Laney’s and Sylvia’s cries rang out in the air, setting up a cacophony of sound in the quiet stillness of the early morning, sending the fowl on the water’s edge into a flutter of agitated feathers.But Heloise hardly heard it for the clatter of her blade falling from her numb fingers to the ground and the ringing in her ears.This man was certainly no stranger to her.Those dark eyes were the same ones she had gazed into while in the throes of passion, those full lips the same ones she had kissed.Though weren’t those eyes on fire now, those lips an unforgiving line?And then he reached her and spoke, proving what her eyes could hardly believe.
“Heloise,” Ethan rasped.“What the hell are you doing here?”
It couldn’t be she.He refused to believe it.
Yet as he stared down at that same face he had come to care so deeply about in the past weeks, there could be no doubt that it was.Here was that stubborn jaw, there those pale blue eyes.Though wasn’t her jaw slack now, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and something close to fear?
His heart squeezed, and he ached to rub his hand hard over it to relieve the pain there, to reach for her and pull her against him and beg her to tell him this was all a dream and they were in fact back in his bed at Dionysus.Instead,he kept those traitorous appendages at his sides, balling his hands into tight fists.
“Ethan,” she whispered through suddenly colorless lips, looking close to keeling over on the spot.As if to give proof of it, she swayed ever so slightly.He instinctively stepped forward, reaching for her, but froze when she took a step back, hands raised as if to ward him off.
Which only served to spark his anger from a small, flickering flame into a burning blaze.“I repeat, madam,” he said, taking another step toward her.“What are you doing here?”
The two women she was with made small sounds of alarm in their throats.Not Heloise, however.Instead of retreating, she held her ground, drawing herself taller, eyes turning hard and cold as chips of ice.
“I could ask the same of you,” she countered, raising her chin.Of course she would not be cowed, not his Heloise.
No, a voice roared inside him,she was nothisanything.
Instead of answering her, he looked to the two women just off the path.They clung to each other, their shock evident though their faces were still obscured.The moment his gaze found them, the taller of the two stepped in front of the other, feet planted wide, shoulders rounded, and arms raised in a traditional pugilist stance.
Which was exactly when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“Mrs.Laney Finch,” he said, eyes narrowing on her.“You are part of this as well, are you?”He glanced at the woman standing just behind her.“And I assume your partner is Lady Vastkern, judging from our previous interactions.”
Mrs.Finch, to her credit, did not so much as flinch.Nor did she relax her posture, her fists coming up even higher infront of her.“Mr.Sinclaire,” she said, voice flat and hard.“If you don’t mind, we’ll take our leave now.It’s so very early, you know.”
Lady Vastkern, however, was not about to be ushered away, it seemed.Stepping in front of Mrs.Finch, she drew back her hood, revealing the mass of steel-gray curls atop her head and her ageless, striking face.“Actually, Laney, my love,” she said, giving Ethan a considering glance from the top of his head to the tips of his boots, “I find I would like to speak to Mr.Sinclaire.I believe there is ever so much we can learn from one another.If you’re not opposed, that is, Mr.Sinclaire.”
She raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow, and he had the impression he was being weighed and measured.He very nearly laughed, though it would have been full of all the bitterness of having been made a fool of all this time.
Against his will, his gaze sought out Heloise.She stood as straight as if a post had been driven into her spine, her face expressionless.It was like looking at a stranger, a sad echo of the warm woman he had come to know.Which served only to drive the blade of betrayal deeper into his chest.
Setting his jaw, he returned his gaze to Lady Vastkern.“I think, madam, that would be a wise course of action considering these very… questionable circumstances.”
She nodded regally, then turned and strolled down the path as if it were the middle of the afternoon during the height of the Season.Ethan was impressed despite himself at her complete confidence—until a movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned to see Heloise bending to pick up her blade from the ground and concealing it in some hidden place within her sleeve.He watched her soberly, waiting for her to look his way, toshow even a small bit of emotion beside the cold indifference she had shown since her initial shock.
But she did not, instead looking straight ahead as she followed Lady Vastkern and Mrs.Finch.It should not have hurt as much as it did.After all, hadn’t he just received confirmation that his initial suspicions regarding Heloise’s intentions had been valid?And yet…
He took a deep breath with effort, dragging the cool morning mist into his lungs by sheer will.But his chest remained tight, as if some cruel god had taken hold of him in his fist and was relentlessly squeezing.He felt as if something inside him had shattered and could never be put back together again.Giving Keely a quick, hooded glance, he strode after the retreating women.He would get answers soon, no matter what it took.The only question was: How much would those answers destroy him?
24
Ethan had heard from Keely of the house on Wimpole Street that Heloise shared with these ladies, a place of refuge for widows.But he’d never thought he would set foot within its walls.It had been just some vague structure, this place where Heloise lived.Mayhap if his life had not taken the path it had, if he had lived a life of respectability that had made him at all worthy of courting someone like Heloise, he might have visited here on occasion, calling on her, bringing flowers.
His lips twisted.But no, his true origins would never have allowed that.In truth, if not for this whole mess with Dionysus, he would never have met her in the first place.He would have been like manure beneath her shoe, not worthy to approach the black lacquered door with its fan-shaped window above, much less to set foot within.As he was doing now, following the three women into the front hall, boots clicking on the polished inlaid wooden floor.
He cast a look her way, recalling the hard expression on her face when she had pulled the knife on Keely, the shock and dismay, quickly wiped away to be replaced with cold indifference, when she had caught sight of him stepping from his hiding place in the bushes.But then, he told himself grimly, she was not the same woman he had believed her to be, the same woman he had come to love.In fact, thewoman he had come to love didn’t exist at all.That Heloise was a mirage.
A squat, hard-faced woman stormed toward them from the bowels of the house before he could so much as get his bearings, her face like granite as she scowled at them.
“A visitor?”she barked in a rough Scottish accent.“At this hour of the morning?Are ye daft?”
“Hello, Strachan,” Lady Vastkern replied with impressive poise, considering she was being scolded by a servant, handing over their voluminous capes to her.“This is Mr.Ethan Sinclaire of Dionysus.Would you be so kind as to bring a fresh pot of coffee to the drawing room?Although,” she continued, raising one steely gray brow as she considered him, “mayhap you would like something a bit stronger?I know it is fully morning now.But you do not keep the same hours as most.”
Said by anyone else, it would have been a scold.But, for some reason, it did not come across as such said by Lady Vastkern.If they had met in a different time or place, he might have liked the woman.
Now, however, he just felt numb, thoroughly overwhelmed as he was by Heloise’s dark presence not five feet from him.“Coffee is fine,” he replied stiffly.
