She steeled herself before they entered. Even her pulse raced in the hand he held.
“This is Dalrymple Inn. I stayed here once with my elder brother before he went off to university.” He pulled open the heavy wooden door. “You’ve nothing to fear. Not unless you are devising an escape.”
She straightened her shoulders and marched into the dimly lit inn.
He followed in her wake, caught the faint trail of a pleasant scent. Rose water? Had that devil of a captain gifted her with perfume to ease his own guilt? Why now, after all these years, had the man finally decided to approach her true father?
Had the captain not come to Lord Gillingham’s manor just days ago, she’d still be well hidden. Had Felton not been in the Monbury Manor library, one room over, he’d have never heard the heated exchange.
“What do you mean you know of my daughter’s whereabouts?” Lord Gillingham had a voice of his own. Low, quiet, yet intense enough that when he spoke, ’twas human nature to shrink and tremble in response.
But the old captain did no such thing. “She is safe and she is well and she is happy.”
“Who are you? Where is she?”
“Safe,” he said again. “And she will remain so if she stays where she is.”
“I want her back. I want to see my daughter.”
“That is yer choice because I am making it yer choice.” The words had seemed wobbly. “For her sake, not yours. A child—a woman—deserves freedom.”
“Then bring her to me.”
“Ye make yer choice so quickly?”
“There is nothing to decide. She is my daughter. She is the only thing I have left of my Letitia—”
“Then think of yer wife, yer lordship, and think of her carefully. Think of what happened to her in the end. Think of a murder ye had no way of stopping from an enemy ye didn’t know ye had. Then think o’ that same enemy unleashing that anger on your daughter.”
Silence had reigned for the space of many heartbeats.
“I shall return in a fortnight. Ye have until then to make yer choice.”
But it was a choice Felton had made for the viscount. He’d followed the strange old captain from Monbury Manor to the quiet woods of Balfour Forest, where he’d taken the fate of many people—both his family and hers—into his own hands.
He stole glances of her now, as they paid the proprietor for a room and meal, then took the two bowls of mutton to a quiet table in the corner.
Despite her earlier refusal to eat, she now spooned away at the mutton with her eyes closed, as if hunger made her savor every swallow. She was lovely, this girl. Lovelier than he expected. Even Miss Haverfield—whom he’d always worshipped for her beautiful golden curls and alabaster skin—did not exceed the simple fairness of Miss Eliza Gillingham.
He forced his gaze into the steaming mutton. The old captain had talked of unseen enemies, of danger that might return after all these years. But if little Eliza had truly been there when her mother was murdered, couldn’t she expose such an enemy now? Before any harm came to her?
Of course she could.
Heaven help them all if she couldn’t.
The bedchamber door clicked shut.
Heat raced along the back of Eliza’s neck, then up to her cheeks, as she faced the stranger whose name she still did not know. Nor want to know. Why did he look so different from any villain she’d ever imagined? Where was the jagged scar cutting across his cheek, or the missing teeth, or the black and wicked eyes?
But this was real. Things weren’t always as she’d imagined them, and the man before her was no character she’d played and frolicked with in the forest trees.
Coldness crept into her blood. She backed to the farthest wall, rubbed her arms, and watched as he lowered his candlestick to a washstand. Beside the bed. The only bed. “You told them we were wed.”
“Getting to be a convenient Bansbury tale, do you not agree?”
“You should not say such things,” she said. “This is not right.”
“You are very scrupulous. An attribute you did not learn from your captain.”
