Letitia opened her mouth. Christian silenced her with a look. “Which school?”
“Hexham Grammar School.”
Christian looked into Trowbridge’s large, slightly pro-truberant blue eyes. “Did you know Randall was a farmer’s son?”
“Yes, of course. We…ah, he wished it kept secret. Especially when he went up in the world.” Trowbridge glanced at Letitia, as if conscious of what such a secret would mean to her.
Christian grasped the moment to ask, “And what about you, Trowbridge? Have you come up in the world, too? Are you, too, hiding something?”
Abruptly Trowbridge looked him in the eye. “Patently, I’m hiding nothing at all.” He held out his arms, hands spread, inviting them to view him as he was. “From which you may infer that deception isn’t my strong suit.” He glanced at Letitia. “It was Randall’s.” He looked again at Christian. “If I had half his talent, I would, without doubt, be more circumspect. As it is…”
Again he gestured, turning the movement into an extravagant bow. “If you’ll excuse me?”
With a nod, he turned away, and walked swiftly, rather stiffly, back up the lawn.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, Christian and Letitia watched him go.
“I’ll lay odds,” Christian murmured, “that he’s from a lower class family, too. That he was another governors’ scholar. His natural…flair, for want of a better word, is his disguise-in our circles quite an effective one.”
Letitia snorted. “If we’re to talk of odds, what are the chances of two governors’ scholars from Hexham Grammar School rising from nothing to walk our gilded circles?”
“I wouldn’t like to think.” Christian took her arm and started back to the house. “Regardless, what would you wager that when we learn about Swithin, he, too, will prove to have attended Hexham Grammar School, and that he, too, was a governors’ scholar?”
“Regardless of Trowbridge’s protestations, his particular bent, no matter how widely recognized, how relatively open and undisguised, still gives him a powerful motive for murder.”
Later that night, Christian moved about Letitia’s bedchamber; shrugging out of his coat, he laid it over the back of a chair. “For instance, if Randall, who must have known his secret, including numerous details-a gentleman who could claim long acquaintance-were to explicitly expose Trowbridge, then everything he’s worked for, his position in the ton, would evaporate overnight. The fact that he and Randall shared another secret wouldn’t matter-the secret of their births counts for much less, and affects them both equally.”
In light of Trowbridge’s “particular bent,” they’d had to wait until now, when they were free of both Agnes and Hermione, to discuss the subject.
Standing before the window looking out over the night-shrouded street, Letitia folded her arms. “No lady would be able to allow him to cross her threshold, not if his inclination was public fact.”
They’d returned to South Audley Street to find that Tristan had indeed arrived and spent several hours with Dalziel searching through the files and papers. They’d eventually departed, leaving a message with Hermione- chuffed to be a part of their investigation-to the effect that they’d return the following day to continue searching and share any news.
Beyond that, Hermione knew no more, which had done nothing to ease Letitia’s growing concern over the Orient Trading Company. She had a gnawing premonition that Randall being a farmer’s son might prove the least troubling of the secrets he’d left behind. She leaned against the window frame. “I wish I’d asked Trowbridge about the company-whether he knew anything of it, or whether, indeed, he was another part owner.”
On the journey back from Chelsea, they’d speculated as to whether Trowbridge and Swithin might prove to also be part owners in the company, accounting, perhaps, for the other two-thirds.
Unbuttoning his shirt, Christian crossed to stand behind her. “One step at a time. We’ve established that Randall and Trowbridge were once friends, that they’d known each other for decades, but that for some reason they grew distant with the years…or they played down and actively hid their association.”
Reaching for her, he drew her back against him; she let him, but remained stiff, spine straight, in his arms. He continued, “If Trowbridge is a part owner of the Orient Trading Company, then claiming he barely knows Randall won’t wash-they would have had to meet frequently, and with Randall leaving him a bequest in a relatively recent will, citing their friendship, then Trowbridge’s claim of mere acquaintance isn’t believable.”
“Which in itself is strange-why hide a friendship if it were there? Trowbridge didn’t attend Randall’s funeral, yet he must have known of his death. He hasn’t called to offer his condolences-he didn’t offer any even today.”
Settling her against him, he reviewed the short interview. “Trowbridge was taken aback that Randall had named him in his will. It seemed to me his reaction had more to do with Randall acknowledging him at all, rather than that it was via a bequest.”
“Hmm.” She closed her hands about his at her waist. “What I don’t see is how any of this is helping us clear Justin’s name.”
Secure in the knowledge that she couldn’t see, he let his lips curve, then he touched them to her temple, drew them slowly down, barely touching, over the whorl of her ear to press a more definite kiss into the shadowed hollow behind it.
Eliciting an encouraging shiver.
“We’re identifying other possible suspects.” He murmured the words against the soft skin of her throat. “And once we know more about the Orient Trading Company, we’ll doubtless have more. If Randall was managing an enterprise directly engaged in trade, there’s always the chance of a disgruntled customer or supplier furious enough, or desperate enough, to commit murder. We now know we can add Trowbridge to our list. And most likely Swithin as well. The more potential suspects we can identify, the weaker the case against Justin.”
She eased back against him, into his warmth. “Perhaps, but he’s still the prime suspect.”
“True.” He skated his lips down the long line of her throat, heard her breath catch as she arched her head, allowing him better access. “But once we start winnowing our suspects, the real murderer will emerge.” Raising his head, he turned her, met her shadowed eyes. “And once we have him, Justin will be safe. In every way.”
She looked into his eyes; he could sense the frown in hers. “You make it sound so…straightforward. That it will simply happen, step by step, like that.”
“Because it will.” He drew her closer. “Because we’ll make it happen”-he bent his head-“just…like…that.”
He covered her lips and kissed her-deliberately kissed her to distract her.
To give her something else to think about, to fill her mind with…
Him. Them.
And what might be.
He needed to reawaken her dreams again, to convince her to trust that they could come to be. To convince her to put her hand in his again, to be his again.
In his heart he knew it wouldn’t be as easy as he’d like, yet when he held her in his arms, when she stepped into him and sank her fingers in his hair and kissed him back with all the pent-up longing in her dramatic soul, he felt like heaven was within his reach.
So close, as he angled his head and deepened the kiss, he could taste it.
She no longer even pretended that she thought he might-or should-leave her each night, that he should go home and allow her to retire alone. Just as well. The single night he’d stayed apart from her had seemed to drag on forever.
Yet as they tussled for direction, wrestled for supremacy, as clothes dropped like so much litter to the floor, as hands grasped and mouths and lips caressed-until he spun her about, bent her forward over a round table and entered her from behind-and she gasped, caught her breath, then sighed, shifted, and took him yet deeper-even then he wasn’t sure, couldn’t tell whether she was as caught in the moment as he was.
As deeply ensnared by the emotional net that for him, at least, in moments such as this, held him.
All he could do was show her how he felt-let her see, and feel, how possessive of her, with her, he wished- needed-to be.
And hope she understood.
In the end, after they’d both touched glory and he’d carried her, all but staggering, to collapse on her bed, as she curled against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, the fingers of one hand lazily riffling the hair on his chest, all he could do was hope that she would once again grant him what she’d so freely gifted him with all those years ago.
Hope that with every night, with every day that passed, she would see his unswerving devotion for what it
