Chapter 26
I winced as Dr. Moulton adjusted my hand, inspecting it carefully.
“Fractured, I’m quite sure,” he said. “I will wrap it, and you’ll need to take care for a few weeks.”
We had taken up residence in an empty interview room at Bow Street.
Dr. Moulton and I sat at the table, his bag open, while Ginny and Jack observed.
Though Ginny had wished to come to Hatchards, Jack had responded so strongly in the negative—“Do see reason, Ginny. None of us is carrying a child”—that she’d relented and compromised by waiting at Bow Street until we’d returned.
“Really, Bea,” Ginny said, standing just behind my shoulder. “You ought to have let Mr. Rawlings do the fighting.”
“I hardly had the time,” I protested.
“Still,” she said. “There was a reason we did not send you alone. He knows better how to handle such things.”
“Rather rich,” Jack said, “coming from a woman who nearly brought me to my knees with her own fist.”
I tipped my head to stare at Ginny. “Really? This is a story I haven’t heard.”
Ginny’s face flushed. “And you won’t.” She turned resolutely back to the doctor. “Any other instructions, Dr. Moulton?”
As Dr. Moulton showed Ginny how to wrap my hand, I glanced out the open door to where Alexander paced in the main office. What he was anxious about, I wasn’t entirely certain. I wasn’t so grievously injured as to inspire pacing.
Mr. Moulton finished the wrapping. “Limited use for four weeks,” he advised.
“I suppose my harp practice will have to wait,” I quipped.
Ginny shook her head with a smile. “It’s waited for twenty-four years. I think it can wait a while longer.”
After the doctor left, we went out into the main office, desks and chairs and tables spread throughout.
Thankfully, Clarissa had been taken to an upstairs room, so I did not have to see her.
I had no qualms about anything that had happened today—she deserved every bit of justice she got—but I’d finally begun to reclaim a sense of calm.
Seeing her again would only disrupt that.
Alexander came to meet me halfway across the room. “What did the doctor say?”
I sighed dramatically, holding up my bandaged hand. “He says I will likely never use my hand again. A tragedy, to be sure, but—”
“She will be well enough,” Ginny said as she passed. “A few weeks to heal is all.”
I glared after her. “A fine friend you are. I only wanted a bit of attention; is that too much to ask?”
She just laughed, going to sit beside Verity. I turned back to Alexander, his lips twitching.
“You have my full attention,” he said. “I assure you.”
“Good,” I said. “A girl can only injure herself so many times.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes somehow both serious and amused. “Let us hope this is the last time.”
The next few hours passed in a haze of interviews, questions, and far too many cups of tea. I knew it was vital to record all the details of a case as soon as possible, but heavens, it was exhausting being at the center of it all.
It was growing late, the purple sky outside claimed by the coming night, when I noticed how very tired Ginny looked sitting beside me for all those hours.
I might have been bearing the brunt of the questions, but she was nearing her ninth month.
No doubt worrying for me the last fortnight had not helped anything.
“Ginny, you ought to go home,” I said. “You look weary to the bone.”
“When you’re finished,” she said. “I’m well enough.”
“Jack?” I needed reinforcement.
He’d been working at a nearby desk but, overhearing our conversation, had already stood. “She’s right, Ginny. Let me take you back.”
“I don’t want to leave Beatrice alone,” Ginny said.
Alexander, who sat by Mr. Drake as he recorded my answers to all their questions, leaned forward. “I’ll bring her when we’ve finished,” he said. “Likely only another half hour or so.”
Ginny finally acquiesced, which spoke to how truly exhausted she was. She and Jack left, then Verity and Mr. Denning soon after. The office quieted, with only a few clerks and other officers finishing a few tasks.
When at last Mr. Drake seemed satisfied, he closed his notes and offered a smile. “I am sorry for what you have been through, Miss Lacey, but I hope we can carry this forward with as little effect on your life as possible.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. “Truly, I am so grateful for your help. For everyone’s help.”
“I daresay none of us minded in the least,” he said. “Rather, we were eager to help, considering—” He stopped midsentence, glancing at Alexander. “That is, of course. You are welcome.”
What had that glance meant? Considering what?
Mr. Drake stood, and Alexander and I followed suit. “We will contact you if anything else is needed,” he said. “I imagine Rawlings will be our go-between.”
“Quite,” Alexander said.
Mr. Drake smiled and gave a short bow. “Good night, Miss Lacey.”
