Ellinbourne’s lips compressed in a tight line. “He did not complete the design. He carved only two lines. Like this.” He opened his sketchbook and withdrew a pencil from his pocket. Quickly, he drew the two lines slightly curved at the bottom that formed a stylized X shape. “Cassandra screamed, pleading with Darkford to make him stop. Her screaming must have broken through whatever had kept Darkford under that man’s control. Cassandra said her husband grabbed the man’s hand, and they fought over the knife. The leader managed to stab Darkford in their struggle. He fell across Cassandra.”
“Dear God,” Lakehurst murmured. He could almost see the scene in his mind. Perversely, a curse of his writing talent.
“The men ran from the cave to the stable to get their horses. The only staff Darkford let stay on the estate during his meetings was Carlyle, a deaf stable groom. He saw them leave, and when Darkford didn’t appear, Carlyle went into the caves and found Cassandra and Darkford.”
“Darkford was dead?”
Ellinbourne nodded. “He’d bled out while laying across her,” he said baldly.
Lakehurst felt sick to his stomach. “Thank you for telling me. The events sound unnervingly like my novel. I can understand why she reacted the way she did.”
“When I took her away from Baydon, I wasn’t comfortable leaving her with the Tidemarks; unfortunately, just two months earlier our uncle, the 5th Duke of Ellinbourne, had died and I had inherited the title. The obligations I had to learn and sort out overwhelmed me. I regret I allowed the Tidemarks to remove her as one of my obligations. That was a mistake I regret every day.”
“How can I… How can I—I don’t know…” Lakehurst shook his head, confounded by the confidences Ellinbourne had shared. “Earn her trust?” he finally said.
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why do you wish to earn her trust?” Ellinbourne asked. “To appease any feelings of guilt you might have for even devising a story that could be eerily real?”
“No! Though I suppose there is a bit of that. But, no.” He looked off across the room for a moment, thinking through the feelings that roiled inside him. He felt drawn to her, that he knew. The rest of what lay inside him existed as a confusing mélange of emotions.
He looked back to Ellinbourne, who sat across from him, studying him with a stern mien. “I don’t know what I feel,” he admitted to him, “however, I do know I want the opportunity to get to know her better. Though I denied it to my sister and grandmother, she has intrigued me since I met her at your betrothal ball.”
Ellinbourne nodded, then slowly smiled. “I think you just might be good for each other.”
“You misunderstand,” Lakehurst said hastily. “My interest is the curse of a writer’s curiosity, that is all.”
But even as he protested, he knew he lied.
* * *
Carrying his novel with him,Lakehurst came clattering down the central staircase at the same time the footman, Stephen, opened the front door to Mr. Lewis Martin, the Bow Street senior agent who’d helped the family on other occasions. Neatly dressed, Mr. Martin could have passed for one of the London clerks who hurried about the Fleet Street part of the city.
Whenever he saw him, Lakehurst couldn’t help wondering about his family. Where did he come from? Well-spoken and obviously well-educated, he stood out among his peers. Lakehurst greeted him and told Stephen he’d conduct him to the Duchess in the Lady Margaret parlor.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Lakehurst said.
Mr. Martin smiled and shrugged. “I like the Duchess,” he said.
“Where is your shadow?” Lakehurst asked, referring to the orphan boy the Bow Street agent had adopted.
“At the Graeme Home for Boys. Just for the summer. His request.”
“Isn’t that the Earl of Soothcoor’s orphanage?”
“One of them. Named after the earl’s maternal grandfather, he says.”
“Why would the boy ask to go there?”
“In the summer, the boys don’t have academic classes. Aside from trade classes—which go year ’round—they are learning to hunt with a bow and arrow and, would you believe, fly-fishing.”
Lakehurst laughed. “Things a city boy wouldn’t learn in the city. What tradework is he pursuing? I thought he wanted to be a runner like you.”
“He says he still does, though I try to dissuade him. He likes woodworking.”
Lakehurst started to open the door to the Lady Margaret parlor when he noticed Mr. Martin’s attention shift elsewhere. A slow smile spread over the man’s face. From the room across the hall came the sound of a violin.
