“Me? No, of course not.” She forced another smile and glanced away. His suspicion and concern cut away at her until she almost lost her resolve.
Would he ever forgive her for this?
Perhaps she could show him the note, after all. What was the worst he could do? Strain himself going after the letter-writer? Do the exact same thing she was considering, but in poorer health?
There was a possibility he would recognise the handwriting, of course, and so he might be able to inform her decision. But if he didn’t, and he prevented her from making this meeting, she might never learn whatever it was this person knew about the accident.
And they had to know something. No one outside of her and Nathanial, and perhaps the doctor who had attended her, knew that she had been deliberately poisoned. For the person to mention that the two events weren’t connected suggested they had intimate knowledge of the situation.
Her head was spinning and the food turned to ashes in her mouth.
“Theo?” Nathanial asked, his voice gentle. “Are you quite well?”
“The journey tired me,” she said after a moment. She might as well find a reason for her sudden preoccupation, and if she retired now, she would have a few more minutes to herself before Nathanial came up to bed, as he would.
“Of course.” His brow didn’t clear, but concern now replaced the uncertainty in his expression. “I should have thought—it’s been a challenging few weeks for you, too.”
She rose, the letter clenched in her fist, and approached him. A gentle smile touched her lips at her nearness. The letter burned her hand.
“Goodnight, Nate,” she said, looking down into the face of the husband she had grown to love so dearly. The grey eyes, the dark hair, the softness that she knew she could bring from him like nectar from a flower.
He reached out and stroked the back of a knuckle along her cheek. “You’ll see me soon,” he said, a teasing note in his voice,although there was still that wariness around the tight corners of his eyes. She smoothed them with the pads of her fingers, feeling the strangest urge to cry.
Her resolve faltered, and she clung to its frayed edges. If she gave Nathanial the letter and absolved herself of all responsibility, she would be openinghimto danger. That, she could never do.
Before she said something to incriminate herself, she picked up her skirts and walked from the room, feeling Nathanial’s gaze on her back with every step.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
True to his word, Nathanial joined her before much time had passed at all, and she was forced to hide the letter inside one of her gloves. Betsy had been apprised of her plans to rise early, and as she and Nathanial lay together, his arm wrapped around her, their breaths mingling, she told him she was slipping away early to see her family.
He didn’t object. The guilt settled in.
But even if she hadn’t been feeling guilty, clinging to Nathanial’s warmth and the soft regularity of his breathing as though she could live in each passing moment forever, she wouldn’t have slept. She was, as she well knew, about to do something stupid, and every heartbeat brought her closer to its execution.
Or perhaps hers.
Every thought was a morbid one, and if Nathanial had awoken to see her restless, sleepless worry, she would have told him everything.
But he slumbered on, and when dawn finally broke across the sky, Theo slipped from the bed, sliding a dressing gown over her shoulders, and moved into her dressing room. There, she rang for Betsy, who came bleary-eyed to dress her in a plain, dark dress.
“Are you sure about this, ma’am?” she whispered as Theo descended the stairs in near-darkness.
“Perfectly sure,” Theo said, though it wasn’t strictly true. She’d read the small note several times that morning alone, and there was little in her life she waslesssure of.
Yet if she didn’t take this step, would they ever find out who was responsible for Nathanial’s accident? The grooms at Stapleton didn’t know, and neither did the beaters. They hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t spoken to anyone, and there were no reports of poachers or anyone else on their land the morning of the hunt.
No one knew anything except, apparently, this mysterious letter-writer, and Theo was determined to unravel this mystery.
Just in case, however, she had secreted one of Nathanial’s knives in her reticule, and she’d left a letter for him with Betsy, to be delivered if she didn’t return within a few hours. All the eventualities she could think of were covered.
Time to find the truth.
The carriage pulled up outside the house as sunlight spilled across the streets for the first time. This was not the grey, foggy day she had feared; the sun burned away the mist, and the sky was a delicate, eggshell blue.
She relaxed into the seat.
Victoria Gate came into sight, far less conspicuous than the Canada Gates beside Buckingham Palace, and the carriage came to a stop. Hawkins, the groom, helped her from the carriage.
