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He turned the cup. "At first I’d underestimated you. And now…" He looked up, meeting her gaze. “I won’t call you by another man’s name.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. The fire ticked. Her chest was doing something inconvenient again and she blamed the brandy fumes.

“Were you happy in your marriage?”

The answer had always sat heavy in her chest, but she pretended to ponder the question.

“No. He had no respect for me. He was cruel.”

“And how much of him is left in you?”

She looked up, surprised. “More than I’d like.”

“More than you’d like…” His brows furrowed. “Do you feel a sense of attachment to him? Or duty?”

“No, not at all.” She turned her teacup slowly. “Just his voice in my ear. The cruel things he used to say.”

He huffed out a breath and drained his glass. “That makes me want to dig up his grave and do indecent things to him.”

Her eyes widened, then she laughed. “I feel terrible for laughing.”

His smile was warm, his eyes dancing in the lanternlight. “You’re free to laugh now, my lady.”

The way he said my lady, baritone and hoarse, had goosebumps rising on her arms and heat building between her legs.

The wooden legs of the chair scraped loudly on the floor as she stood abruptly.

“I must turn in, try to sleep.”

He stared at her, the curve of his mouth all knowing. “Of course.”

“Stop smiling. You may think you know, but you do not.”

He raised a brow. “Never said I did.”

Her hands worried her skirt. “Goodnight, Kit.”

“Goodnight.”

Chapter ten

Buried

Kit

Three days since the orchard. One since the kitchen.

The orchard he could have recovered from. Two people standing close in failing light, a crow, an interruption. He'd spent three days filing it down to something manageable. Then she'd come downstairs and sat across from him and cried for Marian and the filing was wasted.

He lay in the dark and listened to her through the wall. Water in the basin. The creak of the bed frame as she settled her weight. He thought about her voice when she'd stood and said she must turn in, and the scrape of the chair, too fast, too loud, and the flush on her neck she hadn't been able to hide. He knew why she'd left. He'd spent twenty years reading people and she was not difficult to read when her guard dropped. She'd left because if she'd stayed another minute she would have crossed the table and they both knew it.

None of this was useful because Reeve's cargo was coming and the tunnel was not ready.

He sat up on the edge of his bed and stared at the floor. He had perhaps a fortnight. The last message had said the ship had left the port. When it arrived, Reeve's men would come through the passage, and they would demand to know if he had carried out the order.

The body. Trestle years in the ground. He'd dug the grave himself, hands shaking, Marian holding the lantern above him in silence. Now he needed to dig it up, move it somewhere Reeve's men wouldn't stumble over it. All without Audrey knowing what moved beneath her floors at night.

He pulled on his boots and went downstairs.