CHAPTER 12
Holt vanished into the caves and Elise knew they had lost this skirmish. She stopped first, her breath fire in her chest, her skirts damp and heavy with salt. The wind tugged at her hood, loosening a strand of hair that whipped against her cheek. Mr. Leigh halted a pace behind her, close enough that she could feel his presence. As ever, he seemed contained, watchful and controlled.
“Well,” she said, without turning, “that answers nothing.”
“No,” he replied quietly, “but it confirms something.”
She glanced back at him. The moonlight caught the planes of his face, intent, thoughtful and infuriatingly calm, as though he had expected this outcome all along.
“You followed him,” she said, “as I did.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you are unperturbed that he escaped.” She stated the words as fact.
“Holt was never meant to be caught tonight.”
She let out a short, humourless breath. “Then what was the purpose of following him?”
“To see who he spoke with,” he said, “where he went and—” He hesitated a fraction. “—who else might be watching.”
That pricked her nerves. Elise straightened. “You believe there were others?”
“I would stake my life on it,” he said simply.
They began walking back toward the headland together, the path narrow and uneven beneath their feet. Waves splashed against the rocks below, the tide swollen. Above them, the sky had cleared to a hard scatter of stars, cold and distant.
Elise drew her cloak closer about her. Her thoughts were racing now—not with fear, but with calculation.
“You recognized me,” she said abruptly.
He did not deny it. “Your disguise was… determined.”
She pursed her lips. “I did not ask for critique.”
“No,” he said mildly. “You asked for honesty.”
She shot him a look. “Did I?”
“You ask many things without voicing them,” he replied.
That gave her pause. She did not like being read so easily.
“And yet,” she said, “you said nothing.”
“You were disguised for a reason,” he said. “Acknowledging you would have put you at risk.”
“That is thoughtful and perceptive of you.”
He inclined his head with a slight upturn of his lips.
She almost smiled—almost—but suspicion returned at once, more acute than before.
“You were not at the tavern by chance,” she said.
“No.”
“Did you follow me there?”
