Barbara chuckled, soft and sympathetic. “From what Stephen told me, you had beaux lining up down the street. That would have left little for the other young ladies.”
“Hmm.” All those beaux, and she had picked Lucien Hughes. How different it all would have been had she chosen more wisely.
“May I ask you a personal question, Mari? I don’t want to pry, but…”
Marietta eased out a smile. “You are my sister. Pry all you please.”
Those doe eyes brightened but then went sober. “It is about Mr. Hughes. Devereaux, that is. You two obviously have an understanding.”
Obvious indeed, given the way he had been acting. Ignoring Barbara’s presence altogether, staking his claim before Slade. Yet in the face of her sister-in-law’s unrelieved black, she had little choice but to avert her face.
“I cannot blame him for wanting to move quickly.” Barbara patted her arm, drawing her gaze again. “But you seem less than enthusiastic. You are attentive in his company, to be sure, but when he is gone…I believe I detect a reticence.”
She focused her gaze straight ahead, along the empty street. “When I agreed to this understanding, there was much I didn’t know.” Feeling the warmth of acceptance, she looked to her friend again. “I have recently found out that he is not a good man, yet I fear there is no escape from him.”
Barbara made no quick assurances. She merely tilted her face toward the sun and drew in a long breath. “My instinct is to say there is always an escape. And yet I know how long it can take and what tragedy can strike in the meantime.” She caught Marietta’s gaze again, her face serious and lined with concern. “I will be praying for a way that will allow you to extricate yourself without danger.”
“I don’t think I need to fear him. He is not—” Images cut her off. Cora’s face, and little Elsie’s. Her throat went dry.
Barbara opened her mouth but then shut it again, turmoil evident in her eyes.
Marietta’s frown deepened. “What is it?”
Looking as though she held her breath, Barbara searched her face. “A man came into the hospital last fall. Shot. A soldier, but he had not been in a battle. He’d been in a duel.”
The implications were as glaring as the low-hanging winter sun. “It couldn’t have been Dev. Had he shot a man, he would have had to flee the law.”
“The man wouldn’t name him to the law. He said it would do no good, as his opponent had the law in his pocket.”
Once again she had to look away as the confounded list of names filled her vision. Judges. Police officers. Lawyers. “I see.”
“I’m not sure you do. Mari, he said Mr. Hughes called him out merely for mentioning your beauty and implying he would call on you when your mourning was complete. But that Mr. Hughes so misconstrued it, and in front of all their friends, that he had no choice but to accept the challenge.”
Perhaps walking had been a bad idea, given how weak her knees felt. Surely, surely Dev was not so jealous as all that. Why would he be, when he had been the only man in her life since Lucien died? Until that fateful sixteenth day of January, she had never wavered in her determination to marry him as soon as propriety allowed.
But then, her very affection for him was proof of her fickle heart, was it not?
The cold air hurt, she pulled it in so fast. “What happened to him? The other man?”
Barbara merely pressed her lips together.
Marietta let the silence hold as they navigated around the city block. Down the busier thoroughfare of Monument Square, they spoke of Stephen and of the joy Barbara had from finally being able to answer to her married name. Then they turned again, back onto the street that led home. Where the rows of townhouses typical in Baltimore gave way to free-standing edifices like hers.
Barbara focused upon the graystone building nearest the Hughes estate. “Are your neighbors in residence? I have not seen anyone there.”
“No. I am afraid the Pinkneys shut up their house at the start of the war.”
A frown knit her brow. “I wonder…perhaps there is someone prowling about in their absence. I heard voices outside last night. They sounded as though they were in the alley between your houses.”
Marietta’s pulse kicked up. “Walker, perhaps? Hez occasionally comes by of an evening.”
“At one in the morning?” Barbara shook her head, though given their shenanigans with Marietta’s granddad, her dismissal was likely mistaken. “I know their voices. It wasn’t them.”
“Likely prowlers, as you said, then. I’ll be sure and mention it to Walker.” Prowlers of the Copperhead variety, no doubt. Her eyes focused on the side of her house nearest the Pinkneys’, on the high hedge meant to lend privacy…and perhaps succeeding too well. Was that where the main entrance to the castle was?