Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They left London at six that evening, the low-lying fog slowing the traffic and adding another half an hour to the journey.
“Do you think we’ll reach Dunstable by midnight?” Emma looked up from the papers in her lap and peered out the window. “I don’t envy Rowton driving in the dark.”
Hugh didn’t say it was easier to evade villains at night, or that Rowton had two pistols strapped beneath his seat.
“If Rowton drives like the devil is at our heels, we might arrive just after eleven.” Or the killer might hold them up on a grim road and make murder look like highway robbery. At least they wouldn’t accuse Saint-Clair.
Hugh twisted the signet ring round on his finger. It bore an engraving of an eagle, an all-seeing bird, the emblem of The Sentinel, not a nod to his lineage.
He almost laughed at the irony.
A newsman hellbent on finding the truth, baffled by his own damn stories. Was old Lord Howden alive or dead? Which coward shot Mallory from the woods and had the gall to blame Saint-Clair?
It was worse than not knowing who had sired him.
“You think we’re being followed.” Emma gathered the notes and returned them to the leather folio. “You’re braced as if expecting an attack.”
Perhaps he was, forever the boy praying he didn’t drop his knife at the dinner table.
“Isn’t that why you told Lady Bellingham of our plans? In the hope that the killer is desperate enough to show his hand.”
She glanced at the folio of evidence she’d been reading beneath the lamplight. “Despite her brusque manner, I don’t believe Lady Bellingham would hurt her own son. I do think she knows why Sarah Carson purchased a new identity.”
He should have been tired of the same names, but it was better than explaining the cupboard or why he looked like his grandmother’s coachman.
“As it happens, I agree.” He’d observed Lady Bellingham with the same critical eye he would any witness. “She had a Bible tucked behind the cushion, and a handkerchief stuffed inside each sleeve. The bravado is merely a mask.”
“I know she seemed pleased at having control of the shares, but I think she’s genuinely afraid for her daughter and wants to protect the one person she loves.”
As I do you.
The words rose in him, a confession he’d had no time to analyse or reconstruct.
He was in love with her.
Deeply in love with her.
The knowledge left him no place to hide.
He drew his watch from his pocket and flicked open the case, needing a distraction. “It seems we’re making good time.”
She studied the gold hunter as if it might tell her something he wouldn’t. “An heirloom? It looks quite old. Is it inscribed?”
“It wasn’t a gift. I’m not sentimental like that.” Yet he’d kept her letters and remembered the handkerchief she’d used to wipe coffee off his waistcoat. “I bought it from an antique dealer in Bond Street and had Veritas Vincit inscribed on the case.”
“Veritas Vincit?” She gave a crooked smile. “Truth conquers.”
“You read Latin?” He imagined she could put her mind to anything. Which reminded him she owed him a story.
“Heavens, no. My father declared it whenever an invention worked and blamed the Latin when one exploded.”
Hugh laughed, though it was hard to picture such a life.
Her eyes were bright with the memory. “I promised him I would recite it if I ever caught my children stealing Cook’s biscuits.”
Children. The word hurt. He had never allowed himself to imagine a child with his name, his eyes, his cursed inheritance.
“I’d wager it was a regular occurrence in your house.” He kept a thread of amusement in his voice. “You stole half my supper while holding me at gunpoint.”
“And you charged me two shillings for the pleasure.”
“You may complain after you’ve paid.” He closed the hunter and returned it to his pocket. “As for the watch, it’s nothing more than a reminder to print the truth.”
She chuckled. “Then you should check the time more often. You made a mistake when you printed—”
She stopped and stared before opening the leather folio.
“What is it?” What had he missed now?
“Lord Howden’s gold watch.” She flicked through the papers, drew one out and handed it to him. “The list of entailed valuables Mr Montfort sent you. The watch isn’t on there.”
Hugh scanned the list. “No. It isn’t.”
God’s teeth.
“Lady Howden gave it to her husband on their wedding day. The inscription inside bears the date. Melinda told me.”
Emma handed him the inventory of sentimental items the servants claimed were missing from the Howden household. “What do the items have in common?”
Hugh read it again. Letters. A poetry book. Jewels Lady Howden had owned outright. “They’re things that might remind a husband of his wife.”
“And yet if old Lord Howden is alive, he didn’t take the one gift his wife bought on their wedding day. Why?”
The carriage slowed at a fork in the road. Rowton turned left after the briefest hesitation. Hugh knew the feeling. He had taken the wrong bloody path from the beginning.
