Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Dominic had heard many women cry.
Usually because they’d forgotten a vital piece of their costume. Drunk too much wine. Realised their lewd antics weren’t nearly as thrilling in the light of day. Or their husband hadn’t returned to their bed.
Only once had he heard a woman sob from the depths of her soul. A wracking sound that didn’t rise from her throat, but from some hollow place grief had carved inside her.
He’d been eighteen. His mother too thin, too frail to support her own weight. Her skin as cold as winter marble.
Miss Harland was soft and warm, every curve a delicious temptation, but her cry reminded him why he filled his corridors with music and laughter. Why he’d rather hear beds banging and pants of pleasure than the sound of someone breaking.
He wished he were standing in the midst of an orgy, just to drown out her heartfelt whimpers. Wished he wasn’t holding her in his arms, something he’d sworn never to do again. Wished he didn’t feel every inch the devil.
“If you want to leave Shadowmere, I can make the arrangements.” His tone was as blunt as ever, the offer more than he’d give to another living soul.
Miss Harland straightened, blinking tears from her dark lashes onto her cheeks, though she didn’t step out of his hold.
“You said I couldn’t leave.”
“Whoever killed your father may come looking for you.” He didn’t add that he was afraid she might meet the same grisly end. Or be made a scapegoat by a Bow Street sergeant desperate to make inspector. “Trust me. There’s nowhere safer than here.”
He glanced at the rundown cottage, half convinced she might perish from the cold within the week. But he couldn’t have her in the house.
She gathered herself and stepped back to a respectable distance. “Can you prove you didn’t murder my father?”
He gave a mirthless snort. “Would I waste my time creating a scene if I’d planned to kill him? Half the staff at Mivart’s can confirm my whereabouts. I never left the hotel room.”
Her gaze dipped to his mouth. “You had company?”
Did she think he used pleasure the way other men used opium? “No. I didn’t invite a woman to my bed.”
“I wouldn’t care if you had.” She dashed a tear from her cheek and lifted her chin. “I’m merely trying to decide if you killed my father.”
He’d wanted to—every day since receiving the letter.
“As a logical woman, you know I’d have done it without leaving a trace. I have no reason to spare you the truth.” He met her gaze, unflinching. “I’ve dreamt of driving a dagger through his heart more times than I can count.”
She searched his face. “Why?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. If I’m to stay here, I need to understand your motives. How else are we to find the real culprit?”
That should have been his cue to step back.
To deliver a line that cut to the bone.
He didn’t care who had done his dirty work for him.
He should get rid of this woman. Hand her a thousand pounds, send her away, and put the past behind him.
“You said it was retribution. That his cruelty knew no bounds.” She laid a hand on his upper arm. “He did something to your mother. Mine hated the ground he walked on.”
He stilled, every muscle rigid, his face a mask of stone.
He could have shaken her off. He didn’t.
Seconds passed. His mouth thinned.
He couldn’t bear to say the words.
“Fine.” She shook her head, loose strands tumbling from the comb. She bent and picked up the key to the cottage. “Can you ask Mr Ramsey to meet me here in an hour, so I might give him a list of what I need? When you’re ready to discuss it, you know where to find me.”
She turned away from him and marched through the open gate, noting the weeds on the path as she made for the door.
He waited until she was inside before walking away. Yet he knew she watched him from the window. That she would cry again. Curse the day he forced her to dance. Seek her own form of vengeance.
For some reason, he welcomed the battle. The thought of tussling with her roused something primitive in him.
He found Ramsey in the morning room, standing beside the long table where Beattie had spread out a linen cloth and several neatly folded menus.
“Miss Harland needs supplies delivered to the cottage. Give her whatever she requires. Whatever it takes to prevent her from leaving until I discover who bludgeoned her father and threw him in the Thames.”
He told himself it was about answers. His guilt. Her safety. But he wasn’t quite sure why he insisted she stay.
Both men nodded.
“I suspect you’ll want the coroner’s report, sir.”
Beattie was more than his housekeeper. He’d fought at Waterloo and had comrades in town—men whose lives he’d saved and who were eager to repay the debt.
“Yes, but I can’t risk leaving Shadowmere until I know more.”
“I’ll have what you need delivered within two days.”
Ramsey was quick to offer a word of caution. “Sir Lionel wants an end to your wild parties. He won’t care if it means the end of you. And that sergeant from Bow Street looks as if he’d frame his own mother to get ahead. Do you want me to call a meeting with the Brethren?”
