Page 87 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry sat back.

“I may have imagined some of it,” the shepherd said. “The details. I may have filled in what I couldn’t see.” He looked at his hands. “But there was a carriage. That much I know. And there was a woman. I did not imagine her.”

“The clothes,” Henry said. He could hear his own voice. Too flat, too controlled, the particular quality it took when he was holding something by the edges. “You said fine clothes. Quality clothes. A traveling gown? A pelisse? What color?”

“I can’t⁠—"

“Dark or light?”

“Dark, I think. Or—” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You told the constable she was walking north.”

“Did I? I might have said⁠—"

“You told him north.” Henry’s jaw was set. He pressed on. “You are now saying away from the carriage, which could be any direction. Which is it?”

The shepherd’s eyes went hard.

“I told you what I saw,” he said. “I am not a man to be called a liar under my own roof.”

“I am not calling you a liar. I am asking for accuracy.”

“I have given you accuracy. I have given you everything I have.” He stood. The chair scraped back. “I think you should go.”

Henry stood. He said nothing for a moment.

Then Charlotte said, “Sir.”

She had been so still that the shepherd looked slightly startled when she spoke. She was on her feet, with one hand resting on the back of her chair, and she was looking at the shepherd the way she looked at Ian when the boy was on the edge of shutting down entirely and she had approximately ten seconds to reach him.

“We are very grateful,” she said. “I mean that sincerely.” She moved toward the door, drawing Henry with her without touching him. “You have had a dreadful year, and we have come in here asking you to go back through a difficult night. You have answered us honestly and with more patience than we deserved.” She stopped at the threshold and looked back at the shepherd. “I am sorry about your wife.”

The shepherd looked at her. His jaw worked once.

“Thank you,” he said. “For saying so.”

Charlotte nodded. And then they were outside. The door closed behind them. The afternoon was cold and sharp and entirely without mercy.

They walked down the track toward the road. Henry said nothing. The hillside was grey and the wind came in off the moor at an angle that found every gap in a coat. He was aware of Charlotte half a step behind him, not hurrying, not filling the silence.

The constable’s report had said: possible sighting, a man and woman, on foot, western road. Henry had read it standing in his study. He had read it four times.

A woman in fine clothes walking away from the carriage before it went over. That was something. That was specific. That contradicted the assumption that Nathan and Eleanor had both been in the carriage when it went off the road. If Eleanor had been out of the carriage, walking away⁠—

He turned the thought over in his mind.

The shepherd had been drunk. Had been grieving. Had been in the dark on a hillside with two missing ewes, and he had seen something he might have imagined and might not have.

The details shifted every time they pressed, and there was no way to know.

He had arrived at this cottage with the first genuine hope he had possessed in two months.

Henry was leaving with nothing.

Charlotte came up beside him on the road. The carriage was waiting fifty yards ahead, the horses still, the driver on the box.

She did not say it was all right. She did not offer anything that would have required him to answer.