He swallowed. “I truly don’t know.” His gaze looked far away. “But I feel ... different. More alive, somehow.”
“And you can eat and drink?”
He nodded. “I can, but I don’t need to. And it doesn’t taste the same as it used to,” he explained.
It was her turn to nod. “And why are you still here?”
He swallowed. “Before I ... left, I cursed my murderers, that I wouldn’t rest until the truth was out. That I would find a way to haunt them, but they are long gone now and there’s no way for me to move on.”
The wordsmove onsliced through her heart, but this wasn’t fair. He needed a chance to find peace. “There must be a way, a way to prove what they did to you, a way for you to move on.” She looked at him and she could feel the fire in her eyes. “And I’m going to find it for you,” she vowed. Even though the vow fractured her heart into a million tiny pieces.
“I have the letters between Lillian and I. She warned me to be wary, to be careful of her family, her father and brothers, and that they wouldn’t take the breaking of the engagement lightly. She warned me that I should perhaps consider going abroad until the scandal passed over. If only I had...” he exhaled. Then his brow creased, eyes raising to meet hers. “But then I wouldn’t have found you.”
She bit her lip, dropping her gaze, refusing to let the tears fall again.
Letters.
Letters, diaries, anything ... there could be something, proof.
“You do realize nobody has left this village, that the Pitt family are still here, there may be something in their house, hidden, that could prove...”
“No.”
The sharpness of his tone cut her off. She opened her mouth to protest, and he covered it with his own in a possessive and hard kiss.
“I said no. I’m not having you be put in any danger because of me.”
Yeah, right,she thought,like you’re going to be able to stop me...
Instead she whispered, “Okay,” before kissing him back.
Chapter Eight
The next couple ofmonths passed by in a blur. A beautiful, dizzying, heartbreaking blur, as she and Theodore searched the house from top to bottom, the grounds, for something, anything, that might provide proof or be of use. She herself had searched the library in town and turned up nothing of merit, merely articles relating to what happened, nothing of newness or any note. Julia realized very quickly that she was going to need to check Sandra and Luke Pitts’ home for any documents, any proof they had kept about their ancestors. And she wasn’t going to ask nicely. She was an outsider as it was; they weren’t just going to hand anything over. The Pitt family ran the King’s Head pub. So, she would check there first after closing tonight. If nothing turned up, she would,ahem, check their house.
It wasn’t really a crime, was it? It wouldn’t really be stealing if she found something, she reasoned. She was trying to get justice for a past crime.
