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I swallowed, hard.
‘Miss Linton?’
‘Yes, Mr Ambrose, Sir?’
‘While Dalgliesh had you in his power, did he…do anything? Hurt you in any way?’
My arm around her shoulders tightened as one great, terrifying question pounded in my mind.
What will you do if she answers yes?
Well, for the sake of Dalgliesh and everyone in my way, let’s hope I would never find out.
Her lips parted—but no sound came out. Tense like wire, I awaited her answer.
‘No, he didn’t harm me.’ You’re in luck, Dalgliesh. You get to live another day. ‘But he did talk quite a lot.’
I had just been about to relax a little. At her words, I was suddenly again stiff as a board.
‘Whatever he told you was probably lies.’
There was a pause. Normally, it was I who made people uncomfortable through long silences. Being on the receiving end of this method was…unexpected.
‘Oh? So you didn’t run away from home as a boy because of an argument with your father, then?’
Did I think I had been tense before? I had been mistaken. My arm tightened around her shoulders like a vice, as if I wanted to keep her from running away. Maybe that was exactly what I wanted.
‘It was somewhat more complicated than that, Miss Linton.’
She was silent again for a little while. But this time the silence somehow wasn’t uncomfortable in the least. Instead, it was…warm. Reassuring.
Soft fingers touched mine. I sucked in a breath and instinctively started to pull away—then stopped. Her smaller hand closed around mine and gave a single, simple little squeeze.
One.
Just one squeeze.
That was all.
That was enough. More than enough. Something inside me shifted.
‘I said it once already, I believe,’ came her soft voice from beside me, ‘but…thank you. I might have gotten out of there by myself—but then again, I might not have. If Dalgliesh had come back with enough men and searched the woods…’
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Fortunately.
If she had, I didn’t know whether I would have been able to stop myself from swinging myself back onto my horse and riding out there to join my men. Join them in the quest to find Dalgliesh, get a hold of him and squeeze his throat until—
Until what?
Until he was dead?
That might be a worthy goal, but spur-of-the-moment strangulation was not the way to a achieve it. There was only one thing I should squeeze right now. One thing I wanted to squeeze. So I squeezed Miss Lilly Linton’s hand. It felt right. It felt as it belonged in mine.
‘I…had to come.’
The words fell out of my mouth as if it were a gash, a wound I couldn’t close. One that I didn’t want to close.
