“Because I have not yet received confirmation of my suspicions. I could only do so much in the time available to me; the remainder I placed in Mr. Gardner’s capable hands. I expect to hear something very soon.”
“So you will owe him a second favor after all. I’m not certain that should have been your decision alone.”
“You are overly concerned with this matter of a favor and a debt and have asked nothing about my suspicions.”
Olivia’s eyes darted away and she fell silent. Her throat was at once too dry and narrow to manage even a few words.
“What I did, Olivia, was in aid of seeing you free of this fear you harbor. Like your memories, it is also your constant companion. Do you think I don’t know why you cannot say you love me?”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
“Look at me, and perhaps I’ll believe you.”
She did, but it was not a look she could sustain. “It signifies nothing,” she said. “You may put whatever construction you like upon it, but it still has no meaning.”
“So you say.” Griffin caught her chin as she would have turned her head and levered her back using only his fingertip. “I do love you, Olivia, and that is not predicated on you returning the same feeling for me. I choose to believe you do, though I will not insist upon hearing it. If it has not come to you yet, I hold out hope that it will. Mayhap it will strike you suddenly, for no reason that you can name, and you will know with the same certainty I do that it has always been love, if not from the first, then from only a few moments past it. You could not have known it then, but looking back, you will wonder how it escaped your notice, or why it was so important to deny what so clearly fit, and in our case, was so clearly inevitable.”
Now she stared at him, and because her throat closed again, she said nothing.
“Shall I tell you the rest of what you’re afraid to hear?” If he hadn’t been watching her closely, alert to the faintest change in her expression, he would have missed the slight parting of her lips and the soft, sibilant sound of her reply. “I could find no corroboration of your story, Olivia. No evidence that anyone ever died at the inn, no tales passed on about a murder on the grounds, no indication that there was ever an investigation related to a death by any authority.”
Olivia struggled to sit up and realized that Griffin’s arm about her waist now served to restrain her. Frustrated, she lay back and ground out, “It does not seem possible. When they lifted him away from me, he was so heavy. They struggled with his weight. I don’t know how he could have lived.”
“I don’t know that he did.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There was no death at the inn, but a Mr. Rollins—not Rawlings—was found hanged in his room at university. As best I could determine, the timing of his death connects closely to your departure from the inn.”
“But how could you know that? I never said any—”
“The Romneys,” he said, placing a finger to her lips when she would have protested. “You’ve spent these last years looking over your shoulder, Olivia, imagining the inevitability of being found out and alternately wondering if there was truly anything to be discovered.”
He was right, but that did not make it easier to hear. “I don’t understand about Mr. Rollins. He hanged himself?”
Griffin’s reply to her question was a noncommittal murmur. “I did not learn about that from the Romneys. There would be no reason for them to know of it. I visited Cambridge and made inquiries. You said you thought all five of the travelers at your table were students. It seemed the place to go once I located your inn.” He saw she was not entirely at ease with what he had done, but had little choice to accept it. “Your decision to go to Alastair while he was yet at university was not without risk. You must have known that. There was every chance you might have had an encounter with the students who came to your aid. Was that what you hoped would happen? You’d have had your answers then.”
Olivia realized she honestly didn’t know. “I’m not sure it was done of a purpose. At the time it seemed that Alastair could offer sanctuary, and I rarely ventured far from the residence he found for me. How curious it is, to think on it now, that I should have put myself in the very midst of a place where I might expect to find answers, then avoid every opportunity to look for them.”
“Curious, yes, but then we are all pieces of work, are we not?”
“I suppose.”
“There is another matter still to consider.”
She sighed. “There can’t be.”
He gave her a wry grin. “You assumed that Rawlings and his friends fled that night, but I can tell you now it wasn’t so. Rawlings never returned, but whiskey, gin, and two pints of ale were all present the following morning. If Rawlings’s friends were able to explain his disappearance to the satisfaction of others, especially the Romneys, what then accounted for your absence?”
“What?”
“Consider this. You disappeared, Olivia. If there was no evidence that anything was amiss, then it would seem you vanished without cause. The Romneys would have been concerned. You imagined you were leaving behind a body, but I am telling you one was never found there. The good innkeeper and his wife would have wondered at your absence. You have said they cared for you. You left no note, no explanation. What reason might they have been given that would have satisfied everyone?”
Olivia’s eyes widened slowly. “They believed I ran off with Mr. Rawlings.”
“And there you have it.” He tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “I have never accused you of being a slow top.”
“They told you?”
