Page 48 of Sinfully Mine
She pressed her lips tightly together, unwilling to say anything more.
Let him go,her broken heart whispered.
Hester had given him herself completely to Drew. Everything she possessed inside her. Told him things she had never told another. And it didn’t matter. She would still be alone. Lifting her chin, she glared back at him.
“Nothing to add, Mrs. Black? No denials? I thought not.”
“I believe nothing more needs to be said,” she hurled at him, anger once more getting the best of her. Hester spun on her heel and left him to pack.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hester sat inthe parlor, hardening herself to the sight of the plain, black carriage Drew Sinclair had arrived in months ago now taking him away from Blackbird Heath. At least he hadn’t attempted to ride to Horncastle. Mrs. Ebersole had been summoned, along with salve and bandages. Dobbins instructed to help with Drew’s trunks.
If either was shocked by Drew’s abrupt departure, they didn’t show it.
She’d come back down the stairs and asked Mrs. Ebersole for tea, though Hester hadn’t touched the steaming pot or the biscuits on a small plate beside it. This was for the best. Really. Drew had likely been the victim of a careless hunter, not anything nefarious. He was stringing together an unrelated series of coincidences in order to form a good excuse to leave her. It was the only explanation Hester could arrive at becauseshehadn’t shot at him.
Hester had spent a great deal of her life alone. Solitary. Drew was no more than a pleasant interruption. This was always destined to be the only outcome of their relationship. He’d grown weary of the country, the animals, the crops. And especially Hester. He belonged in London, along with Mr. Worthington and Lady Downing.
Hester pressed a palm to her mid-section, feeling the catch of the callouses on her thumb against the muslin of her dress. She could never compete for his affections against the likes of that gorgeous creature.
She had not looked up when Drew came down the stairs, nor turned when he paused at the entrance of the parlor. A deep, drawn-out sigh had left him, his gaze burning the back of her neck, but he didn’t speak. What more was there to say?
Once the carriage rolled out of sight, Hester rose and poured herself a brandy, ignoring the tea which had long since cooled. Belatedly, she considered that this might have been what made her father a sot. Losing the one thing he’d loved. Her mother.
Hester threw back the brandy, welcoming the sting as it traveled down her throat.
Father had become Horncastle’s resident drunkard after Mother died, but Hester thought Thomas Morton had been headed down that path long before his wife fell ill. Certainly, he showed no talent for farming the land left to him by his father. The gambling and constant inebriation started as the farm began to fail. Poverty followed. She’d wed Joshua to escape her father, only to find herself in the orbit of yet another man who cared more for cards and dice than her.
But at least she’d had Blackbird Heath.
Hester pushed aside the past. It wasn’t worth revisiting.
The more pressing concern, now that her emotions had calmed, was Drew’s belief that Hester had tried to have him killed. Granted, shehadtried to scare him off initially with the little garden snake and artfully placed clumps of dung, but those things were hardly murderous.
She thought back to the night she’d found Drew outside the study, clutching the wall, bloodied. Hedidlook as if he were in his cups and merely stumbling about in the dark. If there was someone outside, Hester assumed it was a farmhand, perhaps a recently hired one, just roaming about. The last time Blackbird Heath had an intruder it was a man who tried to steal a chicken because he was hungry. Pastor was his name and he now managed Hester’s sheep. Hardly deadly.
No one, to Hester’s knowledge, hadeverbeen stabbed for their purse in Horncastle, but admittedly, she didn’t engage in gossip or travel into town often. The road where Drew claimed to have been shot was well-traveled, but hunting accidents did occur.
Taken all together, the events could be considered sinister in nature. If Drew were convinced someone was trying to get rid of him, given Hester’s previous actions, it would be logical to assume she was the culprit.
“Except I love him,” she whispered to the empty parlor. “How can he not feel the truth of that?”
But no one else had anything to gain except Hester if Drew relinquished his claim on Blackbird Heath either willingly, or because he was dead. Certainly, Martin Godwick didn’t like the idea of Drew being here, and he’d been protective of Hester since Joshua’s death, but that was hardly grounds for murder.
A hint of uneasiness slid through her recalling the conversation in Martin’s office the day he’d attempted to kiss her. She’d put it down to his worry over Ellie. But could Martin—
Don’t be ridiculous.
Hester was unlikely to inspire any gentleman with such passion. Not even Drew.
The thought had a choked sound come up her throat, no matter how she tried to stop it. In response, Hester poured another brandy.
If not Martin, could the culprit have been Mrs. Ebersole? Blackbird Heath was her home as much as Hester’s. The housekeeper had been in place long before Joshua and Hester wed. She knew a great many people in Horncastle, there must be at least a few who would have been willing to accept Mrs. Ebersole’s coin in return for scaring away Drew.
More ridiculous.
Dobbins? Jake? Hester thought it unlikely.
