Chapter Eighteen
“I’m sorry.” Callum’s voice was dim in Isabel’s ears. “This is not the evidence I thought to find.”
Of course she had summoned him, her writing frantic. Douglas, the footman, had picked up on her sense of urgency. He’d bolted off at her instruction, returning with Callum just as Isabel had managed to calm Lucy with quiet words and more than a little brandy.
She and Lucy were out in the corridor, because the room was again poisoned by its contents. Callum had looked at the desk. The broken drawer. The secret compartment.
The brooch.
When he finished, he rejoined them in the corridor. It was dark-paneled, the better to show off the art hung in gilded frames. Isabel wanted to smash it all, to get out of this house at once.
For Lucy’s sake, she remained calm. Standing firm, she drew the younger woman into an embrace and patted her back. Over Lucy’s shoulder, she said to Callum, “I never thought you’d find any evidence related to Andrew’s death. It’s just been too long. But this—this isn’t related to Andrew at all, is it?”
“It was in his desk.” Callum looked grave. “But that’s not an answer in itself.”
The brooch was related not to Andrew’s death, but the death of Lucy’s parents. Would Andrew have killed them? Had he known the criminal?
Isabel thought out loud, sorting through possibilities. “I don’t understand it. I wish I could remember, was he here? He didn’t keep a datebook. But surely he was never gone long enough to travel to Gloucestershire? No, never. It would have taken days, and he never departed for more than a single overnight.”
Lucy pulled back, pale and shaky. “It couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t. It must be a coincidence.” She dashed tears from her eyes. “Or he tracked down the killer, and he got the brooch back, and—and he was keeping it to surprise me.”
This sounded entirely unlike Andrew, as impossible a suggestion as his journeying more than a hundred miles and back again within twenty-four hours. But the hope in Lucy’s voice was pitiful and thin, and so Isabel kept her doubts to herself.
“I’m sorry,” said Callum again. “I can make inquiries. But at this moment, all I can do is recommend a carpenter to fix the broken drawer.”
“I don’t think I’ll bother,” Isabel said. “But thank you.”
They walked together down the corridor, Lucy turning off at her bedchamber with a promise to rest and relax. At the door of her own room, Isabel caught Callum’s hand.
“I have something for you,” she said. “Since you are here. Come in for a minute?”
He looked dubious. “The circumstances are not ideal.”
“I know. But come in all the same.” So he did, and she shut the door behind them. Crossing to her wardrobe, she opened the doors and drew out a large box. “These are for you.”
He set the box on the bed and lifted the lid. “Boots,” he said flatly.
They were not just any boots. They were Hoby’s finest, sturdy and glossy and made to suit his feet exactly, thanks to the measurements she’d taken while he slept in her guest chamber.
But the expression on his face stilled her tongue, kept her from saying any of that. “Will you try them on?” was all she said.
He put the lid back onto the box. “Why did you get me boots?” His eyes searched her face.
“Because you need them, and you won’t get them for yourself.”
His lips tightened. “You don’t have to look after me. You don’t have to buy me gifts.”
This was not the reaction she’d expected. She’d known he wouldn’t be effusive, but she’d thought maybe she’d get a laughing thanks. A rueful look at the damage his own boots had incurred. The lack of emotion was strange.
“I know I don’t have to,” she said. “If I did, I wouldn’t want to nearly so much. But it’s my choice, and I want you to have these.”
“That is thoughtful of you.” He took up the box, turned to go. “Thank you. I’d best be going. I have to work for my bread.”
“I know, and I thank you for coming by. Lucy was grateful too; I am sure she will tell you so when she’s recovered from the shock.”
He nodded.
She wanted to keep him there; she kept talking. “I hope you will come to the new house when we’re settled in it. We do not see you enough.” As he opened his mouth, she blurted, “And do not say to what end. Seeing you is an end in itself.”
“Lady Isabel,” he said softly. She winced at his use of her title. “I’ve always been aware of the end. Haven’t we come to it?” He was so inscrutable, but his eyes were fathomless. She wanted to swim in them.
“What does that mean?” She clutched one of the bedposts, needing something solid to grasp. “You always thought of me as temporary?”
He answered her question with one of his own. “What would you do if you were not afraid?”
She blinked. “You remind me of my own wish to be braver.”
His smile was small and wistful. “Even the bravest person in the world is afraid sometimes. Bravery has nothing to do with fear. But had you no fear, what would you do?”
The answer came to her lips in a second. “I would be with you.”
“You see? You will not be with me.” He adjusted the box in his arms. It was too large and heavy, coming between them, and she wanted to toss it away.
“You haven’t asked me,” she retorted.
“I cannot, Isabel. I haven’t the right. You’ve the money and the connections. What would you give up for me? What would you lose?”
She slapped the bedpost with the flat of her hand. “Why must I lose anything? If you intend this conversation as some noble gesture, I find it lacking.”
“And how did you intend the boots?”
“As an apology for having you shot. As a gift because I think of you often. As a sign of how much your comfort means to me.”
“Ah.” He looked at the box lid. “That is most kind. You’ve been cushioned, and it’s not your fault. It’s no shame. It’s a good thing, to have a comfortable life. So good that I don’t want to take it from you.”