“Because he had it on him, not packed in a trunk. He was killed on the street before he could hide it with the rest.”
Emma tapped her finger to her lip, two lines creasing her brow. He’d never met a woman so determined to find the truth, or one who stole his breath when she frowned.
“And he did buy the house in Italy,” she said. “To avoid facing prosecution for the accident at the mine. Which means Mr Bellingham told the truth, and his father hired an assassin.”
“Not an assassin. A thug. Someone paid to do another man’s dirty work. And if he learnt Bellingham had told you, that’s why he died in the graveyard.” Which meant Emma had been in the killer’s sights since the moment she’d stepped onto his landing.
He thought of the night he’d let Rowton take her home alone and cursed himself.
“Proving any of it is another matter.” She looked up from the papers, her gaze finding his face with that unnerving accuracy of hers. “What is it? Guilt over Mr Bellingham? How were we to know his life was in danger?”
“Bellingham isn’t uppermost in my thoughts.”
She understood without him saying another word. “I should ask if you’re worried about the newspaper, but you’re looking at me as if I’m walking on thin ice.”
He might have praised her insight, had fear not got there first. He could not remember feeling so helpless. Not even when he’d heard that deathbed confession. Now he was falling and didn’t know where he’d land.
“If only I’d left it alone.”
She put her hand to her throat. “You mean if only you’d not accepted my challenge? If only you’d not invited me in?”
“Yes.” He shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t change a thing between us.” And he’d do everything in his power not to lose her. “I’ve never been responsible for anyone but myself. But I’d lay my life on the line to protect you.”
The ache in him had a name now, one he wasn’t ready to say aloud. But he watched her lips part, her breathing quicken, the hand at her throat trembling as she studied him.
Please. Don’t ask me now.
Something in his face must have warned her.
“And I would protect you with everything I have, Hugh, though I’ve never actually shot the Henry Nock.”
“Then you’ll have lessons when we return to London. The life of a journalist is often fraught with danger. Best you’re prepared.”
She feigned a smile; he could tell. “I’d almost forgotten I need to find lodgings once this is over.”
You don’t. Not unless you want to.
“We’ll discuss it later, at the inn.” He’d never wished for a broken axle or a fallen tree in the road before. He’d wished his father had lied, never more so than now. “Come sit beside me. I’m tired of talking about clues and evidence.”
She came to join him, settling carefully at his side as the carriage rocked over the uneven road.
He looked at her, at the lamplight warming the curve of her cheek, at the soft mouth he could draw from memory.
“You look tired,” he said.
“That is not the compliment a woman hopes to hear after surrendering her virtue.”
He smiled despite the heaviness in him and brushed his thumb over her jaw. “Then allow me to rephrase. You look like the woman who has ruined me for all others.”
She turned her face into his palm. “Then I hope you never find a cure.”
“I’m certain there isn’t one.”
He drew her against him, tucking her head beneath his chin, one hand splayed against her back like a shield against the world.
“Sleep if you can. I’ll keep watch.”
“For villains?”
“For villains. For bumpy roads.” He pressed his lips to her hair. “For anything that whispers you’re alone in this.”
The carriage rolled on, the clatter of the wheels filling the silence. Emma settled against him, her hand resting over his heart as though she meant to save it.
Hugh stared into the shifting dark beyond the window and kept watch long after her breathing softened.
By the time the inn lamps appeared through the rain, his arm had gone numb, his coat was damp, and he would sooner have spent the night on the carriage seat than wake her.
He’d not accounted for Rowton, swinging wide into the yard to avoid a ditch, his curse loud enough to wake the dead.
Emma stirred and raised her head. “Are we there?”
“Yes.”
She sat up and leant over him, peering out at the Old Thatch Inn. “How quaint. My father invented a coating for thatch that was supposed to prevent fires.”
“Another explosion?”
“No. He’d used a type of fish oil, spilled some on his coat, and every cat in Witney followed him around for weeks.”
Hugh laughed. “He’s fortunate he wasn’t eaten alive.”
“One did nibble his finger.”
The anecdote made him want to pull her close and beg her never to stop telling these ridiculous stories.
He wished the night would end like this, light and playful, the two of them falling into bed before the past could force its way between them.
He alighted and helped her down.
Tomorrow they would visit the colliery. Tomorrow they might learn why Sarah Carson had run, why Rebecca Bellingham had vanished, and why her brother had died in a graveyard.
Tonight, there was the truth he feared more than any killer.
He prayed she’d forgotten his vow.