“Simple,” she said, examining my face with the seriousness of a physician. “I didn’t know you then.”
I chuckled again. “Well, you know me now. Leave. I’ll manage on my own.”
She made that frustrated growling noise again. “I’m not going to leave you,” she said with such conviction I was pulled from my haze. She lifted one of my hands and draped it over her shoulder. It was too easy to lean on her. Dangerous, even. She didn’t know the effect of those particular words on me. I sank into her, even though I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t count on her a second time to care for me and we shouldn’t be seen walking back in such a familiar manner.
She started forward. I shook my head, hating that once again I was in need of her strength. I wasn’t a weak man, not usually, but Miss Blackwell had only seen me when I was. “You can’t help me like this. Everyone in the house can see us.”
“I have no qualms about advertising how ill you have been. Half of the party already knows, thanks to Brookhouse’s loose tongue.”
“But I don’t want Harriet?—”
“You won’t be able to romance her if you are dead.” She glanced heavenward. “Come on.”
We shuffled forward again and this time something about the movement felt familiar. She felt familiar. Her citrus smell had been intensified by the rain falling around us, and her stubborn strength holding me up felt like a hazy dream that I’d lived in once before. Not only that, she hadn’t corrected my use of Harriet’s Christian name. I was going to think too much about this concerned version of Miss Blackwell once I was alone.
I took a deep breath. My vision was completely cleared. I’d overexerted myself too soon, but I didn’t need Miss Blackwell to assist me all the way back to the house. I pulled to a stop andremoved my arm from her shoulder. “I can manage. Just give me a few moments.”
She glared at me. “If you faint, Iwillleave you.”
Rain beaded on her dark lashes and several locks of her hair had escaped her coiffure. Two rogue droplets joined into one on her cheek and then traveled down her face and neck. I stopped following it when it reached her collarbone. How could one woman look so fierce and yet bewitching at the same time? “You know, I don’t think you would.”
She sighed. “But I would want to.”
What had I said to her in that croft to make her distrust me this much?
“Why is that?”
“Because I once had the chance to protect Hattie from pain and I didn’t. I’m not going to make that mistake twice.”
“What kind of pain? Is she well? Has she been ill?”
I barely knew this woman, but I could see her mind working behind those dark lashes of hers. She didn’t want to trust me. “She isn’t ill. Her sister eloped with a man far beneath her station two years ago.”
Harriet’s sister had been at Eastmoor, but she hadn’t been as interested in walking. I had only the vaguest of memories of her. “Matilda?” I asked.
Miss Blackmore frowned. I’d taken her by surprise. It was almost as if she didn’t want to believe Harriet and I had shared a past. “Most of London knows, so I’m not telling you this as gossip.”
“I wouldn’t think that of you.”
That only made her frown deepen. “Matilda’s weakness should have no bearing on Hattie’s prospects, especially when it was never in her power to do anything about it and it was in mine.”
A flurry of movement from the house caught my eye. Two servants were headed our way with umbrellas. A moment ago I would have welcomed the sight, but I’d finally obtained a piece of the puzzle that was Miss Blackwell and I needed more time. “You blame yourself for Matilda Pryor’s elopement?”
“No. Not completely.” Her face dropped in a way that made me doubt the verity of that statement. She was haunted by her choices. “But I should have told someone. I shouldn’t have kept secrets that caused so much damage. If I had said something ... ”
No wonder she was so adamant about protecting Harriet. I reached for her left hand to reassure her, but there was something inside her glove. I squeezed it, taking in the hard lines and shape in her palm.
She pulled her hand away and put it behind her back.
I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you didn’t have my key.”
“I never said I didn’t. I simply didn’t say I did.”
She’d personally locked my door. How brazen was this woman? She’d strode into a part of the house where only men were quartered, retrieved my key while I was dressing and locked Henry and me in. Dash it all, didn’t she have the sense to ask a servant to do such work for her? “Give it to me.”
“Give what to you?”
“Don’t be obtuse.” I held my hand out. I’d known she was the one behind the scheme of locking me in, but to know my key had been there in her hand this whole time? Infuriating. “My key.”
