“That seems unlikely to lead to very much,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “But truthfully, I do not know what else we can do at present. At least this trip was not for naught.”
He looked at her with a small smile which she returned.
She was not quite sure what exactly he meant by that. She suspected it had rather less to do with ship manifests than he let on. And she suspected, if she was being honest with herself, that she felt precisely the same way.
CHAPTER 25
Two days back from Dover and he still had not quite found his footing.
It was not that anything had been said. Nothing had been said. That was rather the problem. They had returned from Dover, resumed their places in the house, resumed their meals together and their evenings by the fire, and neither of them had mentioned the night at the Fox and Hare. Not the scuffle or the tears. Not the fact that he had pressed his lips to her forehead in the dark and felt her breath catch. Not the fact that he had lain beside her for the rest of the night with her arm across his chest and his hand over hers and had scarcely slept.
They had simply come home and continued.
That was the part he could not quite reckon with. The continuing. Because it felt so natural that it frightened him.
Last night she had come into the library with a book and settled herself in the chair across from his without asking, the way she had long since stopped asking, and they had read in silence for two hours. At one point, Nell informed her that David was unsettled. She had gone upstairs to see to him and come back down again with the baby on her shoulder. Still carrying her book, she sat back down. He had watched her read with one hand and rock David with the other arm and had thought, with a most unwelcome clarity, that he had never in his life seen anything he wanted more to keep.
This morning at breakfast, she had pushed the marmalade across the table before he asked for it because she had noticed three weeks ago that he always wanted it and had simply never stopped noticing. He had thanked her, and she had smiled at him over her cup and gone back to her toast. It had been entirely, dangerously ordinary.
He had to stop this. He had told himself so on the road back to London. He was still telling himself so, and it was not working in the least.
“Julian,” Nathaniel said.
He looked up. He had entirely forgotten where he was or what they had been discussing.
“Yes. I beg your pardon. I was wool-gathering.”
“I know you were. I know precisely what my dearest friend looks like when he is wool-gathering, and it looks exactly likethat.” Nathaniel settled back in his chair. “As I was saying, Stanhope has made enquiries about Mrs. Holt. It appears she told the truth throughout. She has lived in the same parish all her life, and the father of the child was a married merchant passing through. A thoroughly unfortunate circumstance. We shall not sit in moral judgment of her, however. She seems an entirely upstanding woman otherwise.” He paused. “Thanks to her information, we have also been able to confirm that Arabella did indeed stay at the inn she mentioned.”
“Anything further on this Bash?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “He was not at that same inn; that much is certain. Stanhope also obtained passenger lists from various vessels that crossed the Channel around the time they set off.” He leaned forward and slid the papers across the desk. “His name was not on them however Arabella’s name did appear.”
Julian picked up the papers, looked at them, then handed them back. “That tells us only that she crossed to France. We already knew that.”
“Indeed. I think it would be prudent to send somebody to Calais to make further enquiries.”
“Already done. I wrote to Mr. Stanstead, and he will go.” He paused. “Clara and I were in Dover two days ago. We found Giacomo’s surname on the return manifest. Vitello. They crossed back as husband and wife with the child listed between them.”
Nathaniel looked at him with some interest. “You went to Dover together?”
“With Mrs. Holt and Nell, Clara’s maid. She had contacts there and knew what the man looked like. It seemed the most practical course.”
“And was it? Practical?”
Julian looked at him steadily. “It was useful, yes.”
Nathaniel said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and crossed them the other way—a habit Julian had observed in him for twenty years and which reliably signaled that he was working up to something.
“Now, since all of that is settled, I think it is time we spoke about whatever is the matter with you.”
“The matter with me? I told you, I was wool-gathering.”
“You did. You did not tell me why.” Nathaniel looked at him steadily. “Would it, by any chance, have something to do with Clara?”
“If you have come here to tell me once more about the sparkle in my eyes?—”
