The words rushed to her lips, but she choked them back. He was trying to trick her into revealing her secrets again. The minute she trusted him, the minute she revealed herself he’d hurt her. He’d say it was her fault, all her fault—that she deserved everything she got, and worse.
He seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for her answer.
She looked away from him toward the glass doors. “I suppose you’ll have to stay here tonight, after all. It’s too dark to travel.” She pulled the bell, and after a moment Mrs. Boyle appeared. “Captain West will remain tonight, Mrs. Boyle. Please make up a room for him, and bring him some refreshment, if you would.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Julian stood frozen before the desk, stiff and silent, staring at her.
“Oh, and Mrs. Boyle?”
The housekeeper turned back. “Yes, my lady?”
“No need to go to too much trouble with the bedchamber. Captain West will be leaving us tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty
She was hiding from him.
Julian slid down the wall at his back until he rested on his haunches, his hands dangling helplessly between his spread knees. He’d been hovering in the hallway outside the marchioness’s apartments for the better part of three hours, but Charlotte had yet to emerge. The chamber doors remained firmly closed, and not a sound disturbed the silence on the other side.
She could be asleep, of course.
But she wasn’t.Julian knocked his head rhythmically against the wall behind him. Somehow, he knew she wasn’t. She’d slipped through his fingers again. He hadn’t any idea how, unless she’d gone out a window and shimmied down a trellis to the ground, but one thing was certain. He’d never find her now.
Like chasing a particularly clever fox through every alleyway in London.Except Hadley House, with its endless series of rooms and haphazard hallways made the London rookeries look organized. She hadn’t insisted he leave her house, after all, and no wonder. Why bother to chase him away? He may as well be at Bellwood for all the time he’d spent with her since he arrived here.
He’d wandered from room to room his first two days, fruitlessly searching for her. On the third day he rose before the sun and stationed himself at the foot of the main staircase so he could catch her before she disappeared into the complex maze of Hadley House, and he was forced to scurry after her like a dim-witted rat.
She’d frozen to a halt at the top of the stairs as soon as she saw him, but even this strange, hollow Charlotte refused to turn and run from him. She came slowly down the stairs, her face blank, but Julian could see her knuckles go white from her grip on the railing.
“Captain West.” Her dull eyes flicked over him and then away. “You’re up early this morning.”
His own face felt stiff, but he made an effort to produce what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Too restless to sleep, I suppose. May I escort you into breakfast?”
She eyed the arm he offered with a frown, as if she weren’t quite sure what to do with it. “No, thank you. I prefer to walk in the gardens before I breakfast, but I’ll be sure to join you for luncheon later this afternoon, or perhaps for tea—”
Gardens again. Gardens seemed to bring out the worst in him, but there was no help for it. “I’d be delighted to stroll in the gardens with you. I’m curious about the house. Cam’s told me a great deal about it, especially the grounds. He says they’re spectacular.”
He half expected her to refuse him, but after a moment she shrugged as if it made no difference to her what he did. She ignored his arm, but she didn’t object when he followed her down the hallway and through a glass-ceilinged conservatory to a terrace at the back of the house. “They’re commonly thought spectacular, yes.”
“But you don’t find them so?”
Because you dread being here, because you blame yourself for Hadley’s death—
He bit his tongue before the words could slip out and forced himself to keep his tone light. “Rolling green hills and extravagant formal gardens don’t appeal to you?”
Another shrug. “They’re very nice.”
Nice.A meaningless word, one that led nowhere, just as this garden did. The twisting pathways circled and doubled back on themselves, with no center and no visible end—
Julian halted on the path. No, that was wrong. Every pathway led somewhere, and every garden had a center, a heart. He couldn’t see it yet, but it was there, and it only took steady, careful steps to find it.
He brushed his fingers across the pink petals of a rose and smiled at Charlotte. “Just nice? I’d call them spectacular, but then I look at them with new eyes, a luxury you don’t have.”
A frown appeared between her brows, but it was the wrong frown, as if they were discussing a complex scientific theory instead of how she might feel about a place that had nearly destroyed her. “What does that mean?”
There was no heat in her voice. It wasn’t an accusation, only a simple question. He drew a little closer to her, until only a few steps separated them. “I mean you have terrible memories of Hadley House, Charlotte. The sorrow you endured here affects the way you see it.”
