arm. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at him. The whiskey lay like fire in her stomach, sending its heat throughout her body. Though it was meant only as a comforting gesture, she was very aware of his hand on her bare skin. She remembered the moment in the carriage when she had thought he was about to kiss her. The air was once again charged between them, as it had been then, and her flesh tingled where his skin touched hers. Eleanor tilted her head back to look up at him. His eyes gazed down into hers, capturing and holding her as surely as if he had taken her in his hands.
Anthony took a half step closer, his hand sliding up her arm, sending prickles of sensation through her. Her breath caught in her throat, and she stared at him, unable to look away. This time he was going to kiss her, she thought, and unconsciously lifted her face toward him.
Footsteps hurried along the hall outside, cracking like shots on the wood floor, and the noise seemed to break the spell. Eleanor took a hasty step backward, a blush rising in her cheeks. She turned away and walked around her desk before she turned to face Anthony again, the large wooden expanse lying between them.
“Well. I am sorry that you happened upon such a scene. Our household is normally much quieter.”
“Thieves are not usually the routine in any household, I imagine,” he replied mildly. He glanced around the room, taking in its spaciousness and comfort, the glass-doored shelves and locked cabinets, the pile of ledgers upon the desk and its well-used look.
“This is, um, your office?” he asked. Certainly he could not imagine Edmund in a place such as this.
Eleanor nodded. “Yes, it is where I work.”
She looked down at the desk, somewhat distractedly arranging the pencils in a row. The discovery of her ransacked room had disturbed her more than she cared to admit. “Why did he tear apart my bedchamber that way? Nearly everything valuable is down here.”
“Doubtless he did not realize that. Perhaps he simply started in your room, expecting to find jewels, and then he planned to work his way downstairs. He wasn’t counting, I’m sure, on your, um, maid discovering him.”
“Amah,” Eleanor corrected. “Kerani looks after the children for me.” She looked up at him, her gaze hardening a little, offering him a challenge. “No doubt you find us a rather unusual household.”
He shrugged. “Somewhat.”
He found himself wanting to ask who were all the people whom he had seen—why her household contained an African man who spoke perfect English and wore a gentleman’s suit, as well as an Indian woman, two children, and a butler who looked as though he would be more at home in a dockside tavern than in a butler’s pantry. And what did a woman do in an office like this? Why had someone ransacked her bedroom—surely not the pattern of a common thief, no matter what he had told her?
But Anthony knew that such thoughts were entirely beside the point. There was no reason for him to be wondering about this woman and her life any more than there had been any reason a moment earlier for him to want to kiss her. So he said nothing, and silence stretched between them.
“Well, that is not why you came,” Eleanor said briskly, turning away and going to a cabinet and unlocking it. “You want to know about Edmund’s death.”
She picked up a piece of paper inside the cabinet and turned, bringing it back and laying it down on the desk close to where Anthony stood, turning it so that he could see it. It was an official-looking document, complete with stamps and seals, written in Italian.
“This is the death certificate the Italian authorities wrote for Edmund. Can you read Italian?”
“A little,” he replied, picking up the document and perusing it. He felt uncomfortable, almost embarrassed.
“It says that his death was due to drowning,” Eleanor told him flatly, pointing with the tip of a pencil to the appropriate line. “Of course, if one believes that the Italian officials are corrupt and lied on the death certificate, I suppose that is not proof enough. There was also an article in the Italian newspapers about his death, since it was an accident.” She handed over a folded piece of newsprint, again in Italian. “There.”
Anthony’s eyes ran down the story. His Italian, never fluent, was rather rusty, but he recalled enough to see that the article was indeed about Sir Edmund Scarbrough and his drowning.
“His health improved so much in Naples that Edmund was much more vigorous than he was here. I am not sure why he grew interested in sailing. I think it had more to do with his friends being interested in it than anything else. Usually he sailed with Dario Paradella or one of his other friends. Dario had been supposed to go, but he had to cancel, and Edmund went by himself. He said he needed to think. When he did not return by nightfall, I grew worried, and I sent a servant to the docks, but his boat was not there. I grew increasingly worried, of course, and I sent notes around to his friends. I sent servants to the various places that he might have stopped, but he was nowhere to be found. So, eventually, I contacted the authorities. Two days later, his…” Eleanor paused, her throat tightening. She swallowed hard and continued. “His body washed up on shore.”
Looking at her quietly pained face, Anthony found it difficult to disbelieve her grief. He wanted to tell her not to talk about it any longer. He wanted to put his arms around her and let her head rest against his chest, just as he had wanted earlier to protect her from the burglar who had ransacked her room. He felt sure that such a reaction was how most men felt about her. She was beautiful, and no doubt she was well used to using that beauty to manipulate men into doing whatever she wanted. Believing whatever she wanted.
He firmly quashed his feelings of sympathy and asked, “Why did you burn his body?”
“It certainly was not to hide anything!” Eleanor snapped, her eyes flashing with anger and resentment.
“Then why? It goes against all decent behavior. What about his poor mother, grieving for him, with no grave to go to for comfort?”
“We were in Italy. She would have had no grave to go to, if I had buried him there, either. At least now she can put his ashes in the family vault. I would think she would prefer to have some reminder of him,” Eleanor retorted. She shook her head, holding out her hands as if to stave off any further dispute. “It does not matter, in any case. I had no say in the matter. The Italian authorities are responsible for that decision, not I.”
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