Her Grace Magdalena Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville – or Magda, as she was still occasionally known – loved riding. She had done even in the old days in New Hampshire, but it was especially lovely now, because her horse never snorted at her humble origins, or gawped at her as though trying to unravel the mystery of how a girl with no family or fortune had managed to ensnare the most eligible bachelor in Britain. 

Of course, Magda could charm away those looks with five minutes' conversation. The gawpers always walked away thinking, "Oh, that's why – she's delightful." But it was still nice, for a few hours a day, to be with a creature who accepted her without question.

She'd been quite far today – all the way to Woodstock and back – in her exquisitely tailored riding habit, with a small top hat and veil perched artfully on her head. It was lucky she was well-dressed – not that she was ever otherwise – because there would be no time to change, now that she was back at the house. She had to speak to the housekeeper about the arrangements for dinner. There would be fifteen guests instead of fourteen, because the Bishop of Oxford wanted to bring one of his 'protégés'. And though rumours abounded about these young men, it simply wouldn't do to upset a Bishop.

She was just breezing through the hall, unpinning her hat, when the butler approached, bearing a card on a silver tray. Magda picked up the card without breaking her stride, and then skidded to a halt when she read it.

"In person?" she asked the butler.

"Yes, your grace."

"He didn't say what he wanted, did he?"

"The pleasure of your company, your grace. Shall I tell him you're engaged?"

She looked at the card again. It was hand-written – no, hastily scrawled – because, of course, the man who had killed the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow with a fork wouldn't keep such things as visiting cards about his person. 

Sir Jack Cade. The 'Sir' was squashed up against the 'Jack', as though it had been added as an afterthought, perhaps on the basis that a Duchess would be more likely to receive a knight. But he needn't have worried. Magda was extremely anxious to see him. It would interest her friends no end to hear that she had taken tea with Jack Cade. 

Of course, there would be some – the Chancellor of the University, the Bishop of Oxford and his wife – who would shudder to think they'd set foot in the same house as a lawless new-breed, but Magda wasn't interested in them. She was interested in the new set – mostly young people, all of them under the spell of Lady Wilde's brilliant son – who thought that life should be beautiful and interesting. They would love to hear tales of rebel new-breed Generals and Indian decadence.

"No," she said at last. "Show him into the morning room, will you, Travers? And send up some tea. I'll be there directly."

The morning room was Magda's favourite. It was where she wrote her letters and received her closest friends. She had overseen the decoration herself. There was no chintz or gilt or red velvet. Better still, there were no stuffed animal heads, which marred the rest of the house with their glassy eyes and curiously invasive smell. 

Magda found those heads especially troubling, because she had seen animals like that as a child – real, living eyes pricking through the mist that cloaked them – on the green mountains of her home. In England, the only stags she had seen were consigned to special parks or other people's drawing-rooms. Everything here was either tame or dead. She didn't allow this observation to bother her, in the ordinary course of events, but sometimes it got through her bustling energy and made her listless.

At any rate, the morning room was her own. Its couches and carpets were a simple duck-egg blue, its desks were polished walnut-wood, and its windows were thrown open to keep the smell of death at bay. Jack Cade was standing awkwardly in the middle of it when she entered, and the door had barely closed behind her when she realized her mistake.

He had not come here to regale her with Indian stories. He had come to find something out – and, whatever it was, it seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright. Oh, he was polite and respectful and even wearing a neck-tie, which she hadn't expected of him, but he had a quiet intensity which alarmed her, and he kept asking about her brother.

He was shorter than she'd expected, and very pale – sometimes faint, perhaps. Once or twice, she even saw him lean forwards and grip the edge of the coffee-table, as if he was trying to steady himself. But oddly enough, this weakness contributed to his worrying intensity, rather than detracting from it. He was down to his last, lingering reserves of energy, and they were all directed at her. His eyes seldom left her face, except when they were darting – with a peculiarly earnest expression – towards the window. Magda had a wild urge to get up and throw it open and say something like, "Please – after you – I would be exceedingly obliged."

Even when the conversation turned to Magda and her husband, he was uncomfortably direct. He didn't seem to understand that there were some things you just didn't say. They had barely sat down when he gave her a look of piercing, blue-eyed shrewdness and said, "You're very beautiful, but you're not quite what I expected."

"Am I not?" said Magda. She wasn't sure whether she should thank him for calling her beautiful. It didn't quite seem to be a compliment. But she was too practised at smoothing over social awkwardness to show her confusion. "And what did you expect?"

