“You must not return to those rooms,” she said, shivering as a chill came over her that had nothing to do with the autumnal weather overtaking town and everything to do with the very real specter of danger haunting them both.
He took a long pull from his drink, leaving his lips shiny with the liquid. For a moment, her foolish heart recalled how those lips had felt against hers, coaxing her to respond to his kiss. And then she sternly chastised herself for even daring to think of something so reckless and inane. Kisses! How could she, when a woman had lost her life and her husband of little more than one month was perhaps a suspect in her murder?
“I have no wish to see them ever again,” he said, his expression tormented.
What he must have witnessed…
He had once told her he was nothing like the men in her acquaintance, and he had not been wrong. Still, she could not help but to suspect that his previous acquaintance with Mrs. Ainsley would have rendered the sight even more shocking and horrible. There was no feigning the raw pain in his voice, in his gaze. He made such a solitary figure, tortured by his gruesome discovery.
Realization struck her, then and there. She had a choice to make. She could either believe him or leave him. Either take the sum of what she had come to know about this man and determine whether or not she dared trust him, or decide he was guilty of a deadly sin. That those hands that had touched her with such exquisite tenderness and brought her to the heights of passion had also inflicted pain.
It was the last thought that broke the dam within her. Elysande went to him, closing the distance between herself and her husband.
“I believe you,” she said.
He wrapped her in a tight embrace then, as if he had no intention of ever letting her go. She inhaled deeply of the familiar scent of soap and Hudson, of musk and man. The warmth of his big body radiated into hers. In her heart, she felt safe here, with him. It felt…strangely right. Her mind, however, still whirled with the madness of the day’s revelations. And with the uncertainty of the future, looming.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice brimming with gratitude as he buried his face in her hair and inhaled. “I have missed you, Elysande.”
For some reason, tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked to send them away. “I missed you too,” she confessed.
More startling than the tears?
Just how much she meant those words.
Chapter 8
Fortunately, Barlowe had accepted their invitation to stay for dinner, providing an essential element of distraction for Hudson’s first meal with his wife since her arrival in London. It was a rather unassuming affair, offered in what he had learned was termed serviceà la française, which simply meant the dishes were presented at once and the diners served themselves. A much preferable means of dining, in Hudson’s opinion. He could not abide by formality.
He reminded himself to sip his wine with care before lifting a spoonful of partridge soup to his lips. The pleasant flavor of celery and onion combined with the rich meat, but he scarcely tasted it. His mind was still whirling with the events of the last two days. Everything that had happened between his first sighting of Maude in his bed until now seemed as if it were a lifetime rather than a mere fragment of one.
“The newspapers are carving you up like a damned Michaelmas goose,” Barlowe announced, cutting the silence of the table, which had heretofore been marked by only the gentle clink of cutlery.
Had he thought himself fortunate his friend had remained? Strike that bloody thought.Unfortunately was clearly the word he had been in want of. He lowered his spoon.
“Let them.” He reached for his wine, sending a healthy portion down his gullet.
Not enough. Never enough. Not since two nights ago.
But then, hell. If he were honest with himself, he would admit he had been in his cups far too often since his return to town. Reginald Croydon’s escape continued to haunt him, his own inability to track down the bastard and return him to within prison walls making a mockery of his every day. The only escape had been seeking out his friends or finding the bottom of a bottle of wine. Few cases of his had ever gone unsolved for this long.
“What are they saying, Mr. Barlowe?” Elysande asked quietly.
“Nothing you need concern yourself with, Ellie,” Barlowe said, giving Hudson’s wife a charming grin and an accompanying wink. “Leave the papers and their scandal mongering ways to Stone and myself.”
Ellie? What the bloody hell?
He had sent a trusted friend to fetch his wife because he had not been able to leave London thanks to his uncomfortable involvement in Maude’s murder. Although Barlowe was an unabashed scoundrel as it pertained to ladies—he was a pretty-faced, golden-haired rake—he had been the most trustworthy friend Hudson possessed who was near enough to seek out Elysande and bring her to London. His good friend, the Duke of Northwich, was in the country with his family. The Marquess of Greymoor had been occupied with a problem at his new hotel.
He pinned Barlowe with a meaningful glare. “What is it you propose I do about the papers,Barry?”
His friend barked out an unrepentant laugh and raised his glass of wine to Hudson. “Well done, my friend. I have been called a great many names before, but never before Barry.”
“It has a certain delightful sound to it,” he returned, equally pleasant.
“You need not fear that I was attempting to seduce your lovely duchess whilst fetching her and escorting her to London,” Barlowe said calmly, as if Elysande were not sitting there with them at the dining room table, before turning to her. “I can be a gentleman when the occasion merits it. Can I not, Ellie?”
There he went again, abbreviating Elysande’s name as if it were his right.
