Page 37 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“To—to take aim?” she ventured, obviously puzzled. “But I told you, I can see well enough without them.”

“I’m sure. Plain glass rarely improves one’s vision.” He paused as understanding washed over her features: He had known all along that she was deceiving him and had still given her help. “Yes, that’s right. I had a look at them the day of the accident. I couldn’t quite figure out why you wore spectacles if not for poor eyesight. But I’ve since learned that your eyes reveal more than you must sometimes wish. It must have been useful to have something to hide them behind. Sleep well, Miss Cooper,” he told her. After snatching his greatcoat from the peg, he turned and walked back toward the doorway to the sitting room, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. She hadn’t moved, though her gaze had dropped to the floor. “I’ve instructed John Coachman to be ready to depart at dawn. Barring yet another unforeseen disruption, we’ll be at Rylemoor shortly before dark.”

In the corridor, he listened for the grate of the key in the lock. That sound was followed by the scrape of some large piece of furniture being dragged across the floor—the settee, he supposed—and the bump of it being nestled against the door.

The barricade felt personal, though he knew it likely wasn’t. Her fear and distrust weren’t primarily directed at him, and they weren’t going to be conquered in two days. Perhaps not in a lifetime—not that he’d ever know.

He had been the sort of boy who’d taken in wild, wounded things and tried—with middling success—to nurse them tame. His friendship with Miles was just another example.

He ought to have remembered the risk of being bitten.

One floor below, in her room, he looked around at the remarkable disorder she’d created in, what, an hour at most? Clothes strewn across the bed, paper on the table. The air smelled of the pear blossom soap she’d purchased in Price’s Mercantile.

As did, he now knew, her skin.

He dragged in a shuddering breath, exhaled, and then set about putting the room to rights.

“What a mess,” he muttered to himself. Not that he was entirely surprised. It was the sort of chaos he’d learned to expect from artists. “Still, if she intended to be off immediately after retrieving her money, shouldn’t she have packed?”

As he neatened the papers, he studied the sketch she’d been making in the carriage: a landscape that must have come entirely from her imagination, as it certainly did not match the dull one that had been scrolling past the windows.

Or perhaps the landscape was not so dull when seen through fresh eyes.

The sketch she had made of the church and churchyard was there, too, and he dared to trace a fingertip over the empty place beside the sexton, where he knew he’d been standing. He wasn’t sure whether to be resentful over his deliberate omission or, given her previous treatment of the subject, grateful.

He recalled what she had told him about her art, how she had never really been at liberty to draw what she wished or for herself. At least in some small way, perhaps, he had given her that.

Mostly, though, he wanted something that would tell him whether he was in her thoughts as much as she was in his.

Once the pictures were collected, he carried the paper and box of charcoals over to the bed, tucked it along the side of the valise and tried not to think about the portrait of her mother. Best not to look at it again, even if Constantia’s story had made his curiosity twinge.

“Not much point in sending up her clothes now,” he debated aloud with himself, recalling the barricaded door. As he folded a pair of petticoats and a dress, laid them on top, and closed the valise with a snap he countered, “But will she still be there if I wait ’til morning?”

He wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that the fact she was wearing only a nightgown—and ordinary shoes; her mud-caked ankle boots were lying topsy-turvy on the floor—would be enough to deter her if she was determined to go.

Bending, he snatched up one of the boots and, with a knife from the discarded supper tray, began to scrape away the mud, collecting it on a crumpled piece of brown wrapping paper from one of her purchases at Price’s.

The tap at the door that came a moment later was quiet, unassuming, but even before he could answer, the door swung inward and a mob-capped servant peeked into the opening. “Is everything all right, miss? I thought I heard a man’s voi—oh!” The door swung wide as she crumpled into an inelegant curtsy. “It’s you, my lord.”

“Miss Crawley—er, Creevey—and I elected to exchange rooms.”

The maid goggled but was too well trained to ask questions, and Alistair was glad his standing at the inn did not oblige him to offer any further explanation. Her gaze flitted about the room, as if ascertaining that he was indeed alone, and landed finally on him. Her eyes widened further. “I can do that, sir.” She nodded toward the boots.

“No. I—” I need something with which to occupy myself. “I’m almost finished.”

“If you’re certain,” she said, though her voice was incredulous. She curtsied again, more shallowly this time, as if she were eager to get away—and relate her discovery of a lord turned bootboy to every other servant belonging to the place, he had no doubt.

“See that I’m awakened at five,” he told her as he once more bent his head to his task.

“Very good, sir.” The door clicked shut and she was gone.

Seated on the edge of the bed, he worked at the boots awhile longer, careful not to mar the leather. It was occupation for his hands but, unfortunately, not his mind.

Constantia had released thoughts and emotions that now crashed through his head without regard to the lanes and fences he’d so carefully built over the years to keep everything in line.

He felt, inexplicably, as if something had been stolen from him. But what? The money was hers, without question. And regardless of how ill-advised it might be for her to slip away into the night, it must be her choice. Even the kiss could not rightly be called stolen.

He’d given it far too willingly.