Page 17 of In Want of a Suspect
“Oh. Well... er, I mean. My mother...”
“Ha. Exactly what I thought! You don’t want him either.”
Lizzie looked down at the poor dog. He was trembling and cold, likely missing his master and confused at the loss of his home. Her mother would have an absolute fit, but maybe Lizzie could sneak him into the kitchen, bribe the scullery maid to give him a bath... and then find him a home? Yes, that was what she’d do.
“Yes, I do. I’ll take him home, and then we’ll figure things out from there.”
“You can’t help yourself, can you?” Darcy asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Darcy did her the kindness of not pressing the matter. “All right, then. Now, did you find anything?”
“Not a lot,” she admitted, standing and coaxing the dog along on his makeshift leash. “Although I did manage to talk to some of the Frenchwomen on the next street over. I’m not sure how well I made myself understood, but they did give me a name that we can try to chase down. Josette Beaufort.”
Darcy stopped suddenly, causing Lizzie to nearly stumble. “Darcy?” she asked. “What is it?”
He stared straight ahead, seemingly at nothing. “Josette Beaufort,” he repeated. “Now that is a name I have not heard in a while.”
Five
In Which Darcy Reckons with His Past, and Faces a Rather Inconvenient Rejection
“WHO IS JOSETTE BEAUFORT?”Lizzie asked.
Memory came to Darcy in flashes—a gentle smile, hands clasped in a candlelit ballroom, the whispers of half a dozen society young ladies. Her downcast eyes, the tightness in his chest that last day, the slick heat of shame...
What on earth didJosette Beauforthave to do with a burned-out storehouse near the docks?
Lizzie’s voice reached him through a fog. “Darcy. What is the matter? Who is Josette Beaufort?”
“Um... she, well, you see, she’s a lady.”
“A lady,” Lizzie repeated. “How descriptive. Care to elaborate?”
Something about the way Lizzie teased him shook him out of his stunned reverie. “She’s a young lady. Her grandfather and my father are business acquaintances. Were. Her grandfather has since passed.”
“So you’ve met,” Lizzie stated.
Oh heaven help him, he’d have to tell her the whole story. “We’ve more than met. There was a time—a few years ago, mind you—that we, uh, briefly... courted?”
“I see,” Lizzie said, and Darcy wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or concerned that she appeared to be unmoved by this revelation.
“It wasn’t even for an entire season,” he rushed to assure her. Then added, “It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“In the way that everything with my father is complicated,” Darcy said with a sigh. “Look, can we go back to the carriage? It feels rather untoward having this conversation out in the open.”
He expected Lizzie to make a sharp quip, but she simply nodded and tugged gently on Guy’s leash. The little dog trotted after her, and Darcy resigned himself both to the fact that the dog was theirs and to the unpleasantness of the conversation that awaited him.
They returned to the carriage, took their seats, and were on their way before Darcy said in an awkward burst, “It’s not that I wasnevergoing to tell you about her. It’s just that we never have gotten around to talking about it.”
“Do go on, or I shall start to imagine the most scandalous of things.”
His eyes widened and his pulse sped up. “Nothing scandalous, I assure you! You already know all my most scandalous secrets.”
“Good,” she said. “Then this should be quite easy to explain.”