Page 7

For a moment, Audrey considered telling Hugh about Tobias’s arrival and the vision she’d received. But then, she decided she didn’t wish to think of it, let alone explain.

“Fine,” she replied simply, then closed her eyes. “Though I would have preferred to leave the dinner party with you.”

“I know,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. “But leave this inquiry to me and Sir. You have more important things to think about right now.” He gave her abdomen a gentle rub.

Audrey bit back a groan. She wouldn’t argue against the baby’s importance, but as the baby was still growing inside her, there wasn’t much for her to do for the child.

Hugh’s breathing smoothed out, and after a minute of silence, she determined he was asleep. Sighing, she burrowed her face into her pillow and let herself drift off as well.

With her belly so large, and the baby pressing on her bladder, she rarely slept through the night without having to use the chamber pot. As if on schedule, Audrey woke shortly before dawn. Guided by memory and the low light of embers in the fireplace, she made her way toward the dressing room, her eyelids still half-shut.

Her feet trampled something on the rug. She opened her eyes fully to see that it was nothing but Hugh’s clothing. Before coming to bed, he’d tossed off his dinner jacket and shirt, waistcoat and trousers, even his stockings in a manner that would have had his fussy valet, Basil, grumbling. Items had been left in a trail along the floor. Shaking her head, she bent to pick up them up. When she lifted his dinner jacket by its coattails, something fell from a pocket, landing with a soft thud on the rug near her bare foot. A ring, by the look of it.

Perhaps it was the lingering fog of sleep, or the concentration needed to keep her balance as she crouched down, but when she picked up the ring, her mind wasn’t properly closed. Just as it hadn’t been earlier, when she’d touched Tobias’s pocket watch. And just like then, a bright, vivid vision pummeled her.

The serious face of her husband, cast in the light of a lantern, looming over her, reaching for her.

Before that, a dark, hooded figure doing the same.

Then, as her vision sailed backward in time, as they always did, Audrey was once again in a glasshouse. The same glasshouse Tobias’s pocket watch had shown her earlier. And once again, she was looking upon the same young woman. Only this time, the young woman was running down a row of greenery, frantically glancing over her shoulder, her eyes filled with fear.

“What are you doing?”

The bark of Hugh’s voice snatched Audrey from her vision. Still crouching, she opened her hand, and the odd ring, roughly cast of iron or bronze, fell to the floor. She staggered backward and landed on her rump.

“Audrey!” Hugh exclaimed, and in the next second, his hands were on her elbows, helping her to stand.

“What…where did you find that ring?” she asked, her heart pounding and ears chiming.

“It is nothing you should have been touching,” Hugh replied sharply as he led her to the bed. Her knees were soft, and she gratefully perched on the edge of the mattress.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, bracing her belly with his hands. “You fell. Did you injure yourself?”

She batted his hands away. “Honestly, Hugh, I was practically on the floor to begin with. I am fine.” Though, she didn’t understand why she was so dizzy; visions didn’t usually tax her so. But then, she’d been good about preventing them lately. And this was the second she’d had within a handful of hours.

Hugh left her and snatched up the ring. “Tell me you were not going through my pockets.”

She glared at him. “Of course I wasn’t! Why would you suggest such a thing?”

“Because I was at a crime scene earlier, and you wanted to be there,” he answered. He went to his bedside table and smacked the ring down in a temper.

“You suggest I went rummaging through your clothes to give myself a vision of what you were doing last night?” The insult left her breathless. Firming her legs, she stood and went around the bed to her own side. “I had no idea you believed me to be so desperate or underhanded.”

He didn’t reply, only paced with his hands on his hips. Even the sight of him unclothed except for his smalls was not enough to distract Audrey from his curiously harsh reaction and the offense he’d leveled.

He raked his fingers through the dark strands of his tousled hair. “I did not want you to touch that, Audrey. I suspected it would give you a horrific vision, and that isn’t something you should be experiencing right now. Not in your condition.”

Not in your condition. There that phrase was again. It was dismissive and patronizing, and she detested it even more coming from Hugh.

“Just because I am carrying a child doesn’t mean I cannot handle a vision,” she countered.

“Anything having to do with this case isn’t suitable for you right now,” Hugh said. “I want you to rest, not involve yourself in a murder inquiry.”

“I wasn’t involving myself. I was trying to pick up your mess!”

He muttered something under his breath—something that sounded maddeningly like bloody woman.

Audrey huffed and, still needing to relieve her bladder, stalked into her dressing room to use the chamber pot. They didn’t often quarrel, but as she’d been nearing her confinement, Hugh had increasingly been handling her with kid gloves, and it irritated her. His outburst tonight, however, more than irritated her. It was utterly galling.