“You do,” Finn said gently.
She cleared her throat. That observation felt too intimate. “Er, what would you do? How would you go about such an investigation, if you still wished to do it?”
He tilted his head. “I offered, Esme, and the offer still stands. I would need a reason to bump into him. I believe he maintains your father’s membership at White’s. I’ve always preferred Fitzhugh’s, but I have my own membership regardless. I could find him there and strike up a conversation without it seeming too odd.”
She worried her lip. She’d wanted this and she still did, but the idea of Finn walking up to her cousin, a man she believed capable of murder, was frightening. She felt defensive of him. “What would you ask him?” she pressed.
“Nothing.”
She shook her head. “Nothing? Then what would be the purpose?"
He laughed. “I think it would be too obvious if I marched across a crowded club, grabbed him by the lapels and demanded he confess to murdering my friend.”
She let out a humorless chuckle. “Oh God, but that sounds wonderful, though. To do that? To humiliate him in front of his friends, to put the idea out there into the world where it would be whispered about and questioned?”
“I wish I could do that for you,” he said, and took her hand. He lifted it to his lips and brushed them to her knuckles gently, frowning at the light bruises there from her fight earlier in the week before he’d returned to London. Which she’d won, despite her distraction. “And perhaps one day I can. But for now I would need to put him at ease. Make him see me as a potential ally, not an enemy. Perhaps I’ll even invite him to my sister’s engagement party in a few days. It’s become quite the sought-after invitation in Society.”
Whenever he’d spoken of Marianne’s upcoming nuptials, Esme had sensed a tension there. A sadness. But now he seemed lighter. Like a weight had been lifted from him.
“The engagement to Ramsbury,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“He’s quite the catch.”
His face immediately fell. “Please tell me you didn’t ever have eyes for my friend.”
“Never!” she said, though her chest puffed at what was clearly his flash of jealousy at the idea. “I had eyes for no one in my days in Society. I never really fit in, even before I had to run for my life.”
“I’ve no idea how,” he said, and pushed a loose curl away from her cheek. “You ought to have been the center of all attention."
She swallowed once again at the focused intent of his stare. There was the longing. The want that called to her own. Shereached up to trace his lips with her fingertips. “You know, I have no way to repay you for this, Finn. Save one.”
She let her fingers drag down from his lips, over his chin, across his neatly tied cravat and the center of his chest. He caught his breath as she inched lower, tracing his stomach and finally cupping his cock through his trousers. He was half-hard already and she went a little weak in the knees at the feel of him.
His pupils were dilated with desire, but to her surprise he caught her hand and lifted it to his lips again, kissing her palm this time. “Esme, if we do that again, it will be only for mutual pleasure. It’s not a repayment.”
She stared at him, this man who so flummoxed her with all he was. “Oh.”
“But if you’d like to stay here for a while, then we could discuss whatever happens when I go to White’s. Perhaps we could share supper while we do.”
She shook her head. “You’re going to go today?”
He smiled. “Yes. Right now. There’s no time like the present, and if I’m going to deliver an invitation for the engagement ball, it’s better to do it now than later.”
“And you’d have me stay here? Wouldn’t your servants talk? Judge?”
He shrugged as he stood and she followed him to her feet. “I doubt it. Even if they do, who gives a damn? Unless you’re uncomfortable.”
She was, in truth. She hated the stares of people who could see through her and there was no one who could judge more swiftly and likely accurately than a servant. But this was about her father. About justice. She would have to be brave.
“I’m fine.”
“Good,” he said. “You can make use of my library if you’d like. Or stroll the gardens. Play in the music room if you’re soinclined. I’ll be certain the staff knows you have free access to anyplace you’d like on the estate.”
Her head spun at the ease with which he behaved. As if this was nothing. As if it was all normal and fine when it certainly wasn’t. But she could find no argument against him when he was so confident in himself and his decisions. So she made none and simply nodded. He leaned down to press the briefest of kisses to her lips, then moved to the parlor door and rang the bell for his butler.
Leaving her standing in a parlor that she no longer belonged in, determined to wait for a man who could never be hers, who was off to uncover secrets that she’d sworn to keep to her grave.
