He could not shake the suspicion which had been dogging him ever since his return to town. That his time away had made him soft. That the distractions of inheriting the dukedom and marrying Elysande—domesticity, damn it—had turned all his steel to pudding.
He shook his head. “The best would have brought Croydon to heel by now.”
“You are getting closer, are you not?”
There was the devil in the details. The hell of it was, Hudson did not know for certain, although he felt sure he would soon find him. There had been clues. A trail of them. There was Francis Watts, the former Scotland Yard detective who had been paid a handsome sum by Reginald Croydon to divulge the details of the previous investigation pertaining to him. But Watts himself had been jailed before Croydon’s escape. There was an unknown female who had caused a commotion outside the prison on the day Croydon had escaped, and a witness had identified her as aMrs. L. Hudson was equally sure the mysterious Mrs. L. would prove the key to learning where Croydon had fled.
“Closer is not sufficient,” he told Barlowe, shaking himself from his heavy thoughts.
He had ruthlessly followed every lead, working in an unofficial capacity with his connections. Every lead had ultimately still left him empty-handed. A room where he had been rumored to have been staying—abandoned. A woman who fit the description of the mysterious female who had caused the distraction enabling Croydon’s escape—gone. The widow of Croydon’s conspirator had claimed to know nothing. Interrogating the bastard’s mother, who was also in prison for crimes she had committed with her son, had produced no useful knowledge either.
“You will find him.” Barlowe turned to Elysande. “I have faith in your husband, Ellie. He is a good man. One of the best.”
Ellie.
His lips twitched with the urge to correct his friend. Instead, he finished the last of his soup.
* * *
After a dayof travel and the shock of Mrs. Ainsley’s murder, Elysande was exhausted. Her mind and her body ached in equal measure. And yet, she was not ready for sleep. Not because of the accommodations. Her room at the town house was sparsely furnished, but the bed had felt comfortable enough when she had rested there for a brief nap earlier before dinner.
Denning had busied herself with overseeing the opening of the duchess’s suite and the subsequent unpacking. Having newly settled into the town house himself, and unaccustomed to the running of a household—likely also distracted by the terrible mire in which he was embroiled—Hudson had not seen her room prepared. He was still new in his role of duke. In some ways newer than she in her role of duchess. Whereas she had been born to such a life, he had not, and the distinction was clearest in matters of the domestics.
No, the reason she had sought out her husband, who was seated in the library in nothing but his shirt sleeves and the trousers he had worn at dinner, was not because she was displeased with her room. It was because she could not seem to stay away.
Dinner had been a somewhat uneven affair, given Mr. Barlowe’s presence. He was certainly a most interesting gentleman. Elysande had been partially grateful for his company, for in his absence, she feared the dinner may have grown stilted and awkward. In the time since he had first greeted her and she had retreated to rest and dress for dinner, Hudson had seemed to withdraw. He had been quiet, everything from the angle of his jaw to the expression on his face—hard and harsh. The bitterness in his voice when he had spoken of his inability to bring about the arrest of the escaped prisoner, Reginald Croydon, had not been lost upon her.
“Elysande.” Her husband rose as she moved toward him, closing the distance. He held a glass of what she supposed must be brandy loosely in his right hand, his fingers cradling the stem. “I thought you had retired for the evening.”
She wondered where his waistcoat had gone, taking note of the buttons undone on his shirt. A vee of his chest was visible, and for a heart-stopping moment, she recalled all too well how he had looked, naked and wet and glimmering in the sun by the lake on the day after their wedding.
The last day she had seen him before this one.
The reminder had the subtlety of a bee sting and a similar amount of inherent pain. She steeled herself against her body’s unwanted reaction to him. “I could not sleep just yet.”
He placed his glass on a low table and prowled toward her with the predatory grace of a large cat. “Forgive me for not seeing your room prepared.”
It was the third time he had apologized for the oversight.
“You had other concerns weighing on your mind,” she said quietly, stopping by a wall of empty shelves where once, presumably, there had been books. “Your library looks as if it has been pilfered.”
“Likely from the previous Wycombe,” he said, his voice low and nearer than she had supposed.
His presence at her back was like a brand.
She ought to move away.
Instead, she cast a glance over her shoulder. “If you would like, I can assist in procuring new reading material. I cannot promise you will agree with my taste, however.”
How she missed her own small library, left at Brinton Manor after she had moved it there from Talleyrand Park in the wake of Hudson’s departure. Burying herself in engineering tracts had long been a favored pastime of hers.
He hummed as he moved so that he was at her side instead of behind her, the sound low and deep. And she felt the effects of that lone sound in her core. What was the matter with her? She should not be so weak for this man, so vulnerable.
“What are your tastes?” he asked, rubbing his hand along his jaw where the shadow of his whiskers lent him a raw masculinity she could not help but to find appealing.
Youwas the ridiculous thought that came to mind. She did find him incredibly attractive. He was handsome, though not classically so, but it was the aura of sensuality that he possessed which drew her to him and held her in his irresistible thrall.
Never mind that, however. She had every reason to maintain a strict sense of caution when it came to trusting him and allowing herself to once more be as vulnerable as she had been by the lake that reckless morning.
