‘Quite sure,’ Helen said.
She looked down at the ground, ready to withdraw, but was stopped by a hand around her wrist. Quinn, the urgency in his face excusing the liberty.
He leaned forward, wincing from the effort. ‘I haven’t seen him this rattled since Lady Elise.’
Helen gave a nod and he released his grip, settling back with a soft huff of pain.
She stepped back to the ground. The story of Lady Elise was not yet over. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the sun’s warmth chase away a little of the chill that came from the news she carried.
‘Are you ready to leave?’ the Duke asked at her side.
She opened her eyes. ‘Not quite. Would you be so kind as to bring your curricle around to where we saw Lord Carlston’s gig? I will join you there.’
‘He has made it clear he does not want company.’
She let the comment pass. ‘Will you bring your horses around and wait for me?’
‘Of course.’ He bowed.
‘Thank you.’
She watched his retreat, then said, ‘Mr Hammond, will you walk with me?’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘It will be my pleasure.’
‘Allow me to come too,’ Delia said. ‘I would be glad of the exercise before the drive to London.’
‘No, Delia. Stay here.’
She turned from her friend’s disappointment. Lord Carlston did not need an audience for his pain.
The walk along the riverbank would have been pleasant if her thoughts had not been so dark. The morning had already taken up some warmth from the sun, and a number of barges and boats were navigating the wide expanse of water. Hammond clearly sensed her mood, for he did not try to make conversation. She took some comfort in his silent company and the rhythm of her long stride; no gown hem to be caught up and no thin-soled slippers that felt all stones and ruts.
Her stout hessian boots and buckskin breeches took her across the rough road and through the knee-length grass. Ahead, Carlston stood on the bank, arms wrapped around his body, watching the water slide past. His horses, still hitched to his curricle, cropped the grass nearby.
She stopped fifty feet or so from him, halting Mr Hammond with a hand on his arm. ‘I have something to tell Lord Carlston. Something that will distress him. He will need a friend after it is done, and I cannot be that friend. Not for this. When I leave, will you go to him?’
Hammond nodded. ‘Of course.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘But what about you? It is clear you are distressed too. Who will be your friend?’
She shook her head, feeling an absurd sting of tears at his never-failing kindness, and started across the grass.
She knew the moment when Carlston felt that she was near. The pulse between them quickened, and then his shoulders straightened. Even so, he did not turn, his attention seemingly fixed upon the grey-green water.
She walked up beside him. He glanced at her, dark eyes hooded, mouth lifting for a moment in a strained smile of welcome. The breeze ruffled his hair, showing the old scar on his temple and the remnants of the blood dried upon his forehead.
‘I liked George Stokes very much,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘A man of firm ideas and an extraordinary capacity for claret. I feel I should at least do him the courtesy of recalling the moment I killed him.’ His hands, tucked under the cross of his arms, clenched into fists. ‘I recollect nothing.’
‘It was the journal,’ Helen said. She wanted to reach across and take his hands. Uncurl his pain.
‘Apparently I tried to kill you too. Selburn told me.’
‘He is one to talk,’ Helen said. ‘He tried to kill you and shot Darby instead.’
It brought a small smile, as she had hoped it would. ‘Poor Darby. A baptism of fire. But she is coping, is she not?’
‘She will.’
‘And you? Are you feeling any effects from the Ligatus?’
He finally turned to face her, the soft concern in his voice echoed in his dark eyes. She had not anticipated the effect it would have on her, the rise of that pulse between them, the strength that seemed to build behind it. She saw his jaw shift. He felt it too.
She cleared her throat. ‘I do not know how I can hold such a heinous thing within me and not go mad, and yet I can.’ She tapped her fingertip on her forehead. ‘The Ligatus has receded from my conscious mind, but I know it is in there, every word that Benchley wrote, every soul he murdered, waiting for me to find a way to retrieve them. Just as I know —’ She stopped.
‘That I am in there,’ he finished. He touched his temple. ‘Just as you are in here, our energies combined into a Grand Reclaimer bond. So much strength waiting to be unlocked.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. The promise of it was breathtaking.
‘I cannot remember much of the last few days, Helen. When I try, there is only a dull sense of some immeasurable pain.’ He lifted his shoulders: an involuntary hunch. ‘I do, however, remember three precious moments: when you freed me from that shrieking black hell; when we bonded with all that power; and the salon, before you left. I remember what I said in the salon.’ He took her hand, his skin warm against her own, and pressed the curve of her fingers to his lips. ‘Amore mio. Do you remember? I meant it then, and I mean it —’
‘You must stop!’ She snatched her hand back. ‘Please. I know something about your wife. Something I have retained from the Ligatus. Benchley wrote about her in his journal.’
Carlston straightened, the tenderness wiped from his face. ‘About Elise?’
Helen swallowed. She had thought herself resigned, but she suddenly could not speak past the choking tears in her throat. She curled her hands, digging her fingernails into her palms, and focused upon the small pain. Best to say it fast.
‘According to Benchley, your wife was a spy working for Bonaparte. She realised she had been discovered, was facing imminent arrest, and so staged her own death and fled. She is, by all accounts, still alive and in France.’
‘Alive?’ He stepped back as if the word had been a slap.
‘Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘A spy for France?’
He stared across the river, dark brows angled into fierce concentration. Helen could almost see the devastating recalibration of every moment he had spent with Elise de Vraine.
Finally, he tilted his head back, eyes squeezed shut. ‘Fool! How could I have been such a fool? So intent on Deceivers, I did not see the common spy in my own house. I wonder, did she want me suspected of her murder?’ He paced a few steps along the bank. ‘Still alive and in bloody France.’ He dragged his hands through his cropped hair. ‘No, it changes nothing.’ He whirled around to face her again. ‘Helen, it changes nothing.’
‘You are right,’ she said. He stepped forward, but she shook her head, stopping his eager advance. ‘Nothing has changed. You have always been married. It is just that now she is no longer a ghost.’