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“Everyone says he’s a sweet child,” she ventured. “To be fair to the duke and duchess, some of their irritability must stem from anxiety, about his health.”

“Must it?” De’Ath’s voice had thinned to a cutting edge.

“Of course.” She licked her dry lips, aware that she’d said the wrong thing and unsure how to repair the damage. “Tuberculosis is a terrible disease. And he’s the heir.”

The garden was gay with spring flowers, and the sun diffused its light evenly across the unrelieved blue of the sky. But De’Ath’s eyes looked like black holes.

“Why do you think he has tuberculosis?” he asked, with that new, unexpected sharpness.

“Doesn’t he?” She took a small misstep and winced as her ankle wobbled. “I don’t remember who told me he did.” It was a fact of the house. She’d known within the first hour that the little marquess wasn’t well.

“He has his own doctor,” she pointed out, “and a live-in nurse.”

“Dr. Thayer. Did he tell you? He won’t speak with me. Geoffrey’s orders. I darken his door, and he pretends he’s rushing into surgery.”

“I never glimpsed the man.”

She found De’Ath’s eyes too unfathomable and looked away.

“And the nurse, Miss Milford?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She worked her throat hard to swallow. As soon as she reached the street, she’d arrow for the first ginger beer seller. She could drink a barrel. “What about her?”

They turned into the trees, and she glanced at the house over her shoulder, a final look.

“Does she agree? She spends more time with him than anyone. What does she say belowstairs, when Geoffrey isn’t there to censor her words?”

“We haven’t spoken. I haven’t heard.” His intensity, the line of questioning—she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. All she knew was that she wasn’t giving him the answers he wanted. She angled up her gaze and gave a helpless shake of her head. “I’m sorry.”

De’Ath released a breath and his face cleared. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m interrogating you.” His voice was smooth again. “Geoffrey and I inhabit different realities. I have to glean my information from other sources.”

“I have no information.”

“I gleaned that.” His mouth tipped up.

She smiled back at him, relieved. His eyes had lost their tarnish and shone with silvery brightness. His mood seemed light again, and hers lightened too. With every step, she drew nearer the street, ginger beer, freedom. Her blood began to sing. Suddenly, he shook his head and laughed.

“We even see different paintings. I look at the painting he hung in pride of place in the drawing room, and I see a picture manufactured by a criminal, someone who aped seventeenth-century techniques to dupe insensitive buyers. He sees a Rembrandt.”

Bloody hell. Her whole body tensed.

“That,” she said, with all the composure she could muster, “is rather minor, in the scheme of things.”

“Minor?” He drew to a halt. They’d entered an enchanting wilderness in miniature, the manicured trees divided by narrow, winding footpaths banked with tulips. A tiny pond glimmered between the trees. It was spanned by a high-arched wooden bridge. Just beyond, the tall iron gate offered passage through the garden wall.

So close.

“No, Miss Finch, a lethargic imitation passed off as an original work of art is nothing minor. Do you know—until the 1850s, collectors bought old masters nineteen to the dozen. Counterfeits, for the most part. Why so many fakes?” He gave a professorial flourish of his cane. Nina didn’t answer. She understood the genre of masculine lecture, its various cues.

This pause—it was mere punctuation.

“Because the rising demand all but required fakes,” he continued. “One of the perversities of the art market, but that’s another conversation.” He shrugged. “I credit the Art Journal with reversing the tide. Its writers appointed themselves watchdogs, sniffed out forgeries, did whatever they could to stamp out the trade. And what happened?”

Again, a perfunctory pause.

“You’ll tell me,” predicted Nina in a murmur, before biting the inside of her cheek.

De’Ath’s eyes flashed, but then his mouth quirked.