Page 27

A fter a full circuit of the lake, they had still not found the kitten. As they approached a stone bench beside the water’s edge, Seth walked toward it, taking a seat.

The rain had stopped, the sun occasionally bathing the land around them as shadows scudded over the grass.

Seth closed his eyes, breathing in the smells of his estate. The gentle scent of lavender wafted toward him as Alicia came to sit beside him.

“Perhaps you are right and she is in the house,” she said, rubbing her feet from their long walk around the lake. “Or—or the buzzard has eaten her and taken her to its young.”

“We will find her. Do not fear. Rest a bit, and then we will return.”

Alicia’s spine remained just as straight as it had been earlier, but she stopped fidgeting, her hands coming to rest on her lap.

Seth looked out over the lake, the quiet and calm of the place settling over his soul.

“You have never asked me,” he said softly.

“Asked you what?”

“About my past. I know you are aware of what happened; I heard you speaking about it with your sister.”

She was quiet for a moment and then nodded. “All I know is what I have heard. I do not put much stock in idle chatter.”

“But you are aware of the trial?”

“Someone told me you had been accused of murder .” Her tone was tentative, nervous almost.

Seth leaned forward, watching the ripples on the surface of the water. “Not quite. Well, not only me. I was asked to stand as a witness at his trial.”

“Whose?”

“A man named Lord Gordon Fernside—the best man I’ve ever known.”

He could hear the catch in his voice.

Why, after all this time, does it still affect me like this?

“What happened to him?”

“Ah, well, there’s the question. He sustained a severe head injury. That is what the official report says anyway. But seeing it was something quite different.”

“You saw his body?” Alicia asked, her fingers clenching together in her lap.

Seth did not speak for a long time, listening to the gentle breeze in the trees and the faint call of a sparrow in the woods.

“We were breaking the rules,” he said ruefully. “Up late at night in the bowels of our house at Eton. Foolish boys, deciding that we knew better than anyone else what we should be getting up to.”

He leaned back, staring up at the clouds sailing over their heads.

“A woman arrived. I did not know her. She told me that she had been waiting for Gordon and that he had not presented himself. That was not so unusual, but it worried me. We went out to find him.”

“Who is ‘we?’”

“Me, Isaac Stone, Lucas Oakley, and Michael Grant. My closest friends. You may remember them from the wedding; they were the ones who came to fetch me when I was not doing my duty to you and our guests.”

“Ah, then I owe them a debt of thanks. But why have you not spoken of them before, if they are your closest friends?”

Why, indeed.

“I suppose I try not to think of them often,” Seth admitted.

There was something haunted in Seth’s expression, and Alicia wanted to wipe it off his face—to make him smile again.

But now that he was finally speaking about his past, she was desperate to hear more.

She itched to ask for more and had to keep herself from pushing. She simply waited for him to continue.

“We went to search for him, all four of us. I thought he was drunk, lost—all the things he usually was. But when we went into the gardens, it did not take me long before I saw him. He was lying in the moonlight, quite still.”

His throat convulsed as he swallowed, rubbing his hands against his thighs, and Alicia slowly moved her own to interlace their fingers. Seth gripped them so hard that she winced.

“I did not know what nightmare had begun, just that I had lost my friend. But we were all accused. The headmaster, the provost, our friends—people I had known all my life suspected I had hurt him. Young boys in the night—no one believed our story.”

He sighed, raking a hand through his hair as he stood up and began to pace.

“The trial was awful. All we had was each other because nobody believed us. Gordon’s father was devastated, furious. He was not a man to cross, and he believed we were guilty, demanding that justice be delivered. But in the end, we were each other’s alibis—no other proof existed. It still doesn’t.”

“Well then, why has the rumors continued?”

Seth threw his hands up in the air. “The ton loves a scandal. The fact that Fern was injured in the back of the head suggested foul play, but no culprit was found.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“I do not know! ” he huffed. “I have been willing to let it lie for years, but I cannot do so any longer. I must find out the truth.”

Alicia watched him pace back and forth along the lakeside.

“Why now?” she finally asked.

He stopped, turning to her, the look on his face difficult to decipher.

“It is just time that it was laid to rest,” he said, his eyes darting away, a muscle ticking beneath his eye.

Alicia watched him thoughtfully, wondering if that was the truth.

“Come and sit down,” she said pleadingly. “You are making me dizzy with your pacing.”

Seth seemed reluctant, but after a pause, he came to sit beside her.

“I am sorry,” she murmured. “I believed the rumors myself before I knew you.”

There was a long silence.

“And now?” Seth asked.

He sounded uncertain, and he did not turn to look at her.

