Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(32)

Ned was not so distracted by his unexpected survival as to overlook the singular fact that Lady Harcroft had cursed his wife.

“This is not what it seems,” he said.

She glanced across the room—no doubt searching out a grubby knife she could use on him.

“I’m here to help,” Ned continued. He stepped into the room, brushing aside the cloths that hung from the line. They were an infant’s napkins, he realized. By the state of their dampness, they’d no doubt been cleaned down at the stream a half mile away in the early morning.

“Did Kate send you? She promised not to tell.”

“Kate…” Ned glanced at the firearm she clutched. Come to think of it, that was his pistol. He’d brought it back with him from China and had tossed it in a cabinet. He’d hoped never to see it again.

“Kate,” Ned continued dryly, “has been sending you assistance, courtesy of me, for a very long while.”

Lady Harcroft met his eyes. “Tell your wife that next time, she needs to load the gun.”

Ned stepped forward. He’d only seen Lady Harcroft before in her husband’s company. This woman—short but stately—did not seem anything like the pale, sickly shadow he’d met at Harcroft’s side.

Now, as he walked toward her, her knuckles whitened on the pistol. She hadn’t lowered it yet. Instead, she clutched it wildly, as if she might wring some use out of it, even after she’d fired.

“Are you planning to bludgeon me with that?” He smiled to show he was joking.

She hesitated, which meant that she might have been.

Ned shook his head and reached to pluck the weapon from her hands before she embarrassed them both. He’d meant to make a joke about her shoulders becoming weary. But as he extended his hand, she flinched backward, her arm flying between them. He froze, midreach; she looked up into his eyes in horror.

She must have seen the shock in his own eyes.

He’d not wanted to think of it. In the frozen aftermath of nearly being shot, he’d not sorted out the implications of her presence. Lady Harcroft wasn’t insane. She hadn’t been abducted. But she was frightened. And when he’d reached for her, she had brought up her hand to protect her face.

Kate was involved. Kate had separated Mrs. Alcot from her husband. Lady Harcroft was here, on Ned’s property—on Kate’s property—flinching from him as if she expected a blow.

Oh.

God.

It made an awful, horrific sense out of everything—Harcroft’s comments last night, Kate’s reaction at meeting Ned last afternoon.

Lady Harcroft’s flinch betrayed more than a thousand bruises. Someone had hit her, and often enough that even friendly gestures now seemed menacing. Ned moved back, giving her room.

“God,” Louisa choked, letting the firearm finally fall. “I am so stupid.” And she burst into tears.

Ned had no idea what to say in response. He didn’t dare come forward and comfort her, not when a mere reach toward her gave her such a start. Instead, he could do nothing but slip a handkerchief from his pocket and slide it down the table toward her. She sat down and cried in the most ladylike manner, choking back her obvious sobs, dabbing at her eyes with the cloth he’d given her. Ned waited in uncomfortable silence.

“If I weren’t such a wretch, I would not be here. If only I hadn’t let it come to this. If I’d had the strength to…to…” She gave a quiet hiccough and winced again.

“To what?” Ned enquired mildly.

“To stop this whole thing, before it even started.” She set her jaw. “If I were not such a weakling, none of this would ever have happened. You knew me. I was such a timid, foolish—”

Ned held up one hand, interrupting the flow of self-berating before it could get started. “You’ve used the word this a great deal here. By this, are you referring to Harcroft’s treatment of you?”

She sniffed once, and nodded. “That would be it.”

“And by it, you mean…” The world slowed, and Ned swallowed. It didn’t clear the damnable dryness in his throat. “You mean the fact that he hit you.”

It was not a question, but she nodded anyway.

“How long?”

“Never more than fifteen minutes at any one time,” she replied earnestly. “I know. It could have been much worse.”

Ned met her gaze, unable to look away. “That wasn’t what I meant. Has this been going on since I first met you?”

“Oh. It started after our first year of marriage. It wouldn’t have if I had been a better wife. You see, there was a gentleman—a friend, only, but…”

She trailed off, and Ned shook his head. She’d been sixteen then, for God’s sake, and newly married. Harcroft had shaped her entire adult existence. He must have tried to do so forcibly.

He would have flinched himself. He understood all too well how her thinking went.

How many times had he wondered that about himself? What if he had been different? If he had been better? If he hadn’t been betrayed by his own weaknesses? Those doubts would debilitate him if he ever gave them full sway. It had taken him years to learn to discard them, to keep going in the face of his own fears. He could imagine all too well how Lady Harcroft must have felt.

Her husband had been Ned’s friend—and it was unsurprising how quickly that sentence properly became phrased in the past tense. But Harcroft could not have understood the degree to which Ned would find himself in sympathy with his wife.