Page 67 of The Lover's Eye
The ceilings were undoubtedly low, however.Giles had a clearer frame of reference for that, having to mind his head each time he passed beneath a hand-hewn beam.He wondered how many drunken sots had left the Three Hens with an honorary splinter in their foreheads.
He made his way to the largest round table where the coroner, Mr.Heppel, and Pemberton already sat.It was sunny outside, but a gas lamp was still necessary to illuminate the space before them.
“Trev,” Pemberton said, edging a seat out by the extension of his foot.The wooden legs groaned against the floor.“Have a sit down.”
“We’re just waiting on Burrows,” Mr.Heppel said with a sigh.He already had his hands around a copper mug.
Giles took the proffered seat, glancing about the space, which was curiously unoccupied.“Did you buy the place out for the morning?”he asked the coroner.
“Not as lavish as all that, but I did come to an understanding with the innkeeper.No customers will be coming in ’fore noon.I knew we’d not have a moment’s privacy otherwise.”
“What about the rooms upstairs?”Pemberton asked.
“Nothin’ we can do about anyone who’s lodging,” the coroner said with a shrug.“I expect word will travel fast, anyhow.”
Giles felt certain that was true.Aurelia had been frequently spoken of for years, more so upon their engagement, and gained outright fame after her disappearance.Confirmation of her death, especially given its gruesome circumstances, would garner universal interest.
Burrows entered then, striding over and joining them at the table.“Where’s the tapster?”he asked, shooting a frown in the direction of the untended counter.
“Go on and pour yourself one, chap,” Heppel said.“I had ’er leave out a tankard.”
Seemingly satiated, Burrows retrieved a copper mug of his own, which inspired Pemberton to follow suit.The three men whose hands were weighted by ale seemed to ease into their chairs.Only Giles and the coroner remained stiff, ready for the business to be over.
The coroner cleared his throat.“We must go over the facts, gentlemen.Miss Gouldsmith went missing in the eighth month of last year.The reverend tells me she acted completely at her ease the last time he saw her, when she was leaving home to go to Cambo House.”
The reverend was giving an accurate account, Giles knew.Only Aurelia had not intended to come to Cambo House—that was just the tale she’d given her father.It was outright rage that had eventually driven her to Giles’s doorstep that night.
Everyone looked blithely at him, waiting for a reply.
“Yes,” he said evenly.“As far as anyone knows, I am the last person to have seen Miss Gouldsmith.She left Cambo House around six in the evening.I assumed she was bound for home, but she did not say where she was headed.”
God, he wished that final sentence was true.Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so damn guilty every day.He knew she was too angry to go home, had suspected she was throwing herself into danger and heading for the coast.He should have stopped her.Even if she kicked and screamed and hated him for it.
“She had no chaperone with her?”
“No.”
The coroner seemed displeased with this answer, but he had not known Aurelia.She had run free about the village and moors as long as anyone could remember.Giles felt with conviction that she must have done so since the time she’d learned to walk.
“What was the standing of your engagement at the time Miss Gouldsmith left your home?”
A muscle twitched in Giles’s neck.Was he a supporting juror in an inquest, or was he on trial?He kept an even expression.“We did have a disagreement.That is not a secret.I do not know what the outcome of our engagement would have been, had things gone differently, but it was broken at the time she left my library.”
The coroner nodded.Giles hated the man’s cumbersome grey mustache; just the sight of it set his own chin to itching.
“Forgive my prying, Lord Trevelyan, but what was the nature of that disagreement?”
Giles’s pulse thudded in his ears, an entity separate from the cool façade he was cultivating.“It concerned the purchases she was making.”
The coroner’s brows rose.He clearly wanted more information.Damn him,thought Giles.How does this change anything?
“Our wedding was a week away,” he continued, staying to the narrow path of truth, “and I had given her a line of credit, with which to make purchases for her trousseau and the redecoration of her chambers, which were sorely out of date.”
“Ah.Very generous of you, Lord Trevelyan.Especially since the marriage-knell had yet to ring.”
Giles did not mirror the men’s amused smiles.“I wanted her to be comfortable, that is all.Her father would have provided the means had he been able.”
“And who, might I ask, put the engagement at an end that night?”
