Page 35 of The Lover’s Eye

When Betsey came to rouse Isobel the next morning, she found her already up.

“Good morning, Betsey,” she said from her seat by the fire. She sat a book down and folded her hands in her lap. “Do catch me up on the chattering belowstairs.”

Betsey stood open-mouthed, finally closing the door behind her and going to the dressing table to put hot water in the basin. “We are not well informed, ourselves, miss.”

“I suppose it’s ‘my lady’ now, isn’t it?”

The lady’s maid ceased pouring the water, her face taking on color. “Oh, yes, of course, milady. Forgive me, I am so used—”

“I was not giving you a scold,” Isobel said, smiling wistfully. “I can hardly believe it myself.”

Isobel began her washing, while Betsey laid out a dress of lavender cambric and a warm ivory shawl. “Tell me, Betsey, is my husband taking breakfast downstairs?”

Betsey’s face tightened. “He might be, milady, but I know he’s to leave soon.”

“Whatever for?” Isobel’s tired muscles clenched with tension, and she had the sudden urge to dash down the stairs half-dressed so that she might not miss him.

“The inquest, of course.”

“Inquest?”

“For Miss Gouldsmith?” Betsey led tentatively. “Lord Trevelyan is expected to be a part of it.”

Isobel pretended that this was not a surprise to her, saying very little as she was dressed and had her hair styled for the day.

As she made her way to the breakfast room, she realized how unfamiliar Cambo House still was to her. Corridors and niches and rooms snaked around her in unexplored shadow—there were enough of them to make her nervous.

It was the grounds she was more motivated to explore. She had intended to ask Giles if he might walk with her after breakfast, but if Betsey was right, he would be preoccupied yet again—with Aurelia’s affairs.

The breakfast room was awash with sunlight, all remnants of the previous night’s storm blown away. Giles was reading a newspaper, but set it down at once when Isobel entered the room.

He rose and helped her into her seat, choosing the one nearest to him just as he’d done the previous day. “Good morning,” he said, his voice reserved.

“Good morning,” Isobel recited. She wondered how sleep weary and tear swollen her face appeared, and immediately wished she had spent more time before the looking glass.

“I was not sure what time you woke. I’ve not started without you.”

Dishes started coming in from the sideboard then, hot plates wafting steam and savory aromas of marmalade, toast, and bacon. As delicious as the spread was before her, Isobel had very little appetite, as if her stomach had been fitted into the long neck of a glass bottle and lodged there.

“Did you rest well?”

“Mm,” Isobel hummed vaguely. She did not wish to lie, but she also didn’t want to burden him with the reality she had slept but a few fruitless hours. “And you?”

“Not well, but that’s rather average for me, I’m afraid,” he said dryly.

Isobel felt his eyes drift to her plate several times throughout the meal, and she prayed he would not comment on the tiny morsels that actually made it to her mouth.

He did not, but the energy between them had altered dramatically since yesterday.

They seemed uncertain of everything about one another again.

“I came to you last night,” Giles said quietly, interrupting a long spell of silence. “But you were resting. I did not wish to disturb you.”

Isobel raised her eyes from the silver spoon making little waves in her teacup. “Mr. Finch had given me word that you would not be coming at all.”

His feathery black brows contracted. He had not yet shaven, and a prickly layer of black stubble shadowed his lower face.

Most gentlemen’s whiskers greyed before their hair, but Giles seemed to be the opposite.

It only enhanced the contrast of his features, intensified Isobel’s desire to touch him. She looked away.

“If that is the message he gave you, I am sure that’s what I said in the moment. However, it was not what I intended. I simply did not know how long I would be gone.”

“Gone?”

Isobel turned deeply inquisitive. She knew only that a body, presumed to be Aurelia’s, had washed up, and her husband had declined to spend his wedding night with her. But he had left home?

She lamented, not for the first time in the last day, that Giles had made her promise not to ask questions. She would be at an embarrassing disadvantage in her marriage, and in her home, if she was not kept abreast of the ensuing inquest by her husband or Betsey.

“Mr. Heppel, our local magistrate, called on me to participate in an inquest. It was a time-sensitive matter, and I’m afraid I must finish the business in the village this morning.”

