Until now.
Tristan slowly raised his gaze to Willis’s face, an icy chill racingover his skin.
Willis, who was now in a tearing hurry to leave, didn’t notice Tristan’s stare, nor did he realize he’d let slip a small detail he’d much better have kept hidden. “Right then, Gray. I’d best be off—great deal to do, you understand.”
He didn’t give Tristan a chance to respond, but hurried from the library with the haste of a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime.
Because that’sprecisely what he was.
For silent, endless moments after the front door slammed behind Willis, Tristan stood utterly still, images from the night Sophia was attacked drifting through his mind. He could recall with perfect clarity the man emerging from the shadows, a club gripped in his black-gloved hands.
As for the man himself…
He was tall but slight, lean and wiry. His face had been covered with a cap, but Tristan had a vague impression of pale skin, and sparse, dark hair.
The last time he’d seen Poole was the day Tristan had gone to Bow Street, the morning after he’d caught Sophia chasing after Peter Sharpe. Poole had been slouched on a bench outside Willis’s office, a black cap on his head, his fingerswrapped around—
Awalking stick.
A heavy wooden one, with a brass knob. The rhythmic tap of it against the heel of Poole’s boot echoed inTristan’s head.
Hadn’t Sophia said something about a cane, or a walking stick, on the day of Jeremy’s trial? Something about Sharpe claiming to have used a cane as a weapon again Jeremy—a cane that had since gone missing.
There was only one explanation, only one way to fit all the pieces together, and the picture that emerged made Tristan’sblood run cold.
Richard Poole isthe fourth man.
Tristan flew into the hallway and up the stairs two at a time—to the second floor, where he burst through his bedchamberdoor. “Sophia?”
No answer. He ran from the sitting room toward his bedchamber, ducking his head into his dressing-room on the way. She wasn’t there.
When he reached his bedchamber, he turned around in a circle, hoping with everything inside him she’d come to him, his dressing gown trailing behind her, the smile that had somehow become everything to him lighting up her face.
She wasn’t there. His apartments were empty.
Wherewasshe? He strode toward the bed, his heart pounding with sudden fear. The room was dim, but the muted light caught on something on the table beside his bed—a dull gleam of silver.
Tristan strode across the room andsnatched it up.
Sophia’s locket. He closedit in his fist.
Her locket was here, but Sophia was gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
The last faint streaks of light faded in the sky as Sophia made her way down Great Marlborough Street, leaving Tristan’s townhouse behind, her steps taking her toward St. ClementDane’s Church.
Lady Clifford and Daniel would be leaving No. 26 Maddox Street by now. She could have gone to meet them at the Turk’s Head, but somehow, Sophia couldn’t bring herself to turn toward the Strand.
There was an uncomfortable tightness pinching at her chest, like a stone wedged under her breastbone. It wasn’t guilt, precisely…regret, perhaps, but there was something else there that was worse than regret.
Shame.
She was ashamed of having allowed herself to believe, even for such a short time, that a man like Tristan Stratford could ever have any tender feelings for a woman like her. As soon as Lady Clifford saw her face, she’d read the truth there, and Sophia didn’t want her to see what a fool she’d been.
It was difficult enough to bear her disappointment in herself. She couldn’t bear to disappoint her friends, especially Cecilia, who truly believed every lady was the heroine of her own story, and that love could be their saving grace. Perhaps it was even true, for the good little girls Sophia’s mother had so often spoken of.
She’d never told Sophia what happened to wicked little girls.
