Page 44 of The Lady’s Deception

When she looked up, Paris was standing just a few yards away.

The girls rushed forward and wrapped their arms around their brother, nearly knocking him off balance. They were no doubt peppering him with questions. But ordinary sounds seemed to have been sucked from the room, leaving behind a dull, disorienting roar. How had he managed to find them so quickly? And was he alone?

As he came closer, his gaze never left hers. Dark eyes, red-rimmed with fatigue. Dark beard—two days’ growth, at least. While she watched, a welter of emotions sketched across his face. Anger, fear, relief. And—oh, yes. Guilt.

Well, why not? By coming here, he had ensured Charles would be able to track her down. And when her brother found her, he would make her feel the full force of his wrath. Afterward, she would find herself trapped in a miserable marriage with a wretched man who had one wife already in the grave.

With a shaking hand, she reached up and slapped his handsome face.

She knew she had been right about the guilt because he made not even the feeblest attempt to stop her from striking him. As if he knew he deserved whatever punishment she could mete out.

Afterward, she expected to feel satisfaction. Instead, a wave of regret washed over her. Her trembling fingers crept to her lips, holding back a sob. For just a moment, his sardonic mask had been lifted entirely. Now it was firmly back in place.

He wrapped one arm around Daphne’s shoulders, laid his other hand on Bell’s head. They were ogling him, waiting to see his reaction to their governess’s shocking act. But he did not look at them. His eyes still had not left Rosamund’s face. “Why, Miss Gorse,” he said, with that familiar wry twist to his lips. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Don’t be angry, Paris,” begged Bell. Daphne made a frantic gesture to silence her, apparently more interested to see how the drama played out without interference.

“I might say the same, Mr. Burke,” Rosamund replied. Oh, how she despised the way her voice shook. With relief. With…something that wasn’t relief at all. “Molly told me you’d rather drown than cross the Irish Sea.”

“Did she now?” Surprise flickered into his eyes, and he gave a weary laugh. “Well, I very nearly managed to do just that.”

Bell sobbed and clutched him harder. “He just means the sea was a bit rough,” Daphne both chided and reassured her. And then she glanced upward again, seeking confirmation. “Right?”

He looked at his sisters at last, shifting his grip to clutch Bell by the shoulders and reaching up to muss Daphne’s hair. “Let’s sit down, shall we?” he said, moving them toward the table. Rosamund noted that he hadn’t answered Daphne’s question.

The three Burkes settled themselves around one half of the table, the girls clinging to their brother. On the other side, Rosamund stood, uncertain. She ran one fingertip along the table’s scarred edge. “You must have crossed on the Peregrine, Mr. Burke. Were you alone?”

He lifted his head. She could still see the red mark her palm had left. “Alone, Miss Gorse? Your confidence in my sailing abilities is quite extraordinary. I assure you, the ship was fully crewed, and the passengers—” She parted her lips to interrupt the flow of his raillery, but something about the look in his eye gave her pause. “I’m quite aware of your meaning, ma’am.” He eased back in his chair and crossed one booted leg over the other. “Rest assured, there was no one of your acquaintance on board.”

Rosamund released a shaking breath and let herself sink into a chair. A reprieve. Of one sort, anyway. Charles might be half a day’s sail away from her, but she was once more just as desperate as she had been on the night she’d met Paris on the quay. The single shilling now hidden in her shoe made no difference at all.

Daphne, however, had been reminded of her annoyance with her brother. She had released her hold on him and was once more regarding him skeptically. “No one of her acquaintance? Why, there must’ve been dozens of people on that ship. How could you possibly know whether Miss Gorse was familiar with any of them? And anyway, I still want to know why she—”

“What’s this?” With his free arm, Paris reached across to snatch up the half-finished letter. “Ah, I might’ve known you wouldn’t disappear entirely without a note to—why—” A laugh burst from him. Humorless. Hurt. “To Molly. Of course.”

Too late to stop him, Rosamund was forced to sit with her hands folded in her lap, watching as his eyes scanned the page, taking in her feeble attempt to explain why she had left, the predicament in which she had found herself when Daphne and Bell had followed her on board the Claremont.

He read it through twice, at least. Perhaps three times. The handful of words on the paper were otherwise insufficient to require such lengthy attention. At last he raised his gaze to hers. “I confess I have spent the better part of the last day puzzling over why you had chosen to involve my sisters in your flight.” With a flick of his wrist he tossed the half-finished letter onto the table. “Knowing them as I do, the truth ought to have occurred to me sooner. Why, it could just as easily have been the case that they had absconded with you.”

“Par-is,” came the expected chorus of protest, followed by an almost unintelligible attempt to explain simultaneously their decision to try to find their governess.

He held up his hand. “Enough. Answer me these questions, one at a time, if you please,” he said, looking between them. “Whose idea was it to follow Miss Gorse?”

“Daphne’s,” said Bell, and to Rosamund’s surprise, the elder girl did not try to deny it. “But my idea to bring Eileen along,” she added.

At that, he drew up his lips as if trying to contain a laugh. “And how did you determine where to look?”

“Lady Sydney was just setting out on her afternoon constitutional,” explained Daphne, “and she said she thought she’d seen Miss Gorse walking south. So we went that way.”

He looked both of them over carefully, taking note, Rosamund felt sure, of the dirt and the state of their clothes. “You came to no real harm on this adventure?”

“No, Paris,” Daphne promised solemnly. “We were careful.”

“No harm,” echoed Bell. “Although…well, my legs and feet are tired.”

“I should think so. Why, it must be nearly four miles from Merrion Square to Dunleary.” His eyes darted toward Rosamund but did not rise to her face, as if he did not quite trust himself with what he might see there. “Such journeys are very hard on the shoes.”

She feared for a moment that she might be the next subject of his interrogation. Instead, he freed his other hand from the circle of Bell’s arms, retrieved the discarded sheet of foolscap, and took up the pen. With none of her own uncertainty or hesitation, he added several lines to the bottom of Rosamund’s letter and swiftly signed his own name to the missive. She made no effort to read what he had written.