Chapter 13 #2
"I am three years younger than her," Henry said, without hesitation.
The room went very still.
Elizabeth's brow drew together. "How do you know her exact age?"
Henry blinked. For a fraction of a second, something moved behind his eyes.
"I heard it," he said quickly. "The constables questioned the staff that night. They said her name, her age. Twenty-eight. I remember details like that."
Charles glanced at Elizabeth. She held his gaze a moment, filing the answer away without comment.
"Very well," Charles said. "Let us speak of that night. Where were you, at the time Lady Sarah Thompkins died?"
"I already told Constable Clark. Stationed at the east gate. I did not move from there."
"Can he confirm that?"
"He can. Ask him yourself."
Charles rose and crossed to the window instead, his voice mild, though something harder ran beneath it. "Come here."
Henry hesitated.
"Now."
He rose slowly and joined Charles at the glass.
"Do you see the constable's men below?"
"Yes."
"And the guards patrolling the edge of the property?"
"Yes."
"Good." Charles turned to face him. "Then you understand there is no leaving this house before we are finished. No running. No hiding."
Henry's color drained.
"Devlin Harris told us something you did not," Charles continued. "That you were unaccounted for during a window of some ten to fifteen minutes that night. That you returned only moments before the body was discovered."
"That is a lie." Henry's voice rose. "I went to relieve myself. I was back long before the scream — before anyone had noticed anything was wrong."
"So you admit you were not at your post the entire evening. As you told the constables you were."
"You are accusing me because I have human needs?" Henry's voice cracked with indignation. "I am not a machine. I stepped away. I came back."
Elizabeth rose, calm but unyielding. "No one accuses you of stepping away to relieve yourself." She came around the table to face him directly. "But there is more. Dr. Franklin and his secretary are on their way here even now."
Something in Henry's posture gave way.
"Lady Sarah Thompkins was Dr. Franklin's patient," Elizabeth said. "His secretary reported a man watching the physician's office on more than one occasion during her appointments. A man whose description matches you."
All the color left Henry's face at once.
"We will learn what else you have not told us," Elizabeth said quietly. "Soon enough."
He had no answer for that. He stood frozen between the three of them, trapped and trembling, out of ways to pretend the ground beneath him was solid.
◆◆◆
A long moment passed. The fire had gone untended, the room close with unspoken things.
Henry had begun to sweat.
Damon's eyes had not left him. His jaw was set, one fist closed against the table's edge. When their eyes met, Henry flinched and looked away, the way a guilty child looks away from an adult who already knows the answer.
Then Damon rose.
"Your Grace," Charles said, wary.
Damon did not answer. He crossed the small distance between them, slow and deliberate, and stopped just short of the table where Henry sat.
His voice, when it came, was quiet. That was what made it dangerous.
"In a few minutes," he said, "we will know whether you were watching her. Sarah. For months before that party. Whether you stood in shadow while she tried simply to live her life."
Henry's breath had gone shallow and fast.
"Pray she does not confirm it," Damon said.
"You spoke, earlier, of what a man like me is capable of when crossed.
You have no idea." He leaned in, only slightly.
"I will return to you every sleepless night.
Every measure of humiliation. Every particle of pain — tenfold.
Not only to you. To your sisters. Your mother. Everyone you have ever loved."
Something in Henry broke entirely.
He drew a sharp, shuddering breath and folded back into the chair, hands rising to cover his face as though he might disappear behind them. His shoulders heaved once, twice. Then his hands fell away, and his eyes, when they lifted, were red-rimmed and very far away.
"I am that man," he said, voice trembling. "I loved her."
Charles leaned forward, his expression sharpening.
"We met at another party," Henry said. "Months before the one where she died. I was posted there too. She dropped her shawl — I returned it. We spoke. And then we kept speaking." His voice caught. "She was curious. Kind. Unafraid of anything. We had an understanding, for a few weeks."
The words came unevenly now, spilling out like something long held closed.
"They were the best weeks of my life. I had never felt seen like that before. Not the boy from nowhere. Not the guard at the edge of the ballroom. Just — me."
He looked up at Damon.
"But then she grew distant. Cold. Said it had to end. Said it had been a mistake."
His voice hardened with old grief.
"I did not think I mattered to her the way she mattered to me. But I loved her. I never stopped."
Damon's jaw was iron. "And so you killed her."
Henry recoiled, guilt flooding his face.
"I did not want to," he said, hoarse. "Sarah was kind. She smiled at me, sometimes. But she did not love me. Not the way I wanted her to."
His eyes found Damon, then dropped, heavy with shame.
"She loved you."
Damon went very still, his chest rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths.
Elizabeth reached out without thinking and rested her hand on his arm — not a comfort, exactly. An anchor.
Henry continued, the words no longer his to control.
"They knew," he whispered. "The men who arranged that guard post for me that night.
They were not merely hiring me. They were testing me.
They knew Sarah cared for you, and they planted the thought until it grew into something else.
They said cruel things — that she would humiliate herself, and me, if she was ever seen near you again. "
His voice cracked further.
"The man who hired me came to the east gate that night and told me to walk with him.
I asked about the post — what if Mr. Devlin found it empty.
He laughed, very quietly, and said, Be easy.
You are looked after. Besides — who do you imagine engaged Mr. Delvin?
He answers to me." Henry's jaw worked. "I believed him then.
I no longer know how much of it was true. But I went.
"On the way he praised me. You are doing well tonight, he said.
The right man, in the right place. And I — God forgive me, I thanked him.
I thanked him for the post, for that evening in particular.
He said, When you told us your reason was Lady Sarah, I thought — who better to stand guard over her than a man who loves her?
And I said—" His voice cracked and he pushed through it. "I said, I only wish she felt the same.
"He brought me to the part of the garden beneath the balcony. And they were there. His Grace, and — and her. Arguing. I could not make out most of it. But I heard her say, I care for you. The real you. And I froze. I heard nothing after that. There was nothing else in the world left to hear."
He lifted his eyes, red-rimmed.
"He told me I was a nobody. But that if I had the courage to protect what little pride I had, they might look after me in return. He told me she was carrying a child. That it was not mine. That it was yours — that the two of you would marry soon. And I—" He stopped. "I lost myself.
"Then she left the balcony, alone, and he said, There is your moment.
Go down and have your answers. Claim her — fight for what is yours.
I looked at him and I could not speak. He smiled and said, I will see to the papers.
No one will ever know you left that gate.
Perhaps I shall make you vanish from them altogether.
And he struck me on the shoulder — the way a man does with a friend, as though it were sport — and said, Now go.
Be a man." Henry's hands had begun to shake. "So I went."