Her cheeks flamed.
And her sister took note, of course.
“Ellie!” she exclaimed. “Do you mean to suggest you have enjoyed Wycombe’s attentions?”
Very much so.
She cleared her throat, then licked her suddenly dry lips. “You are being far too forward, Izzy.”
“Youhave,” her sister guessed, grinning. “Oh, Ellie. I never would have guessed. You need not look so Friday-faced. I am pleased to know you are not entirely fashioned of ice.”
“Alas, I am not.” And she was quite cross about this unwanted, unexpected development. “But enough talk of me. I shall ring for tea, and then I want to hear more about your plans with Mr. Penhurst.”
Without waiting for her sister’s response, she rose and crossed the chamber to ring the bellpull. Tea and chatting were what she needed. Some time with her dear sister. Anything to keep her mind from returning once more to—no!
She would not think his name.
Chapter 7
It was nearly midnight, and the day had been bleak with rain. His body ached, his mind was still gripped with the same restlessness that had been chasing him for the past few weeks, and he had possibly consumed too much brandy this evening at the Black Souls with his friends.
Hudson passed through the familiar door and crossed the chamber with the reassured ease of a man who had traversed this same path in darkness hundreds of times before. That was because he had. Tonight was no different from the others which had preceded it, and yet it very much was.
He could not stop thinking of Elysande.
The memory of her, unsmiling and painfully lovely as she had watched him go, had been plaguing him with alarming regularity ever since he had left her last in the great hall at Brinton Manor over a month ago. Along with it, the dizzying remembrance of what they had shared by the lake.
The inconvenient lust which had been his constant companion since his departure from Buckinghamshire, like thoughts of his wife, could not be shaken. Their exchanges had been polite, nothing more than a handful of sentences strung together to reassure each other they existed. That their marriage day—which often seemed more like a dream from which he had been rudely awakened—had indeed been a reality.
On a sigh, he turned up a lamp, light flaring to life in the modest front room he had once called home. It was cool tonight, and he had neglected to set a fire for the evening. But never mind. Perhaps the change in weather was a reminder for him that he needed to return to the country. He could not avoid his wife forever. Sooner or later, he would have to see her and confront what had happened between them the morning he had left.
He shrugged out of his coat, catching the faint odor of cigars—regardless of how many times his friends smoked in his presence, he did not think he would ever grow accustomed to the scent—and settled it on a peg. As was his ritual, he removed his shoes and then rolled up his sleeves.
Performing his ablutions in the chill autumnal air was to be his penance. He poured clean water into a basin and then scrubbed his face, wishing he could so easily scrub his mind in the same fashion, and that he could cleanse the guilt which had been following him like a shadow since earlier that night. Hours had passed, and yet he could not shake it.
Guilt because he had been gone far longer than he had supposed he would be.
Guilt because he had wedded, almost bedded, and then abandoned Elysande.
Guilt because he was here and she was not. And because he had spent some of the evening at a dinner party—the first frivolity in which he had engaged for as long as he could recall—where Mrs. Maude Ainsley had been present. In his defense, he had not known she was a fellow guest when he had accepted the invitation his old friend, Zachary Barlowe, had issued for dinner.
But none of that had mattered when she had touched his thigh beneath the table and later invited him back into her bed. He had done his damnedest to swat her hand away without drawing notice to their fellow diners, but Maude had been undeterred by both his subtle refusal of her offer and his pointed mentioning of his wife.
Wife.
Elysande.
He splashed more water on his face, hating himself for what felt like a betrayal. He had denied Maude, of course. Their affair of two years ago had been brief but passionate. She had been a widow who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to seize it in both dainty hands. He had been a brash detective who loosely traveled in the same circles on account of the friendships he had forged.
But he was married now, and although he admired Maude’s keen intellect and the bold impunity with which she charged through life, he intended to remain faithful to the woman he had married. Moreover, it was not Maude he woke each morning thinking of, nor Maude he wanted.
He needed to return to Elysande and Buckinghamshire. And soon, he knew.
A few days had turned into a few weeks. Hudson had settled into a comfortable routine since his return to London, aside from his reason for being here. For Reginald Croydon was somewhere within London as well, and Hudson was determined to hunt him down and see him back to prison where he belonged. He was getting closer to discovering him than ever, new clues appearing each day. One interview, one day at a time.
Croydon was a manipulative mastermind who had been responsible, either directly or indirectly, for more murders and other assorted crimes than any other man Hudson had sent to justice in his entire career. That he remained free, having somehow bribed his way out of the cell which had been holding him, was a constant source of fury for Hudson.
He dried his face and hands with care before turning toward the small room where his bed dwelled. He would sleep like the dead tonight, that much was certain. He did not think he had ever felt more weighted down with despair. Everything was in a tumult. His marriage, his ability to aid Scotland Yard, finding that bastard Reginald Croydon alive and making him pay…every part of it.
