Felton said so. Felton believed so.
No way under heaven had Mr. Northwood told her not to scream.
Felton leaned back under the shadow of the coffeehouse eaves and lowered the brim of his hat. All morning, he’d been dogging Mr. David Bowles throughout the village, and not once had the man caught on to him.
Even now, across the street, Bowles continued down the sidewalk in the late-morning sun, looking neither right nor left. He walked with speed, head erect, a stick tucked under his arm and a priggish sway to his steps. Gads, but the man was proud. Did he really think himself so superior?
Lowering his stick, Bowles halted in front of the haberdasher window, peered at something through the glass, then slipped inside the open-doored building.
Felton let air fill his cheeks, then blew it out. This was pointless. All morning had been a waste. What did he really think he would gain by following the man?
Mayhap Bowles had nothing to do with any of this. Mayhap, if Felton was going to follow anyone, it should be Lord Gillingham.
But he wouldn’t think of that now. Yet another matter he tried to shove away from the recesses of his mind.
Like the kiss.
Over and over he’d been taunted with it, that senseless moment. Like a dream or a terror or a whisper, soft and faint, it had pulsated through him and forced him to relive the scene a thousand times.
How soft she’d been. As soft as he’d ever thought her to be. How sweetly and eagerly her lips had responded to his, as if whatever he felt she’d felt too, as if she—
No.The resolve again. The weak resolve.No, I cannot.
He pushed off the coffeehouse wall and started down the street, wiping away the sweat from his forehead. He had to keep his bearings. He had to keep his mind on the matters at hand. If there was any hope of getting to the bottom of this, he could not let himself become distracted—especially by something he’d already determined should never be.
Indeed, the kiss had been a mistake.
One he would not make again.
Felton.Again and again, Eliza saw his face in her mind. She saw his eyes become stricken, his features twist with disbelief—the same disbelief as when she’d confided to him the suspicions of her father’s guilt.
But maybe her father wasn’t guilty. Maybe Mr. Northwood wasn’t either. Maybe Eliza didn’t remember anything, and if she ever had seen the man who murdered her mother, the memory was too distant to ever summon back.
She squeezed her fists in her lap as the barouche jostled them onward. She wouldn’t tell Felton. She couldn’t tell him. Too much was unclear and indistinct. Just a voice in the dark, anyone’s perhaps, begging her not to scream. Could she really swear it had been Mr. Northwood?
“This is our last stop, and then we may return to the village. I am simply elated to show you that delightful curiosity shop I spoke of.” When the barouche door swung open, Miss Haverfield folded her parasol and accepted the footman’s aid to the ground, baskets swinging from both arms.
Eliza followed with her own baskets. After breakfast, they’d taken the Northwood gig to Miss Haverfield’s estate, where the barouche, a dozen baskets, and a wigged footman were already awaiting them.
Miss Haverfield nodded to the first of a row of cottages. “Here dwells the ill-mannered Mrs. Coote.” They sidestepped a mud puddle on the path to the door. “Mr. Coote died some years back of dropsy, and his wife has been cursing everyone or giving them raging stares ever since. I positively detest coming here. But as Father says”—she rapped on the splintery door with her white glove—“one must keep up good opinions, must we not?”
In seconds, the door rattled open and a red-faced woman with grime in her wrinkles blinked up at them.
“Good day, Mrs. Coote.” Miss Haverfield flashed a smile and handed over the basket of fruits and breads and a knitted shawl. “I do hope you have been doing well—”
The door slammed shut before more could be said.
Miss Haverfield shrugged, mumbled something about the oddities of the poor, then moved along to the next half-crumbling hovel, then the next after that. “You know, Miss Gillingham, you must take more care against the sun.”
The third door opened and Eliza offered a basket to the thin boy on the other side.
“After all, do you wish to break out in freckles? Or worse yet, become dreadfully brown?” She twirled her parasol as they approached the next cottage. “But then again, I should not scold you so, should I? You could not have known such things, I suppose, in that wretched forest of yours. Truly, I wonder that you know anything at all.”
Something dark fell over the window of the last cottage.
Miss Haverfield shooed away a pig that sauntered toward them. “Heavens, the primitivism of this place. I can hardly bear the smell.”
The second window darkened too.
