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“Good thing, as it turned out.”

“Yes.” Jerome sipped his wine.

Ashford laid his knife and fork on the plate and pushed it aside. Taking up his glass, he cradled it and said, “So Lannister’s absence from town was just a coincidence.”

“Must have been,” said Jerome.

“Peculiar, the way rumors develop. One of the stories was that they were actually seen leaving town together in his coach. But how the deuce did Ava get all the way to Ravenshaw by herself?”

Jerome stopped in mid-chew, an odd frisson of cold passing over his skin. “I don’t know, actually. In the, err—curfuffle, I never asked her.”

Ashford let that go without asking any more probing questions and the conversation turned to other things. But a disturbing possibility wouldn’t leave Jerome alone. He tried to shake it off and joined Ashford for cards after the meal and allowed his friend to offer him a toast in honor of his coming nuptials.

“No doubt Rob will send you an invitation. Nothing is to be announced for a few more days, I understand. Rob needed time to inform Haldane and Silverly.”

“They won’t be pleased.”

“Agreed.”

Ashford eventually rose after a few rubbers and bade him farewell. “Need to get home before the children are in bed,” he said with a wave and ambled off.

Left alone and not inclined to return to his empty London townhouse, Jerome settled himself by the fire in an armchair with a drink and the newspaper.

He was disturbed an hour later by someone saying, “Lannister, by God! Where did you spring from?”

Lannister stood in the vestibule between the lounge and the card room, visible to Jerome through the broad archway.

Jerome didn’t hear Lannister’s response to the question, but the rumors linking Lannister and Ava plucked at him, and when Lannister entered the lounge—not the card room, as Jerome would have expected—Jerome folded the newspaper with the intent of rising to accost him. To his even greater surprise, Lannister approached him.

“Ravenshaw!” Jerome rose to shake the hand being held out to him. “Didn’t expect to see you here. May I join you?”

Jerome’s skin prickled with premonition, and he waved the other man to a seat. “Of course. I gather you have just returned to town?”

“I have.” Lannister ordered a drink and settled into his chair, throwing Jerome a look that he couldn’t read. Speculative? Concerned? Something else? A slightly awkward silence ensued while he waited for his drink to arrive. With glass in hand, he looked at Jerome over it and said, “The question is, why are you here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, I gather Troubridge didn’t put a bullet through you, which is something!”

Jerome’s heart raced, but years of hiding his feelings from others held him in good stead, and he said with remarkable calm. “Do you care to explain that statement?”

“I did my best to ensure he wouldn’t, but the man is irrational, far too likely to go off halfcocked where his women are concerned.”

Jerome’s hand tightened on his own glass, and he said tightly, “Cut line!”

Lannister looked down at his glass reflectively. “Since I’m not sure what you know, nor do I know what happened at Ravenshaw, I’m reluctant to say too much for fear of putting my foot in it. I gather Ava did reach Ravenshaw safely?”

“She did, and how the bloody hell do you know that?”

Lannister looked up. “You relieve my mind. Once Troubridge realized where she was, I wasn’t sure what he would do.”

Jerome waved that aside and said, “I repeat, how do you know any of this?”

“Well, I’m the one that brought her, you see. Did you think she came all that way by herself?”

“You brought her?” Jerome reeled under the implications. “Why?”

“She asked me to,” he said simply. “And it was that or let her go on her own, and I couldn’t do that.”