But Euphie had failed Violet once already. George closed her eyes. And what about the poisoned sheep— the reason she’d traveled to Yorkshire in the first place? The attacks were growing more frequent. As she’d left, George had overheard two footmen talking about a poisoned woman. She should’ve stopped and found out if the dead woman was connected to the sheep, but instead she’d let Tony hustle her out the door. Once she’d made the decision to leave Woldsly, it was as if a strange lethargy had taken over her body. It was so hard to concentrate. So hard to know what to do. She felt wrong in her bones, but she couldn’t seem to make things right.

“You must stop thinking about him,” Tony said.

His tone made George glance at her brother, sitting in the blood-red leather seat across from hers. Tony looked sympathetic and worried. And sad, his shaggy eyebrows drawn down. Sudden tears clouded her eyes, and she turned to the window again, although she couldn’t see a thing now.

“It’s just that he was so . . . good. He seemed to understand me in a way nobody has before, not even you or Aunt Clara. And I couldn’t figure him out.” She laughed under her breath. “Maybe that’s what attracted me to him. He was like a puzzle that I could have spent the rest of my life studying and never grow tired of.” They rumbled over a bridge. “I don’t think I’ll ever find that again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said.

George laid her head back on the seat. “You’re awfully kind for a brother. Did you know that?”

“I’ve been most lucky in my allotment of sisters.” Tony smiled.

George tried to smile back but found she couldn’t. She went back to looking out the carriage window instead. They passed a field of drenched sheep, poor miserable creatures. Could sheep swim? Maybe they’d float if their pasture flooded, like tufts of down in a puddle.

They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she’d be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from a soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse, Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive. She might toss the letter on her desk and think, But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream.

She might think that.