“Did he call you that?” he asked.
“Yes, he did use the word.” She took her hands away from the spoon and clasped them in her lap. “It is the simple truth, is it not?”
“It is a good thing he is thirty miles away,” he said. “My fists itch to rearrange the features on his face.” He slammed his napkin down onto the table and got to his feet. “I could kill him, the sanctimonious fool.”
“I should have added,” she said, “that he said the word more in horror and pain than in condemnation.”
He moved around the table and leaned over her, one hand braced on the table. “Fleur,” he said, “don’t ever let yourself be dragged down by that label. Promise me you won’t.”
“I have accepted the fact that I did the only thing it seemed possible to do at the time,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “It is in the past. Like your scars with you, it will always be with me and it will always affect my life. But I will not let it destroy me.”
“I would double my own scars and live with them,” he said, “if only I could remove yours from you, Fleur.” His eyes burned down into hers.
“Don’t.” She reached up one hand and cupped his scarred cheek with her hand. “Don’t, please. What happened was notyour fault. None of it was. And I think that everything that happens in life happens for a purpose. We become stronger people if we are not destroyed by the troubles of life.”
“Fleur.” He held her hand against his cheek. “And is there a purpose to this too? To you and me and to the fact that we must never see each other again after tomorrow?”
She bit her lip.
He straightened up and released her hand. “I am going for a walk,” he said. “Come. I will see you to your room first. It has been a long and an eventful day. Tomorrow we will find what you have come to see, I promise you.”
She preceded him up the stairs and turned the key in the lock of her door. He was standing at quite a distance from her when she looked up.
“Good night, Fleur,” he said.
“Good night, your grace.”
“Adam,” he said. “Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
“Adam,” she whispered. “Good night, Adam.”
And he was gone, his booted feet heavy on the stairs even before she had closed and locked her door behind her.
THEDUKE OFRIDGEWAYwalked back from the red house on the hill the following morning, deep in thought. Had Brocklehurst been that obsessed with her? It seemed that he must have been if he had gone to such extraordinary lengths to get her within his power.
And yet he had been content to net her, knowing very well that she neither liked nor respected him and could never love him. There were some strange men in the world.
There was something not at all normal about Brocklehurst.
Unless he had misinterpreted events entirely, the duke thought. But what other possible explanation could there be?
Fleur was in the private parlor at the inn, where he had lefther after an early breakfast. He had persuaded her, with some difficulty, to allow him to go alone to Mr. Hobson’s house.
“Well?” She stopped moving as he opened the door, and gazed tensely at him.
“It seems that the burial took place at Taunton,” he said. “It is about twenty miles from here, forty from Heron House. Mr. Hobson has been there and seen the grave. There is a tombstone there now.”
She stared at him. “At Taunton?” she said. “But why?”
“It seems that Hobson was killed close to there,” he said, “when he and Brocklehurst were returning from London. Brocklehurst buried him there before traveling on here to break the news to the family.”
Fleur stared at him. “I don’t understand,” she said. “It was at Heron House that he died.”
“Of course,” the duke said.
“The only reason he was not buried there was that his family was here,” she said.
“Yes.”
