‘You’re damn right you need me. But you need a doctor first.’
Blake snarled at him but he stood his ground.
‘What does Finch say?’
That letter was sealed with a cheap wafer and addressed in Finch’s round, painstaking hand.
My lord,
Under the circumstances I think it best if I am with her ladyship. I will guard her with my life, be certain of it. I will ensure that the carriage and horses are returned to your lordship when her ladyship no longer requires them.
Jacob Finch
‘Thank God he is with them,’ Blake said, handing the letter to the other man.
Had Finch been with Eleanor at the church? Had he seen what she had seen? It seemed that little episode must have looked truly damning if Finch, with no emotional involvement, had immediately sided with Eleanor’s demands to leave the house without telling him.
‘But why has she gone?’ Jon demanded.
‘Because she saw me leaving what must have seemed like a token inside Felicity’s memorial—because she knew I was still carrying a miniature of Felicity and I suspect believed I loved the memory of a dead woman more than my wife and she could not trust my word.’
Blake spoke before he realised that he had an audience—not just his half-brother but Tennyson and now Duncombe.
‘You…’ Jon expressed himself in language that made the butler gasp.
‘Quite. Duncombe, sor
t my head out—I haven’t time for the doctor. Then get me a clean shirt and pack.’
The valet came down the remaining steps and peered at Blake. ‘You are concussed, my lord. Your eyes… You should be resting.’
‘I will rest in the carriage. Hurry.’
Duncombe washed the cut on Blake’s scalp and bandaged it, then started to pack while Blake, unable to sit still, searched Eleanor’s rooms.
The family jewels were still there, and all her evening finery.
‘She’s packed for practicality,’ he said to Jon, relieved by this evidence of rational thought and not simply hysterical flight. ‘And Polly must be with her as well as Finch.’
Talk about snatching at straws… She is sick. Oh, God, I ought to be with her.
‘This is locked.’ He tugged at a drawer and then, when it failed to open, forced it with a paper knife without even thinking why he was violating his wife’s privacy. It was locked but he could not afford to overlook anything she had tried to hide from him in case it held a clue.
The drawer was full of paper covered in Eleanor’s handwriting. He picked it up, expecting it to be more of Oscar’s adventures. A phrase caught his eye and he stared. Not Oscar… But what the devil…?
Another straw?
There was no time now. He pushed the whole lot into a portfolio.
Jon infuriated him by taking his arm down the stairs, then producing a rug as they got into the carriage. ‘Rest, damn you!’
What else was there to do? Nothing until he found her. Certainly thought was beginning to be difficult through the pounding waves of headache and nausea.
Blake suffered Jon and Duncombe to thrust him down full-length on the seat with a pillow under his head.
He closed his eyes.
She saw. What must she be thinking? I promised her… She promised she would not leave me. But how can I blame her? She doesn’t love me, but I must have hurt her so much…