“Yes?”
“You’ll be going to breakfast, won’t you?”
“No, I think not. I should rather roam outside for a bit.” With a parting smile, Eliza hurried her way through the hall, down the stairs, to the foyer, then outside. She circled the house quickly, nearly running until she reached that mossy flint wall she’d been admiring from her window.
She perched there, dug her fingers into the soft moss, and let her gaze take everything in. The wide, short bushes. The three towering trees. The small garden, very unsymmetrical and lacking ornaments, but pleasant in its simplicity and color.
She imagined a little boy scurrying about this very yard. Running, leaping, cackling in the bliss of childhood—with eyes and smiles like Felton, only younger. How he must have ordered about his little comrades in those days. How he must have ordered her about too. What had she thought of him as a child? Had she smiled at him often? Or been happy when he came to visit? Or pretended with him, as all children do?
She was still pretending. Pretending he loved her. Pretending she loved him.
But the kiss?
No, that had been real, unexpected, and frightening. She didn’t know why she should be afraid, or how such a tiny thing could tremble the core of her being, but it had. Heaven knew that had she been given the choice of air or his lips, she would have suffocated in such a kiss. She would have lived and died in that moment and regretted nothing.
But then she had remembered. She had pulled away because it hurt too much to love him that way and not tell him.
She couldn’t tell him. How wretched that of everyone in the world, she should be the one to uncover the truth that would destroy him. He would hate her for such a truth. She knew him well enough, knew his heart so that his anger and denial and disbelief were already expected. How could she do such a thing to him? How could she look into his face and tell him his father had been her kidnapper, if not her beast, all those long years ago?
God, I am so afraid.The same two pigeons she’d seen before flew together from one tree to the next, then soared to the roof of the house.Please help me. Please guide me.
Only then did she notice movement. On the second story of the house, two windows from her own, a white curtain stirred.
A face stared out at her. Too indistinguishable with the glint of the sun, but distinct enough her skin began to crawl with unease.
Protect me too.With the voiceless prayer, the white curtain pulled shut. The face was gone.
Whoever had been watching her had stopped.
For now.
Felton’s clothes still reeked of the Jester’s Sunlight as he urged his horse faster on the dusty road for home. He’d lingered at a lone table half the day, ignoring hard stares, until the Swabian finally arrived.
The man was a blackguard. A filthy, rotting, useless fool of a man. All he did was stand there, nursing his dented tankard, shoulders hunched, silent to all of Felton’s questions. Indeed, not once did he speak. Had he no conscience? Did the life of an innocent girl mean so little to him?
Once or twice, he’d shaken his head, his frown so grave and eyes so wretchedly sad they might have been interpreted as a second of pity.
Or regret.
Then his buffoons had joined them and circled them, just like before—but this time Felton left without argument.
Not that he hadn’t wanted to fight. Just that in his temperament of late, he might have ended up bashing one of them in so badly they’d bleed and die on the tavern floor planks.
’Twould be no great loss, that was for certain. One less fiend to victimize Eliza.
Up ahead, just before the road turned off to the smaller, gated road to home, waited a buggy along the stone wall. Orange evening light spilled over the scene and illuminated dust floating about a gentleman’s postured form.
Felton reined in his horse and tipped his hat. “Mr. Haverfield.”
The squire frowned, his gaze skewering Felton the way it always did. With disapproval, with disgust, with a righteous indignation as if he were handling unpleasant business with a farm hog or a thieving ragpicker.
Or the son of a woman killer.
“I shall be brief, Mr. Northwood. I have been waiting for you here today because I did not want to trouble your household with a visitor.”
Or be seen at the Northwood residence, more likely.
“For many years now, I have disapproved of your interest in my daughter. I mean no unkindness, but she is far superior to you in every sense. The thought of such a match displeases me, to say the very least.”
