Page 61 of Nature of the Crime
She folded a chemise and placed it into the small trunk of Audrey’s belongings, then rubbed her temple.
“Now then, that is enough,” Audrey sighed. “I insist you go to bed. I know you only wish to look after me, but please allow me to do the same for you.”
Her maid, infamous for her placid, unsmiling expressions, twitched her mouth into a grin. “Very well, Your Grace.”
“And check in on Carrigan, would you? I know he is better, but I still worry.”
Her driver had been next to insensible from the heavy-handed pour of laudanum into his “medicinal” tea that Mrs. Plimpton had prepared for him earlier that afternoon. Thornton had explained that though he didn’t know how much the innkeeper had added, it could have been a dangerous amount. He’d seen men and women overdose and die before, sometimes accidentally. Fortunately, Carrigan had been recuperating well, the last Audrey had heard.
Greer opened the door, revealing Hugh, who had been waiting patiently. He leaned against the wall in the corridor, hands in his pockets, looking sinfully handsome with no cravat and shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows.
“How is our patient?” he asked Greer as he entered the room.
“Stubborn as usual, my lord,” she replied, and with another impish grin, closed the door behind her. Audrey balked.
“I think she is becoming far too comfortable in her position,” she said, though she didn’t mean a word of it. This lively side of Greer was something she appreciated.
Hugh ambled toward the bed, his eyes narrowing. “What is that horrible thing on your head?”
Audrey huffed and tore off the mobcap. “Just Grant having fun with my maid.”
Hugh laughed and sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted him to reach for her, but he kept his hands in his pockets. She had not seen Hugh since Greer shuttled her to the back room for the bath, and to be truthful, everything that had happened since she had been pulled aboard theSea Wolfwas a little blurry. Her body had been so cold, Thornton explained, that she had started to enter a kind of half-sleep. Had she been out in the cold much longer, she would have fallen unconscious and likely died. As if Hugh was also thinking of the same thing, he grew serious.
“You are well?”
She nodded. Her skin was still strangely numb and tingling in places, but she wouldn’t complain. The outcome could have been far worse.
“How is Becky?” she asked. When she’d been brought onto her father’s boat, she’d sobbed with relief, but Audrey hadn’t had the chance to speak with her. She’d barely been able to speak at all, her shivering was so severe.
“She is just fine,” Hugh said. “Mr. Leeds came to the inn earlier to say Becky will return in the morning. For now, she’s going to take over the running of the inn. Ethan plans to help.”
“And Mrs. Plimpton is under arrest?”
He nodded. “She says she wants Becky to have the inn. I think she is a conniving woman, but I hope she is at least being honest when she says she never knew St. John’s plan to give her to the smugglers.”
Audrey wanted to believe her too, but the innkeeper’s deceit had been so stunning, she wasn’t sure what to think anymore. It probably no longer mattered. She would go to prison, at least for a little while. However, the real crimes had been committed by St. John. Her stomach tightened and she shifted under the blankets as she recalled how close he had come to ending her life. The sickening cracking sound when she’d slammed themetal push pole against his head had burrowed into her ears and her memory.
She closed her eyes. A warm hand covered hers atop the blankets.
“Did he harm you?” His voice was low and harsh. Audrey shook her head, knowing that even if St. John had, there was no one for Hugh to punish.
“Sit with me?” she asked, peeling back the blankets, and offering the spot next to her. Hugh removed his shoes and then settled next to her, tucking the blankets around them after Audrey nestled up against his side. He draped his arm around her, holding her close.
“Tell me what happened.”
She started from the moment she realized she’d been tricked by Mrs. Plimpton. As she went on, Hugh’s arm flexed with stifled fury now and again, especially when she spoke of St. John’s intentions to row her far out and throw her overboard, to drown. But he didn’t speak, allowing her to explain the motives behind everything.
“I think mostly, he was bitter that Philip got a new life and that he had bungled his own.”
“Right versus wrong was not a concept he had ever learned,” Hugh said. “The privileges he’d taken for granted his whole life could not prepare him for a time when he was not handed everything he wanted.”
St. John had acted like a child. A scornful, murderous child. And yet, he had been correct about one thing.
“He accused us of being hypocrites. Of lying.” Her palm, which Thornton had wrapped in cotton linen to protect the raw scrapes left behind from the rocks, rested against Hugh’s chest, her cheek next to it. “He is right. We are.”
He tripped his fingers across the seams of the wrapping. “No. What we are doing is compensating for a choice neither of usmade.” He sat forward, causing her to sit up too. Cupping her cheek, Hugh met her gaze. “I won’t lie to you. I have conflicting feelings about all of it. But what I do know, is that Philip’s decision to leave has given me the opportunity to love you, openly. I won’t feel sorry for that. I refuse to feel guilty for it.”
Her eyes stung with tears. “I wouldn’t feel guilty for it, either, if only Cassie and Michael and Tobias did not believe their brother to be dead.”