Isobel marveled at his cool, collected tone. She had expected him to seem more perturbed by the whole affair. It should make her feel better that he had been forced to keep from her chambers, should it not? It had not been a decision purely of his own free will, as she had been thinking.

“I had been hoping to walk the grounds with you this morning,” she said, offering a little smile. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

“That would be lovely.” Giles mirrored her fond look and started to say more, but his gaze was broken by Mr. Finch’s entry.

“Pardon my interruption, my lord, but it is a quarter past,” said the old butler. His inky gaze stayed fixed upon Giles, even though Isobel sat nearer to him and well within his line of sight. It seemed he wanted to pretend she was not there at all.

“Very well, thank you, Finch,” Giles said, rising from his seat and patting his mouth with a napkin. His body seemed to incline toward Isobel, as if to touch her or kiss her head, but he straightened. She felt the lost opportunity of his touch like icy pricks in her skin.

“Travel safely,” she said softly.

“I will, thank you. I should be returned in time for dinner.”

?

The Three Hens was a reputable establishment, but not any place Giles wished to be. That conviction fell upon him anew as he opened the old wooden door, faded and splintered by salt and wind.

The village tavern was much like any other. It’s true proportions remained elusive—the stone walls always felt close and encroaching, but the space managed to accommodate a dozen mismatched tables, which were usually under constant occupation by local men.

The ceilings were undoubtedly low, however. Giles had a clearer frame of reference for that, having to mind his head each time he passed beneath a hand-hewn beam. He wondered how many drunken sots had left the Three Hens with an honorary splinter in their foreheads.

He made his way to the largest round table where the coroner, Mr. Heppel, and Pemberton already sat. It was sunny outside, but a gas lamp was still necessary to illuminate the space before them.

“Trev,” Pemberton said, edging a seat out by the extension of his foot. The wooden legs groaned against the floor. “Have a sit down.”

“We’re just waiting on Burrows,” Mr. Heppel said with a sigh. He already had his hands around a copper mug.

Giles took the proffered seat, glancing about the space, which was curiously unoccupied. “Did you buy the place out for the morning?” he asked the coroner.

“Not as lavish as all that, but I did come to an understanding with the innkeeper. No customers will be coming in ’fore noon. I knew we’d not have a moment’s privacy otherwise.”

“What about the rooms upstairs?” Pemberton asked.

“Nothin’ we can do about anyone who’s lodging,” the coroner said with a shrug. “I expect word will travel fast, anyhow.”

Giles felt certain that was true. Aurelia had been frequently spoken of for years, more so upon their engagement, and gained outright fame after her disappearance. Confirmation of her death, especially given its gruesome circumstances, would garner universal interest.

Burrows entered then, striding over and joining them at the table. “Where’s the tapster?” he asked, shooting a frown in the direction of the untended counter.

“Go on and pour yourself one, chap,” Heppel said. “I had ’er leave out a tankard.”

Seemingly satiated, Burrows retrieved a copper mug of his own, which inspired Pemberton to follow suit. The three men whose hands were weighted by ale seemed to ease into their chairs. Only Giles and the coroner remained stiff, ready for the business to be over.

The coroner cleared his throat. “We must go over the facts, gentlemen. Miss Gouldsmith went missing in the eighth month of last year. The reverend tells me she acted completely at her ease the last time he saw her, when she was leaving home to go to Cambo House.”

The reverend was giving an accurate account, Giles knew. Only Aurelia had not intended to come to Cambo House—that was just the tale she’d given her father. It was outright rage that had eventually driven her to Giles’s doorstep that night.

Everyone looked blithely at him, waiting for a reply.

“Yes,” he said evenly. “As far as anyone knows, I am the last person to have seen Miss Gouldsmith. She left Cambo House around six in the evening. I assumed she was bound for home, but she did not say where she was headed.”

God, he wished that final sentence was true. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so damn guilty every day. He knew she was too angry to go home, had suspected she was throwing herself into danger and heading for the coast. He should have stopped her. Even if she kicked and screamed and hated him for it.

“She had no chaperone with her?”

“No.”

The coroner seemed displeased with this answer, but he had not known Aurelia. She had run free about the village and moors as long as anyone could remember. Giles felt with conviction that she must have done so since the time she’d learned to walk.

“What was the standing of your engagement at the time Miss Gouldsmith left your home?”