“We may not have known each other for long, but you are no killer. Hearing you speak about him… I can tell how much he meant to you.”

Seth looked down, tugging at a loose thread on his breeches, awkward and withdrawn suddenly.

“Can you tell me something good about Lord Fernside?” Alicia asked. “I imagine you have been wallowing in sadness for so long.”

Seth said nothing, plucking at the thread.

“I lost my mother when I was young,” she continued. “I do not recall a great deal about her, but I remember she would hum the same tune over and over. I never knew what tune it was—perhaps I never will—but when I think of her, I try to focus on that happy melody, not the sadness in my heart.”

After another few minutes of silence, Seth finally began to speak.

“I met Gordon when we were fifteen. He intervened when a bigger boy wanted to knock me down in the courtyard.”

“ Bigger than you?” Alicia asked skeptically.

Seth scoffed. “I have not always been as tall as I am now. Gordon did not even know me, but he could not bear to see injustice in the world. He helped me up, clapped me on the shoulder, and told me I needed to learn how to stand up for myself. We were friends from then on.”

Alicia leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder as he continued.

“He was fiercely loyal to all those around him. Gordon would have done anything we asked without hesitation, without question. I loved that about him. Whatever problem you might come up against, he would be by your side no matter what.”

His voice cracked, emotion welling up as his chest heaved.

“I have been angry with him for a long time, for leaving me to face the world alone when he used to always be by my side.”

Alicia squeezed his arm in comfort. “You did not have a groomsman at the wedding. I wondered about that at the time. I thought it proved you were not a good man, but I know different now.”

“I could not ask anyone else to stand beside me,” he murmured. “Not without Gordon. It was better for that spot to remain empty than to try and replace him.”

Alicia looked up as a shadow moved above their heads, the buzzard wheeling in the sky, watching the earth below.

“I believe Gordon was there beside you. If not in person, he would have been there in spirit.”

Seth went still, and then he leaned back, placing an arm around her shoulders. “That is a comforting thought.”

His fingers tightened as he sighed heavily.

“I have never been good at friendships or making connections. When someone so close to you is taken away, it is hard to find the strength to allow another to know you.”

Is that how he feels about me? Is that why he has repeatedly told me that our marriage means nothing?

That thought lit a fire inside her, a desire to help him in any way she could.

“Gordon would have liked you,” Seth added, tension creeping into his voice. “He would have enjoyed agreeing with you to spite me and proving I was wrong about everything.”

Alicia laughed. “I am sure I would have liked him; you would not be best friends with a man who was not worthy of it.”

Seth’s chest tightened at those words, uncertain what he had done to receive such praise, but enjoying the sentiment all the same.

Alicia’s steady presence and kindness in the face of his grief had surprised him.

No one in his life whom he had spoken to about Gordon’s death had wished to entertain the topic. Even after the trial, when he had longed to speak with his father about the pain of it, his father had shut down any attempt to raise the subject.

The ache that he had felt for so many years lessened for the first time. He felt that she truly understood him, that she forgave him in a strange way.

It was liberating.

As he stared out across the lake, he suddenly saw a flash of white on the opposite bank. Two little ears and long legs scampering through the grass. He jumped to his feet.

“I see her!” he said, glancing at the buzzard above them. “We must reach her before the bird does, or she will be done for.”

Alicia was on her feet, too. “You see Dove? Where?”

“By the reeds on the other side of the lake. You go around the other side and intercept her if she tries to run.”

Alicia set off at pace, and Seth sprinted around to the left, feeling his muscles loosen as he settled into the pace, his body thrumming with energy.

Glancing across to the other side, he saw Alicia’s figure slightly ahead of him and gave a loud laugh as he quickened his pace, making it a race between them.

He heard an answering shout from the opposite bank, and Alicia, who had been walking quickly, suddenly broke into a full sprint. Seth was not sure who would reach Dove first.

He managed it by a whisker, the thundering of his feet making the kitten leap back from him, but he managed to snatch her little body just as she was about to flee.

He held her up triumphantly as Alicia reached them, panting and taking the little bundle into her arms.

“Where have you been? You could have been eaten by a buzzard!” she scolded.

But her eyes were alight with happiness as she looked up at him.

“Thank you. I would not have found her without you.”

Seth stroked the cat gently, feeling her purring beneath his hand.

“Let us take her back to the house. I am sure we can persuade the cook to give her some warm cream to dissuade her from venturing out again.”

“Would that not make her think she is being rewarded for escaping?” Alicia asked.

“ You are keeping her in your room overnight from now on. She will not be permitted into the gardens alone again.”