Now, however, there were things she had to tell him. He needed to make clear that, no matter what she thought, she had no choice; telling him, and soon, was her only option. After meeting Arbry, he wasn’t prepared to allow her to keep her secrets to herself for even one more day; he needed her to tell him so he could effectively step between her and all he’d been sent to investigate, including, it now seemed, her “cousin” Arbry.
If he could separate her from the investigation, he would, but he couldn’t see any way of managing that yet.
One step at a time. He needed to learn all she knew about this business. Had she been any other woman, he’d already have started plucking nerves of various sorts, but with Penny such tactics weren’t an option, at least not for him. His plucking her nerves was too painful for them both. Just lifting her to her saddle that afternoon had been bad enough, and he hadn’t even been trying. He’d distracted her by asking after Arbry, and she’d recovered quickly, but…not that way. All he could do was be water dripping on stone.
He strolled toward her, deliberately making noise. “Tell me—why did you choose to come to the Abbey?”
Penny glanced at him. Slowly swinging, she watched as he leaned against a nearby tree trunk; hands in his breeches’ pockets, he fixed his dark gaze on her.
They’d been lovers once. Just once.
Once had been enough for her to realize that continuing to be lovers would not be wise, not for her. He’d been twenty, she sixteen; for him, the encounter had been purely physical, for her…something so much more. Yet their physical connection continued; even now, after thirteen years and her best efforts to subdue her susceptibility, it still sprang to quivering life the instant he got close. Close enough for her to sense, to be able to touch—to want. Even now, looking at him leaning with casual grace against the tree, the breeze stirring his black hair, his eyes dark and brooding fixed on her, her heart simply stopped. Ached.
Her susceptibility irritated, annoyed, sometimes even disgusted her, yet she’d been forced to accept that regardless of him having no reciprocal feelings for her, she would always love him; she didn’t seem able to stop. That, however, was something he didn’t know, and she had no intention of letting him guess.
Forcing her eyes from him, she looked ahead and continued to swing. “Nicholas is no fool. If I was following him out of the Wallingham Hall stables, he’d notice.”
“How often have you followed him?”
She swung a little more, considering how much, if anything, to reveal. “I first realized he was visiting places no nonlocal gentleman such as he should know of in February. I don’t think he’d started before then—none of the grooms were aware of it if he had—but in February he spent all five days he was down here riding out. I’d done the same then as I did this time, coming here to the Abbey when he arrived, so I didn’t realize he was also riding out by night until it was too late.”
His silence made it clear there was a lot in that he didn’t like. Eyes on the corn rising green in his fields, she said nothing more, just waited.
“Where did he go? Smugglers’ haunts, I assume, but which?”
She hid a resigned smile; he hadn’t missed the point of her seeing Mother Gibbs. “All the major gathering places in Polruan, Bodinnick, Lostwithiel, and Fowey.”
“No farther afield?”
“Not as far as I know, but I missed his nighttime excursions.”
“Did you ask Mother Gibbs what he’d been doing in those places?”
“Yes.”
When she didn’t elaborate, he prompted, his voice carrying a wealth of compulsion—no, intimidation. “And?”
She set her jaw. “I can’t tell you—not yet.”
A moment passed, then he said, “You have to tell me. I need to know—this isn’t a game.”
She looked at him, met his eyes. “Believe me, I know it’s not a game.”
She paused, holding his gaze, then went on, “I need to think things through, to work out how much I actually know and what it might mean before I tell you. As you’ve already realized, what I know concerns someone else, someone whose name I can’t lightly give to the authorities. And regardless of all else, you, in this, are ‘the authorities.’ ”
His gaze sharpened. For a long moment, he studied her, then quietly said, “I may represent the authorities in this, but I’m still…much the same man I was before, one you know very well.”
She inclined her head. “My point exactly. Much the same, perhaps, but you’re not the same man you were thirteen years ago.”
That was the matter in a teacup. Until she knew how and in what ways he’d changed, he remained, not a stranger but something even more confusing, an amalgam of the familiar and the unknown. Until she understood the here-and-now him better, she wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting him with what she knew.
What she thought she knew.
Recalling her intention in coming to the orchard, she rubbed a finger across her forehead, then looked at him. “I haven’t yet had a chance to work out what the snippets I’ve learned amount to—I need time to think.” She stopped the swing and stood.
He straightened away from the tree.
“No.” She frowned at him. “I do not need your help to think.”