He left, and then it was just Alexander and me.
“I’ll see you home,” he said. “Mrs. Travers said she would send the coach back for you.”
“It’s hardly a few minutes to walk,” I protested.
“Let us humor her, shall we?”
I gathered my things—gloves, reticule, and bonnet—then followed Alexander toward the front door. Ginny’s coach was indeed waiting for us outside, the driver standing beside the horses and looking very familiar.
“Mr. Barton!” I exclaimed. “How do you do?”
“Well enough,” he said, smiling broadly. “Pleased to see you. It feels as though I just left the pair of you at that inn.”
It did not seem that way to me. Rather, it felt like a lifetime had passed since then, an age that had changed me in so many ways. But I did not need to delve into those feelings with Mr. Barton. “It does indeed,” I said, returning his smile.
Alexander helped me into the coach, then followed me inside and sat beside me. He closed the door, and we started off.
I could not help a glance back at Bow Street, to the lighted window, where I imagined Clarissa was being kept. I swallowed hard. “What will become of her?”
Alexander did not ask who I meant. “England’s laws do not look kindly on thieves. If she is convicted, I’ve little doubt the sentencing will be harsh.”
I shook my head. “That her life should come to this while mine is . . .” I sighed. “I only mean to say, she and I are more alike than you might think.”
“You and Miss Haythorne?” Disbelief was stark in his voice. “As alike as a butterfly and a cockroach.”
“Let us hope I am the butterfly in this comparison.”
“You’re nothing like her,” he said flatly.
“And you’re wrong,” I said. “You do not know what it is to be a woman, to be raised with certain expectations and rules. Clarissa and I both longed for a life outside what was demanded of us. We both wished for adventure, excitement, romance. In truth, our desires were uncannily similar.”
“You, however, did not stoop to grand larceny in your pursuit of such desires.”
“Yet,” I said, a mischievous tilt to my head.
He exhaled a short noise of amusement. “You should feel not one ounce of sympathy for that woman.”
“I cannot help it,” I replied. “She lost the man she loved. I can only imagine how that feels.” I paused.
“It makes one think how one decision can affect a lifetime . . .” My voice faded off, then I shook my head.
He was right. I was being too sentimental.
Clarissa did not deserve any more of my thoughts. Not now. Not ever.
“What is it you want now?” His voiced had changed, more guarded, careful.
I regarded him. “What do you mean?”
“You said that you wanted adventure, excitement, and romance,” he said. “I only wondered if after the last fortnight, that might have changed.”
I smiled. “I’ve had adventure and excitement aplenty. Perhaps enough for a lifetime, but one never knows.” I tipped my head. “Romance, however, I could do with a great deal more of.”
We passed a streetlamp, and it cast half his face in steep angles, the other half softened by shadow.
He looked at me. Oh, how he looked at me.
And I realized that this was the first time we’d ever sat beside each other in a coach.
Before, he’d always sat across from me, keeping a certain amount of distance.
Now, however, the side of his leg brushed my skirts, his boots only inches from mine.
I felt a stirring in my stomach. A delicious foretelling.
“Do you know,” I said, “that we haven’t been alone since we left Briarstone?”
“Trust me,” he said, his words thick with meaning, “I am fully aware.”
His gaze pierced through me, so intense that I found I could not breathe.
I’d faced down both a murderous thief and a vengeful lover in the last three days, but this new awareness between us brought more trepidation than the two of them combined.
I knew what I wanted. I knew what I longed for.
But what if our hopes were not the same?
He’d been a bachelor officer of Bow Street for so long. What if I was not enough to—
“When we were at Briarstone,” he said, the rumble of his deep voice interrupting my thoughts, “there were certain subjects I could not breach.”
“Because I was under your protection.”
“Yes.”
I had to look away, my breaths coming too quickly. “I am not under your protection anymore,” I said quietly. My hands were clasped neatly in my lap, proper as I never was. I hardly knew what to do with myself. This conversation could go a million different ways.
Or it could go the one way I hoped for the most.
“That is where you are wrong.”
His words forced me to look at him again, the wishing inside me so strong my chest seemed to swell with it. Sometime during the ride, we’d both turned toward each other, as if drawn by a force neither of us fully understood.
“You will always be under my protection, Beatrice Lacey,” he murmured. He lifted one hand, trapping my chin between his thumb and forefinger, ensuring I did not look away. “I will always be your defender.”