Samantha exchanged a look with Adrian who then asked, “You’re positive of this?”
“Absolutely. We…we had plans, you see. All we needed was a bit more money. Once we had that, we were going to travel to Gretna Greene, but…something changed. I got a note from her the night before she…” His hands shook as he gulped down a breath, eyes welling with endless sorrow. “She told me we’d run out of time, that we had to leave now if we were to stand a chance – take whatever blunt we’d managed to gather and flee.”
“Bloody hell.” Adrian’s surprise equaled Samantha’s.
She’d not been expecting this and immediately wondered if it could be true. Or might Hutchins be lying? Attempting to convince them Lady Eleanor had been his future and that he had no cause to want her dead. The raw emotion he showed was extremely convincing.
“I’d like to continue this conversation inside over a drink,” Adrian said, an intense gaze fixed upon Hutchins. “But only if you swear to me that you’ll not give us trouble.”
“I won’t.” Hutchins looked at them each in turn. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
“Good enough,” Adrian said. “Come on then.”
They entered the tavern and claimed a table in one of the corners farthest away from the entrance. Adrian ordered three mugs of ale once they were seated with Hutchins positioned between himself and Samantha. The drinks arrived and Samantha took a large gulp to banish her thirst, enjoying the foamy drink’s smoothness with its underlying contradiction of sweet bitterness.
“Tell us more about this plan of yours to elope.”Adrian took a couple of swallows then set his mug on the table.
“There’s not much else to say,” Hutchins said. One stern look from Adrian, however, prompted him to add, “Her father refused to give us his blessing, which I suppose is understandable. I’m not of her class. My income is barely enough to scrape by on, and she had no fortune of her own. But neither of us cared about that. The only thing that mattered was for us to be together. We were certain everything else would be resolved as long as we had each other.”
“While I applaud your determination to follow your heart, your view on life is rather naïve, don’t you think?” Adrian folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “You wished to remove Lady Eleanor from her life of comfort and make her live hand to mouth with you.”
“It would no doubt have proved a challenge,” Hutchins admitted, “but she knew what she was getting into. I made sure of it.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow. “We’re speaking of a woman accustomed since birth to rely upon servants, a woman with no idea what it means to go hungry or to sleep in places where one might become infested with lice, as she might very well have been forced to do if you failed to supply the best lodgings during your journey.”
Misery pulled at Hutchins’s features. “Her father made a similar point when she told him about me andasked him to meet me. He refused outright and made her promise never to see me again.”
While Hutchins said this with bitterness, Samantha was certain Orendel’s only concern had been for his daughter’s wellbeing. Adrian was right to call Hutchins naïve. Without a substantial income to support the couple, Eleanor’s romantic notion of marrying into a life of hardship would no doubt have soured with time.
Despite what the poets proclaimed, love was rarely enough.
“When was this?” Samantha asked.
“About a year ago. I’d been secretly courting her for a few months before, ever since she came to the bookshop for the first time and I managed to slip her a note.”
“You’ve known each other for quite a while then,” Adrian acknowledged. He drank some more ale and Hutchins did the same.
Samantha tried to work out all the logistics involved in such a relationship and realized just how hard it would have been to make it work. “An earl’s daughter would never have ventured anywhere without a chaperone, so one of the Orendel maids must have known of your clandestine meetings before the attachment was brought before her father.”
Hutchins’s eyes turned watery once again. He gave them a quick swipe with the back of his hand. “Lady Eleanor often donated to St. Augustine’s Church. She proposed we should both start volunteering there and asked me to do so first. We didn’t speak to each otherthe first few times, attempting instead to pretend we weren’t acquainted and had no interest in each other.
“After a while, the maid who accompanied her grew laxer in her duties. It was clear she was bored. Eleanor eventually suggested she take tea and cake at the bakery next door while she waited, allowing the two of us to talk without the maid being any the wiser.
“From time to time, Eleanor even managed to sneak out at night and come meet me, but this was rare. She was always so afraid of getting caught, fearing it would make it more challenging for us to see each other.”
“Who suggested the elopement?” Samantha wasn’t sure it signified, but she was curious.
“She did.” He dropped his gaze to the table and frowned. “The idea of marrying Mr. Lawrence was abhorrent to her. Not so much because of Mr. Lawrence himself, from what I gathered, but because it made her feel trapped. She knew she was being bargained away and she hated that. Especially since she wanted to choose a different path for herself.”
“How did you feel about her marrying another man?” Adrian asked.
“I found it unpleasant, but I didn’t want to press her into choosing me instead. Not with her father already making decisions on her behalf. So it pleased me immensely when she suggested we run away together. It showed how serious she was about me.”
“Or, her engagement to Lawrence made you incredibly angry. We only have your word that she wanted to leave with you instead. But what if that wasn’t the case?What if she’d had a different change of heart?” An assessing gleam entered Adrian’s gaze. “You might have felt betrayed, jealous, perhaps even—”
“No.” A firm denial that cut the air. “Eleanor was everything to me. I would never have harmed her for any reason. If she had chosen to marry Lawrence, I would have respected that. Who the hell am I to take charge of somebody else’s future? She was her own person. She should have been allowed to make her own choices.”
Samantha leaned back in her seat, a little impressed by Hutchins’s impassioned statement. He certainly seemed to have cared for Lady Eleanor, but then again, so had Orendel and Mr. Lawrence. Yet their intentions where she was concerned contradicted each other, suggesting one side had either been deceived by Lady Eleanor or hadn’t been completely forthright with Adrian and Samantha.