He put his head on one side. "I don't know. A more obvious kind of beauty. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a corset full-to-bursting."

Magda laughed. She was on familiar ground here, at least, although no-one had ever put it quite so directly before. "To explain why my husband married a woman of such humble origins?"

"Exactly."

"But is it really so extraordinary? Don't people marry for love all the time?"

"Not the English upper classes. They've had the sentimentality bred out of them over hundreds of years. They'll break their rules for money, but not for love."

"I disagree," said Magda gently. "British history is full of affluent old squires who lost their heads and married their dairymaids. Fitzwilliam was telling me about a case in his own family-"

"Old squires, perhaps," said Jack Cade. "Young, handsome, eligible squires, never."

Magda gave him a tolerant smile. "Well, my husband is an exception."

"You're the exception, Magdalena Blake. And you don't get to be an exception without being exceptional."

This probably was a compliment, but Magda didn't feel like thanking him. She deftly changed the subject – wasn't the weather dreadful? Did he take milk and sugar? She did so like the custom of afternoon tea, it just wasn't the same in America – and watched him from behind her smile.

When he wasn't being uncomfortably observant, he was... fidgety. He kept glancing at the window, as though he wanted to leap out of it, and then at her, as though she was the only one who could open it for him. And although he kept mentioning Elliott, he didn't seem to like doing so. There was a... bitey quality to his voice – she couldn't think of any other way to describe it – when he spoke of him, as though he was trying to bite down on the words, or bite back others.

And Magda realized her biggest mistake of all was receiving him in the room where she wrote her letters, because every time her brother's name came up, she couldn't keep her gaze from straying to the little ivory box where she kept his correspondence – including that last, perplexing telegram from Northaven. And she was sure, although he drank his tea and didn't mention it, that Mr Cade had noticed.

She seemed to remember he had some connection with the girl Elliott had been seeking for seven months. Hadn't she read about it in the papers? Hadn't the girl been one of those poor slave-women who'd been so zealously described in the Illustrated London News? And Jack Cade had taken them under his wing? Although some of the more conservative papers had suggested he was just setting up his own harem. 

Always assuming that the conservative papers had exaggerated slightly, wouldn't that mean he would be a friend to Elliott's girl? If he had helped others like her? But Elliott had told her not to tell anyone. He'd said you didn't fake your own death unless you had people to hide from.

"I used to be a pianist myself, you know," Jack Cade resumed, when she had poured the tea.

"I did know," said Magda. "There were pictures of you on the walls of the rehearsal rooms at the Alhambra when Elliott played there. And why do you say 'used to be'? Surely, if you've been a pianist once, you're a pianist always, whether you make a living from it or not?"

He flinched at this, but kept smiling. "You see, I've been finding out about your brother. I feel an affinity with him, you might say. Seems that he stopped playing concerts seven months ago, and has been wandering the country quite erratically ever since. Now, it's a funny thing, but something happened seven months ago right outside the rooms where he was rehearsing."

"Oh?" said Magda, spilling a few drops of tea in her saucer. "You mean that poor girl who was stabbed to death on the steps of the music rooms? Yes, he was questioned by the police at the time. He didn't see it. He always rehearses with the curtains closed, and, quite honestly, a herd of wild horses could gallop through the room without rousing him when he's wrapped up in his music. The first he heard about it was when the police started hammering on the door."

"Why did he stop giving concerts?"

Magda was ready for this. A wearying number of people had asked already. "Oh, he had some ridiculous scruple about not being good enough. He wanted to improve himself before finishing his European tour. He's been visiting the finest academies in Britain, and calling on the best composers."

"And not, as it might be, playing penny-gaffs in London's East End?"

Magda paused with her teacup halfway to her lips. "What an extraordinary notion! Where did you get an idea like that?"

He gave her a searching look, but Magda was more than equal to it. She'd encountered looks like that twenty times a day since her marriage, usually from people like the Bishop of Oxford, who were trying to discover what magical properties she had which could have explained Fitzwilliam's marrying her.

"Where is he now?" Jack Cade asked.

"The Italia Conti in Regent's Street." The answer came quickly, but just as quick was the shrill certainty that he knew she was lying.

"I know it," he said. "One of my girls is a student there."

"Oh yes," said Magda, seizing on the topic with relief. "Those poor girls at your Academy. Tell me, are they recovering from their shameful treatment? Is there anything one can do for them?"

