“What are you talking about?” she choked out. “My glove?”
His brow wrinkled. “This morning one of the maids found your glove on the floor in Lady Winford’s chamber. Do you know how it might have gotten there?”
Selina shook her head, trying to find any kind of explanation for this incriminating news. More so, trying to understand the answer herself. Howhadher glove come to be in the Winford chamber? She had no idea! Had she been so careless as to leave it there? No. She’d been wearing both gloves when she returned to her chamber and she’d never gone back.
“I must have lost the glove the night we first searched the chamber together,” she said, barely keeping the tremble from her voice. “Perhaps it was kicked under the bed somehow and that delayed its discovery.”
He shook his head slowly. “No, Selina. They were the gloves you were wearing last night.”
She swallowed hard. “How could you possibly know that?”
He leaned a little closer and his hand stirred like he wanted to touch her. But he didn’t. He didn’t, and her heart hurt. “Because I remember peeling them off your fingers,” he whispered. “I remember seeing the little embroidered initials inside. I remember your scent clinging to them, vanilla and cinnamon, the same one that clings to me when I’ve spent any time at your side. They were the gloves you wore last night, Selina. And you had both of them when I came to your chamber to make love to you. Aside from the fact you weren’t wearing gloves the night we searched the chamber. So the one had to have been left in Lady Winford’s chamberafterwe parted company.”
Selina pushed from the bed, hating how exposed she felt physically and emotionally. And also how compromised she was by her lack of knowledge. If she knew how her damned glove had gotten into the chamber, she could have probably created a passable lie. But since she had no idea…
“Selina.” His tone was sharper. No longer the voice of her lover who had comforted her and pleased her and held her. No, this was the voice of Derrick Huntington, investigator. She wasn’t his bed partner anymore—she was a suspect.
And she stung from the loss of connection as much as she trembled from fear that he was about to uncover all her secrets.
“I don’t know,” she breathed, because that was the truth and he would see that. “I don’t know how the glove could have possibly gotten into the room, because I never went there.”
“Not even to help me?” he pressed. “Not to take part in the investigation against my wishes?”
She shook her head. That wasn’t what he thought. She could tell from his voice. He really did suspect her. And she had to get him to change his course right now.
“No, I never went back,” she said, strong with that truth again. “But…but perhaps the Fox did it.”
One brow arched and he stared at her. “How?”
“He could have gone there looking for the necklace and dropped my glove,” she said, desperate for the answer that would make Derrick stop looking at her like she was a liar. Shewasa liar, but seeing it on his face was like ripping her heart out.
“Why would he have your glove?” he pressed. “How could he had gotten it if you never left your chamber last night after I departed?”
She worried her lip, trying to come up with an explanation. She walked away from him as she did it and crossed to her dressing table. She opened her top drawer, trying to find something to do with her hands and saw her few pieces of jewelry there. It was funny, she rarely wore any. She just stole it from other people.
Most of her pieces weren’t worth much, except for a pair of cameo earrings that Robert had given her at Morgan and Lizzie’s wedding the previous year. And looking at them, she developed a plan. Not a perfect plan, but a plan nonetheless.
She made a show of digging in her drawer and used the distraction to palm the earrings. “Derrick!” she cried out. “Derrick, my earrings are gone!”
“What?” he said, getting out of the bed and coming to her side.
When he stared into the drawer, she took a moment to drop the cameo earrings into the pocket of her robe. How she hated herself for it. And for all the lies she would now tell.
“Robert gave me earrings at our brother’s wedding a few months ago,” she explained. “And they’re gone.Thatcould be how he got my glove. Derrick, I seem to be a victim of the Faceless Fox!”
Chapter 18
Derrick fastened his trousers and tucked his shirt into the waistband as he watched Selina pace the room. Every step was restless, shaky. She was certainly no longer the intensely confident woman who had tested his every boundary.
She was also still clad only in a flimsy dressing gown, going on about her lost earrings in fits and starts. He wasn’t sure if the near-nudity was truly because she was distressed and hadn’t realized she was still unclothed…or if it was nothing more than an attempt at distraction.
It certainly worked as one, for he couldn’t stop staring at how her body shifted beneath the silk, even now when everything in him told him she was a liar.
He shook his head as that word ricocheted through his brain, not for the first time since confronting her about the glove. He hated that word. Hated that he aimed it at her, even as a question.
And hated that he now had to put himself into his role as investigator with her. But he did it, even as his uneasy heart throbbed. He watched her rather than listened. Every tic, every breath, every flutter of her hand was a tell. Together they told the story, whatever truth she might try to hide. Whatever truth he might not really want to reveal.
She was afraid,thatwas clearly true. He could see it in the way she moved, in the elevated pitch of her voice, in the way her hands shook ever so slightly at her side. Shewasafraid.
