Seconds passed. His mouth thinned.
He couldn’t bear to say the words.
“Fine.” She shook her head, loose strands tumbling from the comb. She bent and picked up the key to the cottage. “Can you ask Mr Ramsey to meet me here in an hour, so I might give him a list of what I need? When you’re ready to discuss it, you know where to find me.”
She turned away from him and marched through the open gate, noting the weeds on the path as she made for the door.
He waited until she was inside before walking away. Yet he knew she watched him from the window. That she would cry again. Curse the day he forced her to dance. Seek her own form of vengeance.
For some reason, he welcomed the battle. The thought of tussling with her roused something primitive in him.
He found Ramsey in the morning room, standing beside the long table where Beattie had spread out a linen cloth and several neatly folded menus.
“Miss Harland needs supplies delivered to the cottage. Give her whatever she requires. Whatever it takes to preventher from leaving until I discover who bludgeoned her father and threw him in the Thames.”
He told himself it was about answers. His guilt. Her safety. But he wasn’t quite sure why he insisted she stay.
Both men nodded.
“I suspect you’ll want the coroner’s report, sir.”
Beattie was more than his housekeeper. He’d fought at Waterloo and had comrades in town—men whose lives he’d saved and who were eager to repay the debt.
“Yes, but I can’t risk leaving Shadowmere until I know more.”
“I’ll have what you need delivered within two days.”
Ramsey was quick to offer a word of caution. “Sir Lionel wants an end to your wild parties. He won’t care if it means the end of you. And that sergeant from Bow Street looks as if he’d frame his own mother to get ahead. Do you want me to call a meeting with the Brethren?”
Let his friends think he couldn’t handle a measly magistrate? Hell, no. Besides, they were all preparing for their own wars.
“No. We’ll meet next week as planned.”
“What about Daventry?” Ramsey said, naming the master of an elite group of enquiry agents. “He’s the one who found Mrs Seagrove. Happen he’ll have a list of men who wanted Harland dead.”
“Daventry may be a fountain of knowledge, but no man holds me by the ballocks. I won’t pay his price. We’ll manage without him.”
Beattie stood firm. “Sir,” he said, in that parade-ground tone of his. “We all remember Papelotte. Looked like a weak point. Turned out to be bait.”
“What are you saying?” He knew damn well what Beattieimplied. That he’d been fooled into blaming the wrong man. “That we find out who really put Harland in the river?”
“It won’t hurt to make our own enquiries, sir.”
“The coffers are full of favours,” Ramsey added. “About time we called some in. Want me to use one to get the name of the witness?” He paused. “And you could ask Miss Harland for the name of her suitor.”
The first was an excellent idea.
The second … less so.
“If the witness exists, I want to know everything about him.” He was curious about the man who’d offered for Miss Harland, but he’d rather be damned than ask her himself. Ramsey could do it. “You speak to our guest in the cottage when you collect the list. I’ve a task of my own to deal with.”
He had one job, truth be told.
Avoid Miss Harland like the plague.
For four days, he’d succeeded.
Four days without asking Ramsey what the devil he was doing with Miss Harland after dark. Four long nights wondering if she was cold or hungry. Yet he’d spent most of his time at the upstairs window of the coach house. It was the only place with a decent view of the cottage.
