“Unless you want what happened to me…to happen to your children. He swore to me…they were next.”
“No.”
Her body shuddered. She slipped deeper into the water, limp, neck craning backward.
Over the rush of water, the shouts drew closer, the rowboat nearer.
“Helen, answer me.” With a dripping hand, he pressed two fingers below her earlobe. Sorrow weighted him. No heartbeat pulsed against his skin.
The only person with the truth was dead.
Georgina weaved her hands together in the candlelit drawing room. Strange. She’d been in this room a hundred times. In the beginning, listening to Mrs. Fancourt sing from the pianoforte while other guests smiled and clapped beside her. Other times deciphering riddles on dull afternoons with Simon, his brother, Agnes, and the other school-aged friends who joined them.
Then later, after Simon was gone, taking tea with Mrs. Fancourt over cheerful smiles and happy conversations. The Sowerby drawing room had been bright, sentimental, comforting to Georgina for as long as she could remember.
Now it was dark.
Cold.
Eerie.
The two Bow Street runners stood by the mantel, unwilling to occupy the chairs she had offered them. They murmured to each other, passing back and forth a deck of cards, in some sort of puzzlement over how a gentleman had recently swindled them at such a simple game.
For the hundredth time, Georgina glanced at the gilded clock on the mantel. Two hours past midnight.
Perhaps he would not come.
Was it possible he would run? She was convinced of his innocence, yes. Such a tale was too preposterous to be true, and if she had learned anything in those warm summer carriage rides, it was the truth that Simon Fancourt, in the pit of his being, was as good as anyone she’d ever known in her life.
Mayhap better.
But with the evidence stacked against him, was it possible he would not return to face the charges? Surely, he would not abandon the two slumbering children upstairs.
But then again, he had abandoned the ones who loved him before.
“I heard something.” The taller of the Bow Street runners straightened, stuffing the deck of cards back into his blue trouser pocket. “Let’s go.”
“Just a moment.” Georgina stopped them at the door. “Do not trouble yourself. If Mr. Fancourt has arrived, I shall show him into the drawing room.”
They glanced at each other, uncertain, before the taller one nodded. “You have two minutes.”
“Thank you.” Grabbing the brass candlestick from a stand, Georgina hurried into the corridor and navigated to the anteroom, just as the front door slammed open.
She took in a breath and lifted the light. “Mr. Fancourt?”
He stepped forward with a gaping coat, his clothes soaked, wet hair strewn across his forehead. Bloody scratches marred his left cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“Your mother insisted we stay.”
“She is hospitable that way.” He started past her.
“Mr. Fancourt, wait.”
“I am sorry, I do not have time.”
She caught his arm. “I fear there is no choice.”
He turned on her, the candlelight flickering across his damp face, his blue lips, his tortured eyes. He hesitated, as if asking her something, though she did not know what.