Let his friends think he couldn’t handle a measly magistrate? Hell, no. Besides, they were all preparing for their own wars.
“No. We’ll meet next week as planned.”
“What about Daventry?” Ramsey said, naming the master of an elite group of enquiry agents. “He’s the one who found Mrs Seagrove. Happen he’ll have a list of men who wanted Harland dead.”
“Daventry may be a fountain of knowledge, but no man holds me by the ballocks. I won’t pay his price. We’ll manage without him.”
Beattie stood firm. “Sir,” he said, in that parade-ground tone of his. “We all remember Papelotte. Looked like a weak point. Turned out to be bait.”
“What are you saying?” He knew damn well what Beattie implied. That he’d been fooled into blaming the wrong man. “That we find out who really put Harland in the river?”
“It won’t hurt to make our own enquiries, sir.”
“The coffers are full of favours,” Ramsey added. “About time we called some in. Want me to use one to get the name of the witness?” He paused. “And you could ask Miss Harland for the name of her suitor.”
The first was an excellent idea.
The second … less so.
“If the witness exists, I want to know everything about him.” He was curious about the man who’d offered for Miss Harland, but he’d rather be damned than ask her himself. Ramsey could do it. “You speak to our guest in the cottage when you collect the list. I’ve a task of my own to deal with.”
He had one job, truth be told.
Avoid Miss Harland like the plague.
For four days, he’d succeeded.
Four days without asking Ramsey what the devil he was doing with Miss Harland after dark. Four long nights wondering if she was cold or hungry. Yet he’d spent most of his time at the upstairs window of the coach house. It was the only place with a decent view of the cottage.
His men were beginning to ask questions.
He’d been called many things over the years.
Wicked. Arrogant. Ambitious.
Never obsessed.
He’d never stalked a woman’s movements.
Never dreamed of one in his bed.
All this talk of vengeance and murder had left him unhinged. Any man would feel unsettled after being named a suspect in a crime. His preoccupation with her likely amounted to nothing more than guilt.
But guilt didn’t usually make a man hard.
This was need, plain and punishing.
He wanted to strip her out of those dusty clothes, silence her clever mouth with his own, and bury himself between her soft thighs.
He’d punch his own face, but his men already thought him half mad. Gouging his eyes wouldn’t help. She lived in his head now, haunting its dark chambers at night, humming that sweet little song.
He had no defence against her, not even in his own mind.
And what in blazes was she doing now?
He pressed closer to the window.
Miss Harland was outside, dressed in old breeches and a gentleman’s shirt. He’d shoot Ramsey if they belonged to him, but the garments hadn’t been stylish since before the dawn of Waterloo.
She disappeared behind the cottage and returned with a wheelbarrow. He watched her slide her hands into leather gloves as if they were fine silk, then kneel and sift pebbles from the soil.
Was this what he’d driven her to?
Manual labour?
He’d pictured her naked on his bed, draped in diamonds.
Now she was elbow-deep in dirt.
She took up a spade and dug.
Where the hell was Ramsey?
Unable to watch, he marched out of the coach house—nearly broke into a sprint—then slowed to a languid stroll the moment she looked up.
“I didn’t realise you had a fondness for gardening, Miss Harland.”
She stood, brushing dirt from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m not sure fond is the right word, Mr Hawke. But there is something immensely satisfying about tackling a project.”
He felt another flicker of admiration.
“I assumed Ramsey was helping you.”
She tugged off her gloves. Her knuckles were red. “He was beginning to fall behind with his own work. And I’d asked too much of him already.”
He hated Ramsey, he decided.
“Have you come to survey my work?” She met his gaze. “Mr Ramsey thought you’d be satisfied with everything I’ve done so far. That you’d have no complaints.”
His traitorous gaze slid over her. No corset. Breasts that would spill over his palm. More than enough curve to her hips for his hands to grip.
Yes, he’d be more than satisfied.
And that was the bloody problem.
“Ramsey mentioned you’d helped yourself to furniture and linens from the house.”
She gave a nervous smile. “He said you agreed.”
“I did.”
She paused as if expecting more, but he needed to tread carefully. Discovering what she knew about her father should be the only reason he was speaking to her now.
“Would you like to come in?” She spoke with the polite distance of a hostess receiving an afternoon caller. “The tea is steeping. You’re welcome to join me. I’ll just move the barrow.”
He should have refused, but his feet betrayed him.