Help, help.She tore off her riding boots, the ones Mrs. Eustace told her proper ladies wear. The stream took them away. Then her stockings. If only it could take her away too. If only it could sweep her back to the ocean, swallow her into the waves, tug her under gently and lovingly to the place where the dead are asleep.
From somewhere near, a noise rose above the burble of the stream. Footfalls. Running footfalls.
No.She scrambled off the rock, and chilling water splashed up her trained skirt. Merrylad growled behind her, as she scaled the bank and pumped her legs into a wild run. They could not have her. They could not do to her what they’d done to Captain. She wouldn’t let them put their hands on her—
“Eliza!”
She hurdled over a rotten log. How strangely her name echoed across the forest. As if she were late for supper again and Captain were calling her home. As if they were playing a game and he’d grown tired of running and laughingly shouted her back.
A hand snatched her arm and jerked her backward.
She swung both fists, kicked at him—
“Eliza.” Familiar, warm, but not Captain. The hands shook her hard. “Eliza, it is me.”
Felton?
She froze as he captured her face. In the darkness, she made out his outline.Felton.
“Are you hurt?”
How she needed him. Despite anything or anyone or any complications that had made her run. Whether he belonged to her or didn’t. Whether he stayed or whether she never saw him again.
“I found the body.” His grip became desperate, as his forehead pressed to hers, as his voice shook and deepened. “Eliza, I—”
Then nothing.
No words of comfort, no whisper of assurance, as if he understood there was no waning the terror. His arms lifted her off the ground and cradled her against him.
For a long time, he walked. She didn’t know how far he carried her or how long it took, but he never brought her back to the cottage. Instead, he lowered her at the base of a tree, covered her with blankets, and rubbed the feet that were scratched and wet.
Felton, stay with me.
As if he’d heard her soul, he scooted next to her and pulled her head into the warmth of his shoulder.
Stay with me always.
She couldn’t face morning without him.
Felton dropped another shovel of dirt into the hole. The face was covered, and no lifeless, unseeing eyes stared up at him.
He worked until the dim light of morning turned brighter and the silvery layer of dew melted into the earth. Sometimes he buried Lady Gillingham, with her shattered body and broken face. Other times he buried Hugh. Young, strong, brave Hugh, who would have never lost his life had the shame not been so unbearable.
But as he patted the last of dirt around the pitiful mound, he buried Captain Jasper Ellis. Tightness squeezed his throat—not because the man meant anything to him and not because he’d ever trusted the rogue.
But for Eliza.
For the way she’d looked this morning, pale in the predawn light, curled in a ball beneath the blankets he’d covered her with. Even in sleep, agony strained her face.
She didn’t deserve such grief. She didn’t deserve to lose everything.
Rolling down his sleeves, he took the shovel back into the reeking cottage. He roamed from the hearth to the table to the bookshelves, touching different parts of her, guilt caverning deep into his chest. Everything was his fault. He should have never taken her away from here that night. How happy she might have remained, how safe and protected, had he not marched in and disrupted her life. All for what? To find out that Lord Gillingham murdered his own wife?
He didn’t know if he believed such nonsense. He didn’t know if he ever could. Or was Eliza right? Was he only being fooled by a man who had long mastered deceiving him? Was that why Lord Gillingham had paid for Aaron’s way to Cambridge? Was that why the viscount spent hours upon hours with Felton, laughing with him and reading with him and playing with him—all to assuage his own guilt?
Felton would find out. One way or another, friend or no, he’d expose the man who had made a wreckage of his life. He’d see justice meted out. He’d see his name restored. He’d see Hugh revenged.
He’d see peace for himself.
