did. It said countess. It said money worth stealing, or worth avoiding. "I cannot walk in this," she said. "You saw what happened. They close every door." Roth studied her, weighing something. Then he set down his cup. "Wait here." He was gone before she could answer. He returned within the hour with a bundle under his arm. He laid it on the table and unfolded it. A dark workday dress, patched at the elbow, its apron stained and torn at one pocket. Cheap wool, worn soft by another woman's labour. "A scullery girl at the inn," Roth said. "I paid her well. She asked no questions, which is the only kind of person worth paying here." Mary lifted the apron. The fabric smelled of grease and lye. Every fibre in her recoiled. For twenty years she had judged people by the cut of their cloth. Now the cut of her own cloth would betray her husband. "There is a room behind the kitchen," Roth said, turning his eyes to the window. "You may change there." She changed alone by candlelight. The buttons were plain bone, loose in their holes. She scrubbed the pins from her auburn hair until it hung dull and flat. She rubbed a smear of ash from the hearth across her cheek. When she looked at her hands, she saw they were still too clean, too soft. She pressed them into the cold ashes and did not stop until they matched the dress. Roth waited by the door. When she stepped out he did not bow. That, more than anything, told her the disguise held. "Keep your eyes down," he said quietly. "Speak only if spoken to. A tired woman going home draws no one." They walked out together into the dark quarters. No one laughed this time. No door shut. A man passed close and paid her no more mind than a lamppost. Mary kept her chin low and her steps heavy, and the streets that had barred a countess let a working woman through. Roth stopped at last before a narrow house near the river. A single window glowed. Inside, two men's voices rose and fell, sharp with anger over money. "That is his," Roth murmured. "The lower voice. He is here." Mary's heart struck hard against the borrowed wool. She had crossed half of England for this door. Now she stood at it, dressed as a servant, listening to her husband quarrel with a stranger in the dark. She lifted her ash-grey hand and knocked.