Eliza’s jaw tightened. “You speak as if it were some divine design.”
“Perhaps it is divine,” Helena murmured. “Or perhaps it is something else entirely. I cannot say.”
Eliza turned to her, a faint unease stirring in her chest. “You are being mysterious again.”
Her grandmother only smiled, laying a hand over hers. “It is an old habit, my dear. One I do not think I shall ever break. Alas, I am old enough to claim such things as my privilege.”
Below, the carriage rumbled away down the drive, leaving behind the two women and the man whose quiet determination would soon upend all of their lives.
As the shadows lengthened across the great house, Eliza could not shake the feeling that Ravenswood itself was watching her — waiting, as though the walls remembered things she did not yet know.
And somewhere deep inside her, beneath her resistance and uncertainty, something else stirred. Not fear, not quite, but the faint, dangerous spark of anticipation.
Chapter
Twelve
The cottage was dark.
The man stood at its edge—just beyond the low, stone fence. He was motionless among the trees, the smell of damp earth surrounding him. But there was no smoke rising from the chimney. No dim candlelight from within. It was still. Still in a way that revealed the emptiness of the place. Leaves scattered by the wind had swept against the door—something that Helena Ashcombe would never permit. Will it as he might, the door itself did not open. No one came or went.
They were gone. They were gone and he was fairly certain where.
He had suspected as much when he found the gate unlatched and the small path leading from it marked with tracks not of one but several pairs of boots. Still, he had hoped — foolishly, perhaps — that one of them might have remained behind. But the cottage was empty, silent, the very air inside stale with disuse.
He lingered in spite of that, his gloved hand resting against the frame. Not out of hope, but because he was planning—pivoting. Changing his plans to accommodate this most recent shift.
He’d meant to end it tonight. To walk out of the woods, knock once upon the door, and when she answered — as she always did — to finish it cleanly. No struggle. No spectacle. Just the sound of it, sharp and final, echoing through the trees.
It wasn’t what he wanted.
He had no appetite for killing, especially not someone he’d known since her girlhood. But he’d learned long ago that wanting and necessity were rarely the same thing. And if Eliza Ashcombe remained alive, the danger to him — to everything he’d built and everything he was owed — would only grow.
She was too much like the others before her. Too curious. Too fearless. Too indomitable. It was an Ashcombe trait.
Moving from his shadowed hiding space, he opened the gate and approached the cottage. Trying the door, it opened easily and he stepped inside. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight as dust drifted in the moonlight as he looked about the small room. It still smelled of her — lavender and crushed rosemary, the faint sweetness of herbs hung from the rafters to dry. A shawl lay draped across the back of a chair, and a book sat open on the table beside the cold hearth.
He closed it without reading the title.
They hadn’t been forced to leave. They’d packed some of their belongings. There were voids where certain items had been removed. That much was clear. There were also heavier boot prints outside — a man’s stride. Someone had come for them. Taken them to safety.
He ground his teeth, the muscle in his jaw tightening. The Earl. Blackburn had come for them just as he suspected. The confirmation of his earlier suspicions filled him with something dangerously close to fury.
So be it. If the game had moved to Ravenswood Hall, then he would move with it. It would not be the first time he’d hadto bide his time, nor the first time he’d stalked his prey from shadows. The Hall could not shelter her forever.
He knew Eliza too well.
The woods called to her — always had. They were her home, her solace, her inheritance. Sooner or later, she would return to them.
And when she did, he would be waiting.
He stepped out once more into the night and turned toward the dark horizon where Ravenswood loomed beyond the hills, its chimneys faint against the pale shimmer of the moon. The cold wind rustled through the trees, whispering her name like a promise.
“Eliza,” he murmured. “You cannot hide from me forever.”
The forest seemed to sigh in answer.
The night was stilland quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock. The household had long since gone to sleep, but Gabriel found himself wide awake, staring into the dim glow of the dying fire. The steady tick tick tick of the that infernal clock only seemed to amplify his restlessness. He’d gone to bed early, exhausted from the day’s demands and from the sleeplessness of the previous night— yet sleep refused him.
