Xander refusedto sustain our ruse, citing a humiliation so severe he would never recover. It was a fair assessment. Fortunately, his abandonment of our shared cause allowed me to continue the investigation on my own.
Even I had to admit that my first attempt resulted in a poor showing. But I was nothing if not adaptable.
I adopted a disguise, borrowing my maid’s uniform. It was a bit too long, but otherwise did the job credibly after she pinned the hem. It also hid my dagger easily. I’d taken to strapping the bejeweled knife to my thigh each morning. Gabriel had gifted it to me on our honeymoon. What a poetic sort of justice if I ended up sheathing it in the back of his killer.
With no other ideas, I’d taken to studying the man, following him. Day in, day out, I watched—his own personal phantom. Unfortunately, I had found little in the way of incriminating evidence, but I had learned a great number of interesting facts about William Hart.
That very morning, for example, he abandoned Lord Leighton to open the office alone and made his way down the street to Hudson’s Bakery. I watched from across the cobblestone path as Mrs. Ainsley handed him something delectable and shoved him to a corner table. She returned with a stack of ledgers that she plopped down before him.
Mr. Hart reviewed each of them in a precise fashion, checking numbers against one another with a finger on each. Presumably, he was reviewing the various contracts required to supply a bakery.
Occasionally he would take a distracted bite of a… tart? Cake? Something equally delightful? I had not eaten that morning and Mrs. Ainsley’s creations were always mouthwatering.
Though I had found little to incriminate him, I had gleaned information of interest. He wore spectacles while working. When something in the ledgers did not match his expectations, he would remove the spectacles and rub them against a sleeve. Then he would return them to his face and sigh when the information remained unchanged.
His left shoulder plagued him when he sat too long in one attitude. He would tense and massage it with the other hand.
When the ledgers contained something particularly offensive, he would drag a hand through his hair, ruining his half-hearted effort to tame it as it returned to the wild mess of curls from the masquerade.
Lastly, I learned that he was adorably uncomfortable with infants. No, not adorable, just uncomfortable. A few moments ago, Mrs. Ainsley pressed baby Emma into his arms with a laugh. At first, he held the tiny redhead an arm’s length away from him with both hands. After a moment, he pulled her closer to his chest, freeing one of his hands to catch her tiny fist. She shook it with all her might and he smiled.
“He is likely innocent.” Xander’s directive ran through my mind once again. I had expected that rule to be more difficult to follow than it was proving to be. William Hart did not act like a murderer. Not that I knew many—or any, for that matter. But he did not fit any of my expectations.
Eventually, he handed Emma back to her mother with some reluctance and packed up his copies of the documents, then returned the bakery copies to Mrs. Ainsley and accepted a basket of treats. He slipped Mrs. Ainsley the funds to cover the baked goods in spite of her protestations and stepped out of the shop onto the cobblestones.
I followed at a distance, just near enough to hear him hum something indistinct. His voice was smooth and he was sure of his pitch.
He arrived at his office, and I took the place that had become mine over the past several days—the bench across the street.
Through the glass door, I saw him set the treats on a desk and all of the clerks rose to select a pastry before going back to their desks. Lord Leighton came out of his office to retrieve one as well.
Did killers give their staff baked goods?
WILLIAM
The thing about knowing I was being followed was that it threw into sharp clarity the tediousness of my everyday life. If she was to spend her days staring at me, the least I could do was make them interesting. The only problem was that my attendance at the masquerade was, quite literally, the most interesting evening I’d had in years, perhaps ever.
After Rosehill chose not to drag me down the aisle or call me out, I found myself at a loss. The chit clearly did not intend to force me into matrimony, in spite of her abysmal taste in husbands. I could admit that it would not have taken much effort to convince me. I’d loved one woman who lived and breathed for Gabriel Hasket, what was a second?
But that fact left the question of what she wanted with me. She followed me for hours each day. A woman of her station with seemingly no demands on her time was unlikely. Which meant she was abandoning those obligations in favor of watching me.
She was perched on what had become her bench across the street wearing her usual ill-fitting maid’s uniform. Who she thought she was fooling with that was anyone’s guess. An ugly dress and a dowdy cap were hardly enough to detract from the bewitching beauty she radiated.
The line of sight from my office to her bench was direct, presumably her purpose in selecting it. I found her position was more than a little distracting. My nights were filled with little beyond memories of her sweet lips, soft hair, and delicate curves. And my days were filled with the sight of said lips and hair and curves.
She was everywhere. Every minute of every day she surrounded me. I could not escape her and worse still, I couldn’t decide if I wished to be free of her. The last minutes before midnight that night were a revelation. If time hadn’t interfered, I would still be worshiping her. I gladly would have kissed her until the sun ceased to rise.
“Your shadow is getting wet,” Kit said, startling me from my efforts to look busy. There had been a lot of that the last few days—staring at paperwork without really seeing anything.
He was propped against the doorframe again, munching on a tart.
“What?”
“Lady Rycliffe. She’s getting wet. It’s raining, or didn’t you notice? Or did you finally manage to pay attention to your work for the first time all week?”
I glanced outside, confirming his intelligence. It was raining, rather heavily, and Lady Rycliffe made no effort to abandon her vigil. Instead, she merely hunkered down slightly to present a smaller target for the offending rain.
Without pausing to consider the ramifications, I rose, snatched my umbrella, and trotted out to meet her. Her gaze was downturned, avoiding the drops splashing across her face, sacrificing her coiffure instead.
