“So, do you?” he prompted.

“Yes. I like Mendelssohn.”

He nodded. “Very thorough people, the Germans, very precise. Did you know the same precision that makes a good engineer also makes a good composer?”

“No, but I can imagine.” Though how the sum of precision could generate magic was beyond her.

Jenkins returned his attention to his paper. “Professor Campbell, his daughter, and I are going to a concert in the Royal Albert Hall this Friday,” he said. “A duo will sing a selection of Mendelssohn songs.”

Well, that had her struggle for her next breath. “That sounds lovely.”

“You are friends with Campbell’s daughter, are you not?” Jenkins said as his pen scratched onward.

“I am, sir.”

She soon gave up waiting for any further elaborations. Jenkins tended to sink back into his vast inner world and forget all about her very existence.

The next morning, a small envelope was waiting for her in her pigeonhole.

Miss Archer,

Would you do me the honor of accompanying our party to the Divine Duo in the Royal Albert Hall this coming Friday? If it is acceptable, I shall arrange for you to travel to London together with Lady Catriona.

C. Jenkins

Annabelle pensively ran her thumb over the card. It was neither satin-smooth nor embossed with gilded letters. But she had not spoken to Catriona much ever since their return from Claremont, and it could be interesting to see Christopher Jenkins outside his natural habitat. And, frankly, to put it in Hattie’s words—she deserved some amusement.

After ten years as the head of Scotland Yard, Sir Edward Bryson had plumbed the bleakest depths of the human soul, and he’d readily describe himself as a hardened man.

The unblinking stare of the Duke of Montgomery still filled him with an urge to writhe and explain himself. “We may not have found him yet, but we have narrowed the area down to middle England with great certainty, Your Grace.”

Sebastian knew he was making the man uncomfortable. He wanted to make him uncomfortable. He was spending a hundred pounds a week on this mission, and for all he knew, his brother could be dead. Kidnapped, or stuck in a bog, or clubbed over his blond head and robbed.

He took a deep, deliberate breath to ease the pressure in his chest. “What makes you certain, Bryson?”

“The men stationed in the ports on the south coast report no movement,” Bryson said quickly, “and we have men monitoring all major roads and guest houses to the north—”

Sebastian held up a hand. “I’m aware of that,” he said, “but how can you look me in the eye and tell me that you know with great certainty the whereabouts of a lone man in a country the size of Britain? The possibilities are endless.”

Bryson’s thin face tensed. “With all due respect, Your Grace, even if a young gentleman wears a disguise, he usually still sticks out like a sore thumb because of how he acts and speaks. And runaway noblemen inevitably stay on roads and seek the convenience of guest houses. It simply doesn’t occur to them to venture into the forests, build a shelter with their bare hands, and live off the land.”

Sebastian leaned forward in his chair. “So your investigation is based on the assumption that my brother is a milksop.”

Bryson frowned. “It is based on experience. The possibilities may be endless, but the mind is limited. People hardly ever contemplate options outside of what they know.”

Sebastian sat brooding at his desk long after Edward Bryson had left.

He finally made his way to his dressing room, where Ramsey had prepared his evening clothes.

A lost brother. An unwilling lover. A meddling queen. Any one of the three dilemmas would drive a man to drink. And since he didn’t drink, and since he was in London, he had decided to go out.

An hour later, he strode out the side door where his carriage was waiting to take him to the Royal Concert Hall.

The concert hall looked exactly as it always had—the stage below to the right of his ducal box, the four chandeliers, the ever-dusty red velvet drapes. And yet it was all completely wrong, because three boxes down toward the stage sat Annabelle.

She had been leaning over the banister, taking in the atrium with serious, wondering eyes. And when her gaze had finally met his, she had gone tense and motionless like a doe in front of his rifle.

He had not given her a nod, for if he had, it would be in the papers the next day.

He was still staring. She was not supposed to be here. The reality of Annabelle in his evening program was as bizarre as seeing two moons in the sky.

Frustration crackled through him. Was this how it was going to be—she would reject him, and he would try to move on, only for her to reappear again and again like some exotic malady?

Caroline, Lady Lingham, placed the tip of her fan onto his forearm.

“How curious,” she said. “I believe that is your charming country girl, there in the box of Wester Ross.”

He’d be damned if he’d take that bait. “How perceptive of you,” he said, “but it is hardly curious. Miss Archer is friends with Wester Ross’s daughter. As you can see they are seated next to each other.”

And he was ridiculously unable to look away from her. She wore a dress he did not recognize, something low-cut that revealed more than a hint of her milky-white cleavage.

He was about to force himself to pay attention to Caroline when a tall, lanky fellow appeared in Wester Ross’s box. He bent over Annabelle with easy familiarity to hand her a glass of wine. And Annabelle smiled up at him as if he had presented her with the Holy Grail.

Sebastian’s body went rigid at the unexpected bite of pain.

His eyes narrowed.

The man wore round glasses and a shoddy tweed coat; clearly he was the cerebral kind. Annabelle’s smile seemed to encourage him to keep hovering over her, no doubt sneaking glances down her bodice, and when he finally sat, the bastard stuck his head close to hers under the pretense of pointing out things around the theater . . .

“Well, well,” Caroline said, her soft voice intrigued. “She may be friends with Lady Catriona, but it seems she’s here as the companion of this fellow from the Royal Society. What’s his name? Jenkins, I believe.”

Annabelle kept her eyes on the stage, but the music reached her as a meaningless hum. She was more than aware of Montgomery’s eyes burning a hole between her bare shoulder blades.

She should have expected him to be here. Fine. Perhaps a part of her had expected him to be here. A part of her seemed to be waiting for him all the time these days. Perhaps that had been her real reason for spending a night painstakingly altering an old dress into a fashionable one. What she had not expected was that he would attend with the coolly attractive Lady Lingham by his side.

She curled her trembling fingers around the stem of her wineglass.

If we were of equal station, I would have proposed to you. She should treasure the sentiment and gracefully move on from things that could not be changed. Instead, his words haunted and angered her in turn. There had been no need to add tragedy to an already difficult situation.

On the stage below, the duo warbled on and on. Jenkins leaned closer now and again, murmuring something clever about the performance, and she remembered to nod when he did. Until the opening notes of “On Wings of Song” pierced her chest like a barrage of arrows.