“Did you perhaps catch what he said? What Luke…” Seth’s words trailed off, his breath hitching.
“Mostly.” She pulled him into a tight embrace as he helped her to her feet. “I’m deeply sorry about Luke… and all the chaos I caused by trying to leave. It was foolish of me, and being blind, I—I should never have—”
“No, no,” he interrupted roughly. “The blame is mine. For allowing you to walk out of my study last evening with the notion that I loathed the sight of you, Charity,” he said in a rush in her ear.
The sound of the carriage approaching grew nearer, but she clung to his words.
“You don’t understand the whole truth. You see,” he murmured, pausing to tenderly caress her cheeks, sweeping away the soot with gentle strokes, “you have brought me more joy than I've known in a decade. I was the fool for not realizing it sooner… for failing to grasp that I am in love with you, and I have been for so long. So please, please don’t leave me again.”
She blinked madly as her eyes grew awash with tears.
“I don’t want to leave you. I couldn’t. You… you saved my life.”
They embraced tightly once more. She yearned to kiss him, to say so much. To tell him that she loved him too, that she was sorry for what Luke had just revealed, and how sorrowful she was that Seth’s perception of most of his life had shifted so drastically in these last few minutes, largely due to her father. However, time was a luxury they could ill afford. That carriagehad not only ground to a halt, but she could hear horses too, and various competing voices.
“As I’ve been saying, constable!” the unmistakable voice of Bates cut through the commotion. “ That man over there is the one who fired upon the duke.”
“Fired upon…?” Charity's fingers tensed on Seth's shoulders, and she felt him flinch. When she drew back her hand, it was damp with something warm.
“Don’t worry, it is just a flesh wound,” Seth reassured her in a hushed tone. “I will be fine.”
“And he was acting under the orders of that man,” Bates went on, “Lord Holmwood—”
“Enough of this!” her father’s voice interrupted sharply. “I acted as any good father ought to after learning the duke abducted my precious daughter.”
“What’s this fire about?” an unfamiliar but shrill voice inquired, and Charity presumed it was the constable who spoke. “What’s been happening here then?”
“Blast the fire, seize him!” her father demanded. “Arrest the duke for abducting my daughter, you rogues!”
“I was not abducted, papa.” Charity allowed her voice to carry loudly, her body still pressed against Seth’s with her handscurling in his chest as he rested one arm around her waist, holding onto her with care.
“Silence, Charity,” her father’s voice boomed. “Please excuse my daughter, she is unwell. She has lost her sight, you see.”
“I have had enough of this. I cannot see, but I have perfectly well mental faculties, Father. I am not quite the dumb child you seem so intent on treating me as. Seth, point me to the constable please.”
Gently, Seth rotated her to face the constable, and she maintained her posture, coughing slightly from the lingering taste of ash.
“You should drink something,” Seth murmured in her ear. “We’ll get you some water and I’ll have a physician sent for.”
She nodded once, yet her immediate concern was keeping him out of jail.
“Constable, the duke is guilty of no crime. I left my father’s home of my own accord to be with him, and we intend to marry. I am the age of one-and-twenty, so I’m well within my right to do so. If there is a crime to be addressed here, regrettably, it would be my father who is culpable. Aren’t I right, papa?”
There seemed to be a ripple around the crowd. Charity could hear various whispers and was only now beginning to understand that her father had brought many men with him.
“What are you suggesting?” her father hissed.
“It has come to light upon the passing of Luke—the Viscount of Helmsley,” Seth paused, and from the sharp intake of breath that followed from a number of people, Charity guessed he had gestured toward Luke’s lifeless body, “that the great fire of Aldenbury, a little over a decade ago, was caused by himself, but underLord Holmwood’sdirective, in exchange for a seat on the board of the Bloomsbury club. It is clear now. Lord Holmwood, you are culpable for the death of my father, and for Luke’s brother, Lord Arthur Baxter.”
An eerie silence followed. Charity didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think that her father was capable of murder, but the fact he didn’t deny it now cast an overwhelming uncertainty over her spirit.
“Oh, you did it, didn’t you?” she cried out and staggered on her feet, but fortunately, Seth was there to keep her standing.
“I did not start the fire!” Her father was wild now. “He did! That man lying there. He started it. I never asked him to murder anyone. He was only supposed to destroy the damn club, not take lives!”
“Does that not amount to an admission…” Seth questioned lowly and must have been appealing to the constable who muttered something quietly in return.
“It is as good as,” he murmured in reply. “Lord Holmwood, I must speak to you in private.”
