She thought he looked like Lancelot in those clothes. She liked the idea of herself as Guinevere, the two of them acting out the myth, meeting in a garden where no one else could see or hear. She even liked the idea that he needed her help for some urgent business.
‘You asked me before who I was. The truth is, I know Simon.’
‘You …’ The words weren’t what she expected. She remembered him asking about Simon in the carriage. She felt the quality of the air change.
‘You should call him Lord Crenshaw,’ she said. ‘He’s far above you in station.’
‘I know what he is.’
‘Then you know you shouldn’t be here.’
But he was; he’d come. As she’d known he would, giving him Lord Crenshaw’s jacket because it was something to return.
‘Katherine.’ Will said her name in a way that made her shiver; it was so intimate, saying her given name like that. She wanted him to say it again. ‘Simon isn’t a good man.’
She told herself it was part of the flirtation, and a part of her even liked it, the idea that he would take her away from her engagement, freedom waiting on the other side.
‘I suppose Lord Crenshaw, one of the foremost gentlemen in London, is a bad person,’ she said, ‘while you, climbing garden walls, are the good one.’
‘People aren’t what they seem,’ said Will.
‘I do know him quite well,’ said Katherine.
‘You don’t know him at all,’ said Will.
‘I know he’s generous and charming. I know he’s handsome and attentive. I even know that he’s in London right now. On important business. He told me—’
Will said, ‘He killed my mother.’
Everything seemed to stop. She felt the chill of cold night air as it touched the shadowed places in the garden. Around her, dark green shapes were moving, rustling softly in the breeze. ‘… What?’
‘We lived at Bowhill, in the Peak District,’ said Will. ‘I was collecting wood when I heard her scream. She tried to fight, but she – there was so much blood, soaked into the earth. By the time I got to her it was too late. I came to London to find out who had done it. Who had sent those men to kill her. It was Simon.’
His gaze had always been intense, but his face was pale and serious, and he wasn’t saying it as if he was joking; he was saying it as if it was true. As if Lord Crenshaw had given the order to kill someone.
‘You’re lying.’ She stepped back instinctively. ‘You’re trying to besmirch a good man’s name. It’s not becoming.’ She had thought Will was a gentleman, but he wasn’t. A gentleman wouldn’t say these things.
‘I’m not lying to you, Katherine. It’s why I came. Simon’s holding a man hostage at Ruthern. And terrible things could happen if that man’s not rescued. You’re the only person who could get us onto the estate to help him—’
‘Then you’ve been lied to,’ she said. ‘Because Lord Crenshaw would never do that.’
But she was filled with the vision of it, of Lord Crenshaw giving orders, and sending out men to hunt down women.
‘There are things happening,’ said Will. ‘Things bigger than both of us. Things that if I told you, you wouldn’t believe—’
‘I don’t believe it.’ She was breathing quickly. ‘Lord Crenshaw is a good man, and we’re going to be married at St George’s Hanover Square, and after that we’ll live at Ruthern; it’s all been planned out.’
He was looking at her as though she stood on the other side of a chasm. ‘Katherine—’
‘You hate him.’ As the ground seemed to shift under her feet, she remembered Lord Crenshaw’s lawyer saying, The boy. ‘You came for him. You never came for me.’ She flushed, the painful truth behind her realisation just slipping out. The boy. Lord Crenshaw’s enemy. The boy who sank the ship.
It’s you. She felt those words deep within her. Mrs Dupont had abandoned her that day because of a boy. It’s you.
She had feelings for an enemy. Self-knowledge made her shiver. Because she knew now that she didn’t want Lord Crenshaw. She wanted this, danger and mystery, and something on the very edge of her understanding—
‘I came for you.’ Will’s dark eyes were a tumult. ‘I came for you. Maybe at first I thought – but the moment I saw you, it was like nothing else mattered.’ Will said it as if he was trying to hold the words back and couldn’t. ‘I know you feel it too.’