She cleared her throat. “I’ll go tonight. It will be less confusing for Rafe that way.”
Jaw tight, Jamie nodded. “My deepest appreciation for all you’ve done to recover my son.” He’d retreated into the haughtiness he hadn’t employed since the night they’d met. “Payment will be delivered to your residence on the morrow.”
He turned on his heel and strode toward the corridor connecting their rooms. As he exited, his body wanted to hesitate. It wanted to look back and leave with one last image of her. But his will was made of stronger stuff.
He walked on.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As dawn stretchedgolden rays across the morning sky, Jamie checked Rafe’s sleeping form one final time before making his way to Hortense’s room.
She was gone.
From his study window overlooking the square, he’d watched her leave an hour ago. An hour spent wrestling with the urge to go to her bedroom. In the end, his will was no match for his heart.
Here he was.
The bed stood smooth and untouched. The fire flickered low in the grate. In her dressing room, her new finery remained. Stately and cold, her rooms retained no trace of her, only a stir of her scent. Soon, that, too, would be gone.
He’d had no choice but to tell her to go. Even so, he’d been as shocked as she that he’d spoken the words. But he knew the feelings pulsing through his heart with every beat. It was more than admiration, infatuation, and lust. The only word for it was love. And he couldn’t force her to trust him or feel for him or love him back. That was what he’d understood in the seconds before he’d told her to leave. He couldn’t be around her, feeling the way he did about her, without her returning the feeling.
And, of course, she wouldn’t. How could he think he was enough for a woman like her? The truth was she’d seen into him and found him lacking. What was he to her?
In his room, he didn’t find his bed, but, instead, spilled into an armchair before the window overlooking the back garden. Desperate to rid his mind of her, even if for a moment, he reached for the stack of books on the side table and grabbed the one on top.A Treatise on the English Workhouse and Its Conditions for Work and Living.He’d pulled it from the study days ago, after the visit to St. Mary Magdalen.
He flipped to the table of contents and gave it a quick scan, falling deeper into the subject with each word read. Hortense, Mollie, and Rafe—arguably the three most important people to enter his life—had been subjected to the workhouse, their destinies shaped by its vagaries and conditions. Perhaps the time had arrived to understand their lives, and the factors that had shaped them.
That Monday night, at Nick and Mariana’s dinner, talk had centered on Parliament and workhouses. When Hortense had spoken, it was to the room at large, but truly to him. She’d believed he could make a difference.
Just now, from the corner of his eye, he noted the absence. He turned to fully take in the contents of the side table. His signet ring. Where was it?
Hortense.He knew it. But why?
Once a eel, always a eel… It’s not only my past.
Doyle.
The old rogue wasn’t in her past. That was the answer.
Before he knew what he was about, Jamie shoved to his feet and strode into his dressing room, and jerked on his boots and greatcoat. Her insistence that they couldn’t be together. That he didn’t know her. Those assertions were at complete odds with the woman he’d held in his arms only a few hours ago. She didn’t abscond with his signet ring because she was a thief, but because her past was also her present.
She hadn’t trusted him with that knowledge. But how could she have? When had life ever shown her it was safe to trust?
Angry, determined strides guiding him down dark corridors and out of Asquith Court, Jamie found himself hailing a hackney.
No more.
Hortense would be free of Doyle before this night was through, for Jamie had vowed to protect her and he wouldn’t abandon that promise. Hortense would be under his protection for the rest of his days, even if she wasn’t under his roof.
Jamie had neverapproached Flick Doyle’s establishment in the daylight. Even the soft, golden light of rising morning did the structure no favors as its ramshackle, haphazard appearance was enough to give one second thoughts about entering its narrow, listing confines.
Not Jamie, though. His step instinctively accelerated.
Nick’s hand wrapped around his upper arm. “Let’s wait and watch for a while.”
Frustration flared through Jamie. He wanted this done.Now.But he also understood this sort of mission was Nick’s area of expertise. A man didn’t become a spymaster by rushing into situations like a foolhardy green youth. So, Jamie allowed himself to be pulled into a dark alcove where he and Nick watched, shoulder to shoulder.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” his brother asked.
