“Look closer.”

But he just shook his head again, trying to return it to the dowager.

“Might be worth something,” one of his companions said.

He shook his head and gazed intently at the dowager’s face. “It will never be as valuable to me as it is to you.”

“No!” the dowager cried out, and she shoved the miniature toward him. “Look! I beg of you, look! His eyes. His chin. His mouth. They are yours.”

Grace sucked in her breath.

“I am sorry,” the highwayman said gently. “You are mistaken.”

But she would not be dissuaded. “His voice is your voice,” she insisted. “Your tone, your humor. I know it. I know it as I know how to breathe. He was my son. My son.”

“Ma’am,” Grace interceded, placing a motherly arm around her. The dowager would not normally have allowed such an intimacy, but there was nothing normal about the dowager this evening. “Ma’am, it is dark. He is wearing a mask. It cannot be he.”

“Of course it’s not he,” she snapped, pushing Grace violently away. She rushed forward, and Grace nearly fell with terror as every man steadied his weapon.

“Don’t hurt her!” she cried out, but her plea was unnecessary. The dowager had already grabbed the highwayman’s free hand and was clutching it as if he was her only means of salvation.

“This is my son,” she said, her trembling fingers holding forth the miniature. “His name was John Cavendish, and he died twenty-nine years ago. He had brown hair, and blue eyes, and a birthmark on his shoulder.” She swallowed convulsively, and her voice fell to a whisper. “He adored music, and he could not eat strawberries. And he could…he could…”

The dowager’s voice broke, but no one spoke. The air was thick and tense with silence, every eye on the old woman until she finally got out, her voice barely a whisper, “He could make anyone laugh.”

And then, in an acknowledgment Grace could never have imagined, the dowager turned to her and added, “Even me.”