Shesoothed him.
“I came home to find the men responsible for what happened. It has placed myself, my children, even you in danger, and for that I am sorry.”
“You cannot be sorry for doing what is right.”
“I had no right to involve you.”
“Anyone who hears of your plight should wish to be involved.” How soft and quiet she was. How easy to tell things to. How had he never noticed that before? Yet had he not always told her ideas and dreams he had never shared with anyone else?
He had always imagined it was because he cared for her so little.
He had fathomed her empty brained like so many of the other girls he knew.
But she was shy, not empty.
“If Patrick Brownlow is the brother of the man you killed, and the conversation you overheard was of a certain with Mr. Oswald, perhaps there is more between them than a mere disagreement.” She shook her head. “Though I cannot imagine him to be involved in this.”
“I already had reason to doubt him.”
“Why?”
“He followed me. He was there, outside the prison, when I was stabbed.”
“I cannot fathom him capable of such atrociousness. He is strange, but he is not wicked.”
“Wickedness is not always perceivable.” Nor were other things, apparently. Like goodness, sweetness, trueness, all the things he read in her expression and should have seen twelve years before.
“As I am in his good graces, I shall discover all I can and see if I might—”
“No. I want you to stay away from him.”
“But—”
“The search is mine and mine alone. Sir Walter has already suffered for aiding me. I will not allow that to happen to you.”
She nodded, folded her hands in her lap, as he gathered back the reins and turned the curricle around in the road. He headed back for Sowerby House, somehow lighter for having told her the impossibilities stacked against him.
“It was Mercy.” He felt her eyes glance up at him in question. “In the turret room. The reason we laughed.” He mimicked the noise she had given the monkey, another laugh stirring.
Her own joined him, as her elbow brushed his and her faint smell of jasmine drifted to his awareness, a bothersome pleasure.
Back at Sowerby House, he swung her down from the curricle. He walked her to her own carriage, handed her in, then bid her a good evening and watched the vehicle depart Sowerby’s gates.
Before he had been ready to resign her to a loveless marriage, assuming that wealth and position would be enough to satisfy her through the long years ahead.
He had been wrong.
She deserved more than the arrangement he had offered her. She deserved a man who respected and admired her and wished to keep her near as much as Simon did right now.
For the first time, he wondered what his life might have been like if he had stayed twelve years ago. Perhaps, in more ways than Simon wished to admit, Father had been right.
Vanprat Avenue was still in the early morning hours, with few carriages and no more than a tattered crossing sweeper boy occupying the street.
Simon approached the Brownlow town house. He knocked twice, but when no one answered, he pressed his shoulder against the door and busted it open. He glanced around.
Down the street, the sweeper boy ceased swaying his broom and raised his head in alert.
Simon entered anyway. The town house was dim, the air no longer fragranced, the rugs all rolled up and stacked along one wall. He navigated back to the drawing room. White sheets were draped across the furniture, as if departing servants had hurriedly attempted to leave the abode in proper condition before finding employment elsewhere.
