I know.
“Eliza, do you hear me?”
Her lips quivered without answer.
Then the door jarred, as if he’d pounded it with his fist, and his footfalls marched away.
She sank to the floor, fumbling with the buttons of her pelisse, easing in one breath after another until they finally started to regulate.
Dear Savior, when will it end?
She was losing strength. She was losing hope.
She was losing everything.
“Why will she not open up the dashed door?” Felton faced the mantel and could have run a fist through the infuriating sound of the longcase clock.
Behind him, Miss Haverfield sniffed again. “It was all so frightening, Felton. I could scarcely keep myself from fainting. To come so close, so terribly close to misadventure and death—”
“Why did he not follow him?”
“Who?”
“The footman! Why did he not stay after the blackguard and see he didn’t escape?”
“But who would have protected us if he had? We most certainly could not have been left alone, not after such an ordeal. Why, I shiver to think if it had been I who had handed that horrid man the basket—”
“How injured is she?” He swallowed twice, mind reeling as fast as the incessantticktocks of the clock.
A sigh filled the drawing room. “Is there nothing else important to you?”
“What?”
“You seem to care very little that my life was endangered today.”
“It was not you, Miss Haverfield, that man was after. It was not you he locked in the cottage. It was not you he shot at. It was not you he struck, and it was not you he tried to kill.” He turned on her. “Yes, I pity you the ordeal, but I have greater things to think of.”
Pink flashed to her cheeks. “A gentleman would not speak so harshly to a woman so close to falling ill with fright.”
“If you are so ill, perhaps you should retire to your chamber.”
“Perhaps I shall.” Indignation lifted both of her brows. “We seem to both be not quite ourselves at the moment.” When he did not respond, she wiped moisture from her eyes and started from the room.
Papa ambled through the doorway as she exited. “Son, the constable has just departed.”
Felton exhaled. He needed to get out of this house. He needed to ride or walk or have fisticuffs with the first person to oblige him, lest the anger explode.
“Come now, Son. Do not look so miserable. She is quite safe now.”
Yes, for now. This moment. But what about tomorrow? What about the next time he was away or couldn’t be near her?
Papa took out his tobacco pouch and moved for the stand. He flipped open a box and rummaged through the contents. “Miss Haverfield has been quite the guest, you know. Splendid girl. Perhaps a carriage ride—the fresh air and all that sort of thing—would do you both a bit of good. When I was young, courting was the greatest diversion to any dilemma.”
“I do not wish to be diverted from my troubles. I wish to resolve them.”
“Yes, well, as do we all.”
Felton headed for the door. “Your pipe is in the study, if that is what you are looking for.”
