Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(11)

“Oh, no,” Kate said. She froze her face into a mask of perfect sympathy and met Harcroft’s eyes. “Not little Jeremy. What sort of wicked, depraved, awful person would hurt that little angel?”

Her words might have been half lies, but the emotion that crept out during that speech was all real. She only hoped that everyone understood it as sympathy for Harcroft instead of the painful accusation that it was.

He couldn’t know what was in her mind, but his own thoughts could not have been comfortable. The skin around his mouth crinkled and he looked away.

“As I said,” he muttered, “there have been neither threats nor demands.”

“How can I help?” Ned asked. “I assume that’s why you came, right? As soon as you heard I’d arrived? Because—” He stopped and looked at the carefully schooled faces surrounding him. “But no. None of you even knew I’d returned here.”

“They’ve come to speak with me,” Kate said into the intervening silence. “To see if Louisa divulged anything of importance.”

The Marquess of Blakely stepped closer. He was tall, and Kate had never seen him flinch at anything. He was damnably intimidating, and she leaned away despite herself. “And has she?”

Kate shook her head as if trying to recall. “We had planned to see each other again at the Hathaway’s house party in November, if the roads were passable. She made no mention to me of any other plans.”

True enough; Kate had been the one to coax her into action. Kate had laid the plans; Louisa had only agreed.

Kate continued, “She had not spoken of any desire to see anything else. Or—excuse my plain speaking on the subject, but under the circumstances, it seems necessary—anyone else. Louisa isn’t the sort to stray.”

A disappointed silence followed this.

“Perhaps,” Harcroft offered, “you might trouble yourself to recall anything she might have said about Berkswift’s environs. Yesterday evening, a woman alone, answering Louisa’s description, alighted from a hack in Haverton, just five miles from here. The hack had been hired in London, and so the occurrence was much talked about.”

“A woman alone? She didn’t have a child? Where did she go?”

“No child. But an auburn-haired woman with deep blue eyes—it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“It must be.” Kate shook her head. “Louisa would never leave Jeremy, not for any reason.” It had, in fact, been a sticking point of their plan—convincing Louisa to allow Kate to take her child in London, so that when Louisa traveled she would not be so easily identified. A red-haired woman with a newborn was too memorable, and looking as Louisa did would only have made her shine, like a lighthouse set on the shore.

“Perhaps,” Kate ventured, “you might tell me if there is anything that happened that might have precipitated her flight. It might help my memory.”

She didn’t want to be the only one telling lies here. Let Harcroft announce that he’d hit her in the stomach, and promised to break her infant son’s arm if she told anyone.

“I can think of other ways to jog your memory.” Harcroft stepped closer.

For a second, Kate shrank from him. She, of all people, knew the violence he was capable of. Then Ned moved to stand beside Kate. It was foolish to feel more secure because of a man who had abandoned her years ago. But she did.

“For instance,” Harcroft said smoothly, as if he had not just uttered a threat, “you might allow yourself time to think about the matter. You could report to me if you recall anything important.”

“Of course. I will send a messenger the instant anything comes to mind.”

Harcroft shook his head. “No need for that. Ned, my friend, you asked me if you could help. A hired hack left my wife a mere stone’s throw from here, and no accounts yet have that woman leaving the district. I’m convinced she’s nearby.”

A prickle ran up Kate’s neck. Harcroft lifted his cold, unfeeling gaze to Kate, as if he knew the substance of her thoughts, as if he traced every hair standing on end to its inexorable conclusion. “I ask only,” he said, “that I be allowed to impose upon your hospitality while I investigate.”

This was not good. It was very not good. Kate curled her lips up into the semblance of a smile while she tried to arrange her muddled thoughts. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll ring for tea, and you can tell me how I can help.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“JENNY,” NED SAID as Kate stepped outside the room, “before we begin to discuss Louisa, there is something I must ask you.”

Jenny, who had sat next to her husband on an embroidered sofa, smiled up at Ned and motioned him to sit. Ned slipped into a nearby chair and leaned forward. What he had to say next was something that had bothered him for the past hour. Under the circumstances, it seemed unfair to confront her with the question. And yet…

“Why didn’t you write me that the gentlemen of the ton were conspiring to seduce my wife?”

Jennifer Carhart had never, in Ned’s experience, been a coward. Yet she looked away at this, biting her lip. “Letters took so long to cross the ocean,” she finally assayed, not meeting his eyes. “And Lady Kathleen—Kate, I mean—dealt with the wager so matter-of-factly. I didn’t suppose she needed my assistance, and to be quite honest, I suspect she wouldn’t have appreciated my interference. Besides, you…” She trailed off, her finger tracing circles against her palm.