Page 78 of A Figure of Love

Gareth nodded. “It was me or him, Dec. And after me, he would have come for you. You defended us—you saved my life.”

“I know, I know,” the words came out on a moan. “I’ve told it to myself a thousand times. But a murderer is a murderer.”

Gareth did not believe that, but his friend needed something more. “I don’t think the hole can be filled with money, or drink, or gambling, or an endless string of women.” Dec opened his mouth but Gareth raised his hand. “Let me finish. I’m not lecturing you; I’m saying something out loud that is true about both of us. I don’t gamble or drink, but I bury myself in numbers and the clarity and numbness they give me. When I can’t, I am . . . well, you have seen what I am. I could not function in society; I cannot talk to the people with whom we are partners or investors.” He shook his head, “I cannot go to a country dance without making an ass of myself. But recently I’ve noticed times when I do not feel this ache. When I help the boy, when I try to do something for somebody else, I am somehow—” He shrugged, frustrated with his inability to describe the contents of his own head. “I don’t know. It is just—better.”

Declan spread his hands on the dirty sheets, looking at them as if he’d never seen them before. “Somedays, it all seems so pointless. Getting out of bed, even.” He looked up. “Do you think it’s this way for everyone?”

Was it? Gareth opened the door in his mind where he kept the things he didn’t want to think about. The woman was the first of those things to sneak out, flooding his mind with the sight, scent, and feel of her. Was she restless and miserable and only part of a person? He didn’t think so, although he had often sensed that something dark lurked beneath her laughing eyes and light-hearted ways. But what did he know? When had he ever applied himself to the emotions of others and how to read them? Or to his own emotions, for that matter.

“I don’t know,” Gareth admitted. “But I do know I don’t want to live that way—hating my life so badly I will hasten its ending—not if I can help it.” His words didn’t surprise him, even though he’d never thought them so clearly before.

“Gare?”

Gareth looked up.

“About the woman—”

“Never mind about that.”

“No. I want to say I’m sorry. I never should have said the things I did. I was wrong.”

As clear as painting in a museum Gareth saw Serena kissing her lover, as he’d done countless times since. He shook his head and looked away. “You weren’t wrong about her, Dec. About her, you were dead on.”

Chapter Eighteen

Serena wished, not for the first time, that she was in Gareth’s sumptuous carriage rather than the mail coach. But using his coach all the way to Dover would have been outrageous, even for a person who was still very angry with Mr. Gareth Lockheart.

But she had used his carriage as far as Sittingbourne; she’d had no other choice. She’d told Jessup she would arrange a post chaise for the return trip, even though that would eat up a chunk of her wages. The mail coach had cost her a half guinea each way, which was—to her way of thinking—highway robbery, especially as they’d already had to get out once to walk over a wretched section of road because the coach couldn’t get over it.

When she’d purchased her fare and inquired as to the schedule the innkeeper at the posting inn had boasted the coach would make the trip in five hours, his eyes dismissing her as unworthy to travel on it in any case, being a woman on her own.

But Serena had not been able to take Nounou and leave Oliver unprotected. Already it had been difficult to leave him. More than once she imagined Etienne arriving at Rushton Park, either to check on her progress in Dover, or to squeeze more money out of her. Travelling alone was a risk but she could not afford twice the fare and Nounou would have slowed her down.

The coach left Sittingbourne at seven o’clock, which meant she would need to pay for lodgings in Dover, if there was any respectable place that would take her.

As it turned out, after two hours stuck in a ditch and another hour to fix a problem with a wheel, they didn’t arrive at the Dover posting inn until after three in the morning. Serena was bone-tired, every muscle and nerve abraded and jostled from eight hours either crammed cheek-by-jowl or clambering over ragged and steep terrain.

On top of her physical exhaustion, her anxiety over Etienne’s incessant demands, Gareth’s inexplicable behavior, and the prospect of confronting a group of English smugglers, had all combined and taken its toll.

The inn was accustomed to odd comings and goings and the preparations were already being made for the outgoing coach, which departed Dover at four every morning—a delightful trip Serena hoped to be making tomorrow morning.

For once, she’d not brought the full contents of her satchel. She’d left her marriage lines and the precious miniature tucked beneath the tools in her big wooden toolbox, which she kept locked in the tack room. She’d brought her sketchbook, in which there were dozens of pictures of Oliver, and, of course, all but one of those she’d drawn of Gareth. Jessup had advanced her money from his housekeeping money on the bank draft, which she’d had no time or opportunity to take to a bank. As a result, she carried only so much as she’d estimated she would need for this journey.

She ordered a hearty breakfast and ate in the common room, which was bustling with passengers showing up to claim a spot on the next coach. The inn was far too busy for anyone to pay her much mind and she ordered a second pot of tea after finishing the first one.

The light was breaking over the cramped streets of Dover when she paid her shot and headed for the establishment where she might find the men she needed to talk to.

“Smuggling isn’t their only lay,” Etienne had told her. “You’ll find two of them down by the docks, where they make a decent show of running a string of crab pots. The third is a cobbler with a shop off the Marine Parade.”

Serena decided to try the cobbler first. After all, a cobbler would have to keep regular hours. The other two might be out on the water for days plying their pots or nets.

Serena learned from a shockingly youthful postilion that the distance from Snargate Street to the cobbler’s shop was only a few minutes’ walk. People were moving around and already the fish sellers were setting up stalls when she reached the harbor. She was rather stunned to realize the cobbler was situated within shouting distance of the customs house. Wasn’t that odd for a smuggler?

Serena did not like the look of the shop, which was dark-fronted and mean, its single window crowded with old shoes and a faded wooden sign. A dim light glimmered beyond the filthy, fly-specked glass, indicating it was probably open for business.

She entered to find a narrow room with a man at the far end. He appeared to be her age and looked up from a boot he was mending. “Aye?”

“I’m looking for Derby.”