More like a girl.
Like a woman.
She flipped another page of the dancing manual he’d recommended. He was leaving Monbury Manor soon. She’d already heard Lord Gillingham call for the carriage and order a footman to assist him back downstairs. All day she’d wanted to talk with him. Twice she’d started up the stairs, every word planned, only to come back down again without ever reaching his door.
Because Lord Gillingham had told her everything. How despite the fact that they nearly beat and whipped him to death, he spoke no words of her Captain’s whereabouts. Why would he do that? Wasn’t that the courage of a king? Or a saintly-hearted knight?
If anyone disliked Captain, it was him. If anyone had reason to turn Captain over to vicious enemies, it was him. If anyone should like to—
The library door creaked open. “What’ee doing?”
“Oh—Minney. Come in.”
“I can come in because’ee like me, yes?”
“Yes. Of course I like you.” Of late, Minney had taken just as much interest in Eliza as she had Merrylad. “What are you doing here?”
“I can go where I want to. Anywhere Papa went, I can go. Mrs. Eustace can’t be telling me I can’t—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you shouldn’t be here, only that I didn’t know if something was amiss.”
“Mr. Northwood, he wants to talk with’ee. I don’t be letting him in though. That’s what I was doing. I was standing outside this door, so’s no one can get in what would hurt’ee.” From behind Minney, a hand pushed the door all the way open.
A bandaged hand. My, how different he looked, with black ringing both eyes, with a cut across his nose, with lips that were swollen and bruising. A knight with dented armor, indeed.
She looked away like the same coward who could not come to his chamber hours before. “Minney, I should like to speak with Mr. Northwood. Please, let us be alone.”
“But I want to stay with’ee.”
“Please.”
The girl sighed and left the room, clicking the door shut behind her.
With slow movements, Felton shuffled closer. The playful comradery of yesterday was replaced with gravity, intensity, as if his pain rendered him in bad temperament. “The carriage is already prepared, so I must be brief. Does anyone know of your cottage in Balfour Forest?”
“No, I do not think so.”
“See that it stays that way. It seems your captain has some unpleasant foes.”
“There are many who dislike him for the ship he sunk—”
“This is more than dislike, and I have every intention of determining why and how many more secrets the man has hidden.”
“This does not make him any more the murderer you wish him to be.”
“Maybe not. But it proves he is not the saint you deem him.”
“How?”
He scowled, clutched his ribs, and turned to the door so fast he winced.
“Wait.”
“So you can persuade me longer your captain is innocent of everything?”
“No.” She held one of Playford’s manuals to her chest. “So I can tell you…so I can say thank you.”
Slowly, he turned. “For?”
