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Chapter Ten
“Charles, what happensif someone she knows comes looking for her?” He was too busy thinking to reply quickly enough for his brother’s taste. Nigel refrained from snapping his fingers under Charles’ nose, but he leaned across the dining table for emphasis. “It may not happen, but it could. Her friend, perhaps. The one she mentioned. Mary, if that was what she said the name was.”
Ithadbeen at least two weeks since she’d been heard from, so Charles knew Nigel thought he had a point. Charles disagreed. “I do not think she is important enough. To be frank. I think there’s simply one more man out there with hurt pride and a black heart. You know Miss Doyle is not rich. There’s no reason to assume she’s being followed or… hunted.”
The thought made his temper much shorter.
“That’s true,” said Nigel.
“Yes. We should defer to her. Her fear is real, even if the logic is not sound.”
Nigel nodded, taking this in. “Do you think she is all right? Physically.”
“She…”
They looked at each other. It was not a pleasant topic, but Charles saw what Nigel insinuated.
“She got away before anything dire could happen,” said a quiet woman’s voice.
Harriet approached them with a tea tray. Charles gazed at her. “I beg your pardon?”
She averted her eyes from his but set down the tray with grace. “Sir, I asked her before Mr. Heaney arrived. He’s a good sort, but I thought she would be more apt to tell another woman first.”
While working under Mac, he’d had friends who had been hurt by men—young women and men alike. They’d possessed similar tells as Miss Doyle’s. Reticence paired with an insistence that they could be independent.
That was how you met Lord Valencourt’s brother,he reminded himself, not allowing his mind to shy away from the truth. Mac had procured His Grace a companion, and it was that companion who’d finally threatened to try extorting the duke. It was a wonder it had never happened to His Grace before.
All Charles said to Harriet was, “Thank you for the tea.”
She nodded and slipped out.
He said to Nigel, “We will make sure nothing happens to her.”
After taking a sip of his tea, Nigel said, “I am happy we found her.”
“Happy?”
“You seem very… invested.” Nigel was being careful with his words.
“I am. But so are you. It is the decent thing to do—make sure she is safe—and not just because she was on my property.”
The words sounded very strange, indeed.Heheld property and a small inheritance.
Under other circumstances, he might try to see it as a Christmas gift of a sort.
After meeting Mr. Lester, he was now no longer sure what had transpired to lead to his birth. If he was not told outright, he was sure it would bother him for some time to come. But at the moment, he supposed that it was more useful to try to reimagine himself as someone with more than just a room to his name. And leave things at that.
When Miss Doyle had slumped nearly onto his lap, he’d told Mr. Lester to summon anyone he deemed able to examine her. While Mr. Lester sent Harriet for an apothecary called Mr. Heaney, Charles and Nigel made Miss Doyle comfortable in an attic room. Harriet dressed her in one of her night rails.
“Yes,” said Nigel. “But I don’t look at her like you do.”
“Don’t be so silly. This isn’t one of your novels,” said Charles. He drank from his cup, wishing it was enlivened by some of the local whisky. “I’ve known her all of, what, several hours?Notcounting the time she’s been unconscious.”
“Sometimes the heart knows what we want beforeweknow what we want.”
“My heart knows it’s going back to London when this has settled down. I won’t stay in Ullinn House.” He gave a tight laugh. “What would there be for me to do?”
“Here? Very little.”
