“I’m for home, then.”
He took a step toward the doorway. The butler stepped aside, his tiny eyes watchful.
With his broad back facing Evan, Ollie refilled his brandy glass without turning around.
“Do that.”
Right. Evan had definitely overstayed his nonexistent welcome.
He quit the dining room. He eased the door shut behind him and made his way toward the rear exit. Partly because the back door led more directly to the trail going toward Evan’s house. And partly because he wouldn’t mind having another look at the rock garden, now that he knew a woman too frail to leave her bed had supposedly decided to do a bit of nontraditional gardening.
At the time, he had thought Timothy might’ve been buried in that third grave, but what had everyone else been thinking? They couldn’t all have been after an empty jewelry box.
Evan could scarce ask Forrester what he’d been doing there without admitting to his own presence. Miss Stanton, however... Evan cursed himself as he realized he’d missed several good opportunities to ask her just what exactly she’d thought had been buried beneath that unmarked gravestone. Next time he saw her, he’d—
Jasmine. There she was. Right by the rear door.
Not facing the exit, however. She stared in the opposite direction, down a darkened stairwell Evan assumed led to a larder. Miss Stanton had her back to him, her outstretched hands splayed against each stone wall, a booted foot hovering over the first step.
He approached with caution. “What are you—”
She jumped, spun around, pushed him.
He didn’t budge.
She put a finger to her lips, eyes wide. “Shhh.”
Evan stayed quiet, more out of perplexity than any desire to be obedient. The woman made absolutely no sense.
She turned back toward the blackness, dismissing him.
He considered leaving as planned.
Galling as it was, she seemed to have forgotten their aborted lovemaking in her obsession with—with what? She was neither descending the staircase nor returning fully to the hallway. She was doing precisely nothing.
He was wasting his time. She wanted a husband; he wanted to run off screaming. Why he continued standing next to her instead of running, he wasn’t entirely sure. She was a marriage-minded woman. He was a bachelor-minded man. Expectations of commitment accompanied any relationship she entered. Consequence-free encounters were the only variety he ever had. So it wasn’t as if there was anything left to discuss.
He had almost turned to leave when he remembered they still did have plenty left unsaid, once he dropped his sexual frustration and wounded pride from the picture. He hated the idea that this woman who’d fled from him seconds after finding release would eagerly bed some insipidtonfop, simply because he had something other than “Mister” before his name.
With such an image in his head, no wonder he’d almost forgotten why he’d come here in the first place. It wasn’t because he’d missed her. Not at all. It was because he didn’t trust her.
“Did you tell Harriet Grey her brother was dead?” he demanded.
“Shhh!” She flapped a hand at him as if shushing a recalcitrant child and then whispered, “Not my finest moment, I admit. Do be quiet and let me listen.”
He stared at the back of her blonde head.
Not her finest moment? What the devil did that mean? He’d expected her to deny the accusation. She had not. Which meant it was true. How, he couldn’t begin to fathom. He had no guesses as to where she’d met an unsavory like Red in the first place—particularly since such a meeting would’ve had to occur prior to her arrival in Bournemouth—much less who would have informed her of his death.
“How did you know he—”
“Shhh.” She tugged him closer. “Help me listen.”
Irritably realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere with her until he’d indulged whatever fantasy had gripped her nonsensical mind, he cocked his head to the side and listened. Hard. For several long moments. Then he gave up.
“I hear nothing.”
“Me neither.” She turned to him, her eyes almost as wide as the lenses of her spectacles. “I wonder what it means.”