“Why, though, must I lose . . . what are you saying?” She struggled to understand. “I will still have money. A house. I would not change at all if we were together.”
This was the wrong thing to say. She could tell at once.
“I don’t mean that there would be no place in it for you,” she added hurriedly. “I mean that there is. So much of my life has changed recently, that being with you would be a lovely continuation.”
“In an affair? Would you keep me as your lover?” His mouth went tight at the corners, the look that was not quite a smile and not quite a grimace. “I would not be satisfied with that.”
“So marry me, then,” she flung at him, and now he was the one to hesitate.
“Best not,” he finally said, as if she’d asked him whether he would take another biscuit with tea. “You’re a marquess’s daughter. I’m a grocer’s son.”
“And? So?” She had abandoned her pride; now a sense of injury swelled within her. “I never reminded you of that. You reminded yourself. And you’re just as superior in your way as I am in mine, Officer Jenks.”
He only lifted a brow, so she continued, pacing the width of the room from wardrobe to bed to wall and back. “Presuming I’m sheltered. That I cannot handle harsh truths. My body lives in ease, yes, but my heart has dealt with truths you’ve never imagined. You have parents who love you, Callum. A brother who cares enough to fight with you. An occupation that gives meaning to your every day.”
He waited her out in silence, his mouth looking grimmer and grimmer. “It’s not easy,” he said, “to work for my bread.”
She rounded on him, hands flying. “I didn’t say it was easy! I said it had meaning. And by God, the choices you have just by being male.” A harsh laugh. “Yes, I have money through no virtue of my own, but what can I do with it? Before I wed, nothing. Even as a widow, I haven’t the freedoms you so often take for granted. To feel safe when you walk into an alley. To leave the house alone. To know that the law of the land and the unspoken laws of society regard you as competent to handle your own affairs, rather than regarding you as ignorant and inferior, then making sure such assumptions are true by placing insurmountable obstacles in your path.”
He shook his head.
She felt empty, hollowed out by the escape of words she’d been waiting to say a long time. “I will leave no imprint on the world when I die, Callum. You leave one every day. It would be worth a lot of money to me to add meaning to my life.”
“Easy to say when you’ve never been short of money.”
She sighed. “Please! Don’t you see? We both have privilege of different sorts. If we pulled together, what couldn’t we do? In life, in investigations—all of it. I know that you are concerned for my welfare, or my reputation. But then who is it, really, who’s separating us?”
His fingers tightened on the sharp edges of the box, denting and crumpling it. “Circumstance,” he said. “The world. We met only by chance, connected by crime. First your husband’s death, then my brother’s.”
“That’s not all that connects us now,” she said.
“It’s not. But is there enough to draw us together, when you and I live in different worlds?”
She held up a hand. “Wait a moment. There are plenty of worlds that can belong to both of us. Vauxhall was one of them. And the theater—you live at the heart of the theater district. But who goes? Everyone.”
“There’s a bit of a difference,” he said dryly, “between the boxes used by the rich and the seats on the floor where people buy oranges as a rare treat.”
“What about the Duke of Ardmore’s music room, then? We belonged there equally ill.”
He cracked a smile.
“Or your parents’ grocery. We had a fine visit. I got to meet your mother, which was nice since I never had any sort of a mother at all.”
“To what end?” he said quietly. She had known the question was coming.
She didn’t know. All she knew was she didn’t want there to be an end, and she didn’t see how there could be anything but.
“If you are asking the question,” she said, “then you have already determined your own answer.”
“You are the one with much more to lose than I if we are together.”
“Ah, so you are being noble!” Her tone was bitter.
“That’s the one thing, Lady Isabel, that I’ll never manage to be.”
She pressed at her temples. Why had she invited him in here? Had she thought the boots would make a terrible day better? They were not magical boots. This conversation would have had to happen eventually, without the playacting of partnership to keep them together. “I don’t want you to be anything but who you are.”
“Yet you tried to make me into something I wasn’t.”
When he set the box down on the bed, her fingers went cold. “What was that?”
“Anything but an Officer of the Police. Upholding the law.” He looked bleak. “That’s all I should ever have been and done.”
“I am sorry you think so.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her eyes well up. So he wouldn’t know how much it hurt that he would strike her from his life like an account dealt with, totted up, excised. “You realize now that you cannot forgive me for asking for your help switching the paintings?”
“No. I cannot forgive myself for giving it. And it’s not only that there’s no space for me in your life, Lady Isabel. There’s no room for you in mine.”
She heard him go, but did not turn around to watch. Her ears strained for his every footfall, though, until she could hear no more, and then the front door closed him out.
Darting to the window, she watched him depart. He walked away with a straight back, stubborn and proud and ethical and rigid and lawful and handsome and dear and unattainable.
There was no question in her mind now: she knew she loved him.
On the bed remained a pair of expensive new boots fitted just for him. They would never be worn, she supposed.
He had been clear about the matter: this was the end. They were done, and they would go their separate ways. Everything had to do with money; money and duty. Hearts had nothing to do with their situation at all.
Stubbornly, her heart ached like a wound within.
She knew she would never ask him to come back to her, and he would never offer.