Oswald swore softly under his breath.
Winston’s hands went cold. “Complicity.”
“Indeed.” Pike produced a folded paper and tapped it. “His lordship has given sworn testimony that Lady Adeline absconded with certain jewels and papers belonging properly to the Harston estate. Furthermore, he asserts that she argued with Lady Harston and fled the accident that resulted. An accident that saw Lady Harston tragically killed. He does not accuse her of murder but believes she is culpable.”
“Accident,” Winston repeated, every word a step on thin ice.
“A domestic dispute gone tragically awry,” Pike said smoothly. “You know how the world delights in exaggerating such things. In any case, Bow Street has been engaged to discover Lady Adeline’s whereabouts and to question all who have…harbored her.”
He let the word sit.
“Harbored,” Oswald said, sharp as a flint.
“It is a legal term, sir,” Pike replied, not looking at him. “Nothing more.”
Winston heard Adeline’s voice in the vicarage yard:
He killed my mother. I saw it.
He saw again the way her hands had shaken, not like a woman rehearsing a line but like a girl remembering the sound of a fall.
“And what,” Winston asked, “does Lord Harston suggest I have to do with this?”
“Merely that his daughter may have taken refuge in your household under a false name,” Pike said. “As your steward and the local magistrates can attest, strangers in a district draw notice. Bow Street will require statements. I thought it kinder to warn you before they do.”
“How very considerate,” Winston said.
Pike’s gaze flicked, just once, to the empty chair near the hearth where Adeline often sat. “If Lady Adeline is here, Your Grace, it would be wise to urge her to submit to proper questioning. If she flees, it will look…unfortunate.”
Winston’s mind had already run ahead.
Accused of theft and murder by the man who killed her mother. Bow Street roused. Strangers asking questions at my gates. And Adeline, who has always run from hurt, hearing of it and thinking there was only one thing to do.
“She isn’t here,” he said.
Pike’s brows rose a fraction. “No?”
“She left this house without my permission,” Winston said, each word smooth with effort. “If Bow Street wishes to find her, they may start with Harston Hall. My money says she’ll go there before anywhere else.”
Pike’s composure slipped just enough to show genuine surprise. “To Harston Hall? Why under heaven would she…”
“To gather what her father has been careful to hide,” Winston said. “Statements. Witnesses. A scrap of truth, if any of it is left where your master hasn’t trampled it.”
“Your Grace goes too far,” Pike said sharply. “I represent a peer of the realm.”
“You represent a man who beats his wife and sells his daughter on paper,” Winston replied. “You’ll forgive me if the realm impresses me less than my own eyes.”
Oswald made a small, admiring sound.
Pike’s lips thinned. “I shall convey your opinions to Lord Harston.”
“You do that,” Winston said. “And convey this as well. If he or any man in his employ sets foot on my land without a warrant signed and sealed by a magistrate I respect, I’ll have them turned out by my own hand. If he wishes to charge his daughter with crimes, he may do it in a court where she can answer. Not in parlors and corridors.”
Pike recovered some of his smoothness. “Then we understand one another. Good afternoon, Your Grace. Lord Duskwood.”
He bowed and withdrew. The maid’s frightened face flashed in the doorway and vanished as the hall swallowed Pike up.
For a moment neither man spoke. The fire ticked. A log collapsed in on itself.
