“Och, but are ye still there then?” The Scotsman again. His knobby fingers circled the bars. “I cannae be bringing ye Sir Walter, but I can be bringing ye something more sightly, if ye wish.”
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Fancourt, it is me.” A quiet voice on the other side of the door. “Miss Whitmore.”
What was she doing here? “Send her in.”
“As ye wish.” With the rattling of the lock, the door creaked open.
Miss Whitmore entered, the white of her muslin gown a stark contrast to the blackened stone and filth smearing the cell walls. She startled when the door slammed shut behind her, then attempted to smile, as if to soften evidence of her discomfiture.
He should speak, but words abandoned him. The reality that she had deigned herself, that she had braved such a place without a perfume-scented handkerchief fluttering over her nose, pulsated shock throughout his being.
“I came because of the things you said.” As if in answer to his questions. “I stayed in the nursery with your children, as you asked.”
“You slept with them?”
“No.” Her cheeks blushed again. “I did not sleep.”
“Then no one tried to—”
“No one attempted anything, and they are now in the capable hands of both Mrs. Fancourt and the butler, who are teaching them proper botanical names for every bloom in the garden.” Her eyes swept over him. Did she always have such a tender look about her, or was it only the exhaustion and pain that lent her face the gentleness he craved?
“Miss Whitmore, I never wished to involve you with this.” He stepped closer, struck again with confusion when she did not so much as flinch or back away.
She did not fear him.
She believed him as much as she said she did.
“But I must ask something more.” He dragged a dirty sleeve across his forehead. “I have no one else to ask.”
“What is it?”
“There are many things I do not have time to explain to you now. The important one is this. Someone intends on harming my children…to stop me.”
“Stop you from what?”
“I need someone to hide them away. There’s a hunting lodge in Hertfortshire where my father used to take me as a boy. Mr. Wilkins could take you. You can trust him. There’s a cottage in the woods where Father used to house his steward, but it is empty now, and there is enough room for—”
“Mr. Fancourt, please.” She breathed faster. “What are you asking of me?”
“More than I have any right.”
She nodded, as if in agreement, her gaze roaming the cell, rising to the ceiling, circling back to the collar of his coat without ever quite lifting to his face. “You would not ask did lives not depend on it.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
She nodded, tried to smile again, then tapped on the door until the Scotsman released her and locked it back.
Simon hurried to the window and seized the bars. “Georgina.” The second time he had used her Christian name. He was not certain how it kept slipping from his lips, or why it came so easily, but she glanced up at him with a tearful glance.
“You are welcome,” she whispered, then was gone.
He sank to the ground for the first time since he’d been thrown inside. Some of the fear dampened. Some of the torture left.
Father had been right about one thing.
Simon had not known Georgina Whitmore as well as he’d thought.
