Robert held her gaze. The old Robert might have answered with charm; the Duke might have offered protection. Instead, he simply said, "I won't."
Matilda entered the carriage. As it pulled away from Falconhurst, she looked back once. Robert remained where she had left him; he did not follow. For the first time, his restraint felt more powerful than his rank.
York did not feel like freedom at first. It felt like a rented room with pale wallpaper, a narrow bed, a washstand, and a window overlooking a street busy enough that no one noticed when Matilda Dracott arrived with two trunks, a reticule full of music, and no certainty about what would happen next.
She took lodgings in the respectable house of Mrs. Albright, the same widow who had chaperoned her meeting with Robert after the cancelled premiere. The arrangement was modest, proper, and entirely her own; that mattered.
On the first evening, Matilda closed her bedroom door, turned the key, and stood in the quiet. No one called her downstairs. No manuscript appeared beside her supper plate. No voice reminded her what she owed. The silence felt strange; then it felt enormous.
She sat at the small writing desk and emptied her reticule: her father's silver tuning fork, three folded pages in her own hand, the unfinished variation she had taken from Falconhurst, a handful of notes from musicians, and one printed proof bearing Hester's name. Matilda arranged them carefully. Freedom, she discovered, was not beautiful at first; it was work.
The next morning, she began. She visited a music shop where one of the violinists from the Falconhurst rehearsals had once purchased strings. She asked for the address of the printer who had prepared Beckham's proofs. She wrote to two musicians who had attended earlier rehearsals. She returned to the York assembly room and spoke with the caretaker about dates. She did not accuse; she asked questions. Dates were safer than outrage; paper was quieter than gossip.
By the third day, she had built a timeline: the earliest proof delivered to Beckham's printer ended exactly where Matilda had stopped copying from her working manuscript; no later completed version existed in the printer's records. That alone did not prove authorship—a copyist could copy incomplete pages. But it proved something else: Hester could not have supplied a complete work because no complete work had been delivered. The final variation existed only in Matilda's own hand. She stared at the dates until her pulse quickened.
There was more: Mr. Ellison, the violinist from the private preview, agreed to meet her in the public room of Mrs. Albright's house, with the widow present. He brought two old rehearsal parts. Both contained corrections in Matilda's handwriting made weeks before Hester had publicly described the corresponding passages as her own inspiration.
"I remember these," he said, placing the pages on the table. "You changed the entrance after I complained the line felt crowded."
"I did."
"Mrs. Dracott was not in the room."
Matilda looked at him. "Would you say that before others?"
He hesitated. The pause was honest, and she respected it more than false courage. "If necessary."
"It may be."
He looked down at the music. "Then yes."
After he left, Matilda sat very still. Mrs. Albright poured tea. "You have one witness."
"One witness is not enough."
"No, but it is more than none."
Matilda almost smiled. "You are very practical."
"Widowhood encourages it."
The next letter arrived that afternoon; it bore Godfrey Beckham's seal. The message was polite; that made it worse. He warned that public claims against Mrs. Dracott could permanently damage Matilda's prospects. He reminded her that publishers depended upon reputation, discretion, and the confidence of patrons. He advised her, for her own sake, to accept that correction and composition were not the same skill.