Page 63 of Death at Fournier Downs
“Wait! Kinson, stop!” she called.
Hugh was leaving Hertfordshire. Of course he was. He was finished with the investigation. Bow Street needed him back. As her driver slowed and she leaned her head out the open window, peering behind them, she expected to see his carriage shrinking in the distance, behind a cloud of road dust.
Instead, she saw his carriage had stopped as well. The door opened, and Hugh stepped down into the road. Her heart knocked along unevenly as she impatiently grasped the door handle and pushed it open.
The footman on the box seat leaped down and quickly lowered the step. She accepted his helping hand just as Hugh reached her. He wore a sly grin, and Audrey knew in that moment that she was lost.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t leap down on your own and twist your other ankle,” Hugh said as she joined him in the road.
“I am not that heedless,” she replied.
“That has not been my observation, Your Grace.”
Her smile thinned at hearing her title on his lips. It was only proper of course, but it was also a reminder of their different places.
At his carriage, a plain, hired coach and four, the young urchin known as Sir hung from the window, his arms dangling from the window’s edge as he gawped at them shamelessly.
“Oh, sonowyou’re in no rush to hightail it back to town,” the boy shouted. Hugh ignored him.
“Don’t mind Sir, he’s just irritable to be giving up the food the earl’s kitchen churns out. Apparently, my cook’s ability pales in comparison to Bainbury’s.”
Audrey bit back a grin at the thought of Hugh’s cook feeding the boy. That he’d brought him along in the first place showed how much he cared about him. It tugged at her heart.
She glanced at her footman, waiting dutifully by the brougham’s door. Hugh noticed and gestured toward the roadside, where a rock wall bordered a grassy pasture. In silent agreement, they moved toward it.
“I am calling on Lady Prescott,” she said as they reached the wall. “Have you been to see her already?”
He was due his fee, after all. But the last time she had mentioned anything regarding money, he’d seemed to take offense. He plucked a long stem of grass from the base of the wall. “Briefly. I need to return to London. I’ve cases there waiting for me.”
She nodded, hating the punch of his curt words. “Of course.”
He peeled the stem of grass in two then cast them aside. “How is Lady Cassandra?”
“I wish I could say she was well, but it would be a lie. You already know the truth.”
Somehow, this man who had been a stranger to her just a handful of months ago, knew her every truth.
“Renfry’s betrothed has cried off,” he announced after a moment. “I heard tell of it this morning. Apparently, he and Bainbury nearly came to fisticuffs when Renfry confessed all. The lady and her family were appalled.”
Audrey held her breath. “What of Cassie…?”
He shook his head. “He does not seem to know anything about that. And though Millbury is aware, Andrea might not be. If you recall, she did not sign the missive luring him to the quarry. Millbury only assumed it was Cassandra because of the mention of the citrine quarry. He must have known of her penchant to collect the stones.”
Audrey exhaled, agreeing that sounded likely. But it was no guarantee that their secret would hold. She took a breath and bit her lower lip. Secrets and lies. They had plagued the last many years of her life.
The temptation to pretend nothing had been said back at the quarry about her stay at the asylum was strong. But pretending would not quiet the nagging voice in the back of her mind.
“At the quarry…” she began, haltingly.
Hugh turned toward her, and though it was a mere shift of his footing, the motion of it was powerful and swift. “Allow me to apologize. I took liberties and offended you—”
“You didn’t,” she said, stunned. It wasn’t what she’d intended to discuss, but she realized now how much their embrace had weighed on him. The memory of his thumb sweeping across her lips blazed hot and defiant yet again.
He held her eyes, as if searching for truth. As if wanting her to be angry and to scold him. When she did not, he licked his lips and tucked his chin. “It will not happen again. It cannot.”
Regret bit at her unexpectedly. She should not want it to happen again, even if she had let her imagination wander that morning, in the space between sleep and waking. “No, of course not.”
And yet, Hugh would not release her from the same heated stare that had spellbound them on the quarry ledge.
