“Consider confiding in me. I believe this is just the beginning.
On those words, he left.
Elise waited until his footsteps faded before allowing her composure to slip, just for an instant. She pressed her shaking hand to her chest; her breaths quickened and uneven. She turned back to Blake, relief flooding her when she heard the gentle rasp of his breathing.
“Rest now,” she whispered.
Involuntarily, her gaze turned toward the door, where Mr. Leigh had disappeared moments before. She exhaled with slow deliberation.
“You fool,” she whispered to herself. “You should never have allowed him near.”
Yet what choice had she had? She could not have moved Blake alone. The weight of him—even half-conscious and willing—would have been impossible, and she would not have left him to die in that ruined shack like refuse. Elise prayed he would not die. She needed Blake now more than ever, but she feared this was just the beginning of what Holt meant to do to get what he wanted.
CHAPTER 13
When Edmund descended the narrow stair, leaving Mrs. Larkin and the unconscious Blake behind, the weight of her last words—‘You must tell no one’—settled upon him like a mantle he had half a mind to shrug off and half a mind to guard with his life.
“I will not betray you,” he had told her.
He meant it, and hoped it could be true.
Yet as he stepped into the quiet corridor, closing the door softly behind him, his face twisted with the very contradiction he had sworn to contain.
He prayed—truly prayed—that she was not a traitor. His instinct told him she was not.
He did not think her one. Everything in her manner bespoke caution born of necessity, not deceit born of malice. Nevertheless, he had seen entirely too many honourable women drawn into peril they had neither invited nor deserved—and he had seen, likewise, too many clever villains wear the mask of virtue.
God preserve me, he thought grimly, from becoming yet another fool undone by a graceful woman’s secrets.
He halted midway on the stairs, rubbing a hand over his mouth in frustration. Impartiality and distance were essential for him to do his duty, and he would do it regardless of the cost.
He could still see the way she had looked at him—her eyes storm-grey, fearful for another man’s life, yet refusing to give a single inch of truth.
There was nothing mild or ordinary about Elise Larkin.
His heart thumped an unwelcome agreement at the thought.
“That will not do,” he muttered, resuming his descent. “You will be sensible, Edmund. You will keep your wits, no matter how she looks at you.”
He reached the last step and paused in the shadows of the corridor the stairs led to. Blake’s injuries passed before his mind—the neat slice of the blade, the deliberate bruising, the savage kicks that had broken ribs.
This was not the work of drunkards or petty thieves but of men who wished someone silenced. Holt.
That meant Blake knew something.
The combination set Edmund’s instincts buzzing unpleasantly.
Blake. The name had come too quickly, too nervously, to be false. No surname, no rank, no explanation—only the look in Mrs. Larkin’s eyes; that quick, frightened flicker when she realized she had said more than she had intended.
Resolute, he adjusted his coat collar, and on leaving the school by the same side door, headed toward the cliff path. The quickest route to the town ran along the headland and past the old fishing shack where he had found Blake that morning.
No ordinary violence explained a man being beaten so brutally and left to die. He needed clarity—evidence. He needed something to keep him from leaping to conclusions—whether in Mrs. Larkin’s favour or against it.
The hut came into view around a bend, slouched against the cliff like a wounded animal bracing against wind and time. Edmund slowed, scanning the area before stepping through the half-open door.
Inside, the air remained cold and stale with the scent of dried blood.
He crouched near the place Blake had lain, tracing the impressions in the dirt. There were two sets of heavy boot prints, at least—one deep-heeled, one smooth-soled but wide—and made by men, by the size of them.