He seemed briefly, flickeringly annoyed at this, but Magda didn't care. Any reaction was better than that searching silence. In any case, there was no time for him to answer, because Travers came in then. He leaned down apologetically, and told her that the housekeeper required instructions – and Magda understood this to mean, in his tactful, well-bred way, that the housekeeper was having hysterics.

"I'll be there directly, Travers," she said, trying not to sound too relieved. "Do excuse me, Sir Jack. I'm giving a reception for the Bishop of Oxford tonight, and these things take an inordinate amount of planning."

It was a relief to sink into the cool, wood-panelled hallway. It was even a relief to be face-to-face with the stuffed deer heads, with their blank eyes and open mouths, from which you felt obscurely that a tongue should be protruding. Anything was better than that vivid blue gaze, hyper-awake because it seemed to be fighting off sleep at every moment.

She found excuses to speak to the housekeeper for longer than was really necessary – she had to serve the turbot, because the Marquis had expressed a particular liking for it, and where was that special strawberry preserve made by the nuns at Godstow? And Travers was to remind Fitzwilliam not to let the men linger too long over their port and cigars after dinner, because the Chancellor would fall asleep and have one of his night terrors, and Lady Epsom was suffering with her nerves, and heavens knew what would happen if she heard blood-curdling screams ringing through the hallways.

She went back to Mr Cade with an unfurling sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. She was not sure which she dreaded more: that he would have finally collapsed on her new carpet, or that he was still conscious and ready to throw that bright, concentrated gaze on her.

He was still conscious – or upright, anyway. He was standing over the desk with his back to her. Magda tiptoed up. She didn't mean to tiptoe, but the feeling of dread was in command, making her act like the heroine of a gothic novel. 

He had opened the ivory box. He was holding the telegram. He was so absorbed in it that she was able to get very close, to read it quite clearly over his shoulder. Her eyes skimmed over the lines with mounting horror.

I've found her. Stop. Assumed name of course. Stop. Mrs Strood at the Birdcage Inn. Stop. They tell me she has skin that glows in the dark. Stop. Not the least drawback in a wife. Stop. Saves on candles.

"Stop!" cried Magda. She wanted to sound like a haughty and offended Duchess, but could only manage the tone of a little girl who'd been found out. "That's my private correspondence!"

Jack Cade rounded on her. He looked rattled and triumphant at the same time. "He was at the window of the recital room that night! What did he see? How did she survive? And what business was it of his, anyway? What does he think he's doing, following women round the country just because he happens to see them from his window?"

"He hasn't done anything wrong!" Magda protested.

With what seemed a huge effort, Jack Cade composed himself. He reached out for the desk, thought better of it, gave her a hollow echo of his boyish smile, and tucked the telegram inside his jacket. "I need to borrow this, Magda."

"No, you may not! And you address me as your grace!"

"If I thought any less of you, I would."

"It doesn't signify what you think of me if you're going to ignore my requests!"

Jack Cade hesitated, wobbled a little, and stretched out his hand for the desk once more.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry." He drew out the telegram and let her snatch it back. "I can remember it. Believe me. And I won't hurt your brother." He smiled faintly, and added, "Well, 'hurt' is such a nebulous word – but I won't kill your brother. At least, I hope I won't."

"He hasn't done anything to that girl," Magda insisted. She wanted to shout and stamp her feet and cause Travers to come running, but her throat was dry. "He's trying to help her."

Jack Cade was clutching the desk so hard that his fingertips had gone white, and she realized there was an immense weariness battling with his energy. For the moment, it had won. He closed his eyes a fraction, and she was almost sure he would go crashing down to the carpet – perhaps even through the floor, if the weights pressing down on him were as heavy as they looked. But he remained upright.

"Yes, I know," he said, in a small voice. His sudden vulnerability was shocking. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach, and... and further down...

"It's just... he plays so well. And he's so young. Is he handsome?" But he raised a hand almost immediately, and said, "Don't answer that. I'll find out soon enough, I expect."

For the first time since she'd entered the room, Magda understood him. Good Lord, how ridiculous! He was jealous. He was famous – infamous – intense, and he was jealous of her little Elliott. And what was so special about this woman, that so many men lost their heads over her? But she stopped that thought almost before it had formed, because she realized it was exactly the same question people asked about her.

"I'd say you have bigger problems," she said, finding the tone of the haughty Duchess at last. "It's curious; Elliott didn't see it either, but a woman would never have overlooked it. She's calling herself 'Mrs Strood', and presumably she's travelling with a man to maintain this alias. You should be asking yourself who Mr Strood is, and whether he's handsome."