‘Which, my lady?’
‘Why does it matter? How is this relevant?’ She was pretending anger and distain to cover something else, he realised, raising his gaze from the notebook to study her face. She stared back, chin up. Fear? Possibly. Talking of her past distresses her so she hits out at me to give herself courage.
‘Anything may be relevant. I need to understand you, your background, your life now, your past, if I am to discover who wishes you dead.’
‘You are forthright, Mr Hunt. Do you not fear I will faint or have the vapours at such direct speaking?’
‘No,’ Jared said bluntly. ‘I do not. Your first husband, ma’am?’
‘It was a Scottish marriage,’ she snapped.
‘That would still be legal here provided it was performed according to Scottish law before witnesses.’ A runaway match, no doubt, if she was so defensive of it.
‘It was. But that is irrelevant. My… He is dead.’
‘His name, please. And how and when did he die?’
‘Francis Willoughby. He fell from a window onto a stone terrace while drunk and broke his skull. He was dead when they reached him. It was almost two years ago.’
‘I am very sorry,’ Jared said. ‘It was an accident, I assume?’
‘Yes. The coroner was satisfied, although there were no witnesses to the actual fall. As I said, drink had been taken.’
‘It must have been very distressing for you. I can imagine your grief.’ Bland statements and clichés like that often had the effect of provoking a response and it worked this time.
‘Can you imagine how I felt? You are an unusual man if you can, Mr Hunt.’ Lady Northam turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Or was that remark intended to be provocative? Yes, I think it was. Very clever.’
He managed not to wince at her perception, made the movement into a nod.
‘No doubt you would prefer not to have to drag this out of me quite as much as I would prefer not to have it dragged,’ she said tartly. ‘Here it is then without the trimmings – I was a foolish girl who fell for a plausible seducer. I ran away with him, my family cut me off, he was infuriated that my dowry was not forthcoming. In other words it is a commonplace story about a commonplace man and a very naive girl
. He was a most unsatisfactory husband and I would have rejoiced to find myself free if I had not found myself with a mountain of obligations and debts.’
She was pretending a hardness and a sophistication that was alien to her, Jared guessed. ‘A wife is not held responsible for a husband’s debts,’ he said mildly.
‘But what she inherits may be entirely dissipated in paying those debts before she can inherit it.’ Lady Northam shrugged. ‘Not that I inherited anything beyond threatening debtors making demands they did not believe I could not meet.’
‘Was Lord Northam someone to whom Mr Willoughby owed money?’
‘No. This happened near an estate he had newly acquired.’
‘I see.’ Of course, the estate he had purchased to help his distant cousins.
‘I very much doubt it,’ Guin said. The compelling eyes that seemed able to read her mind narrowed, then Jared Hunt looked back at his notes. This hard-faced stranger thought she had sold herself to an old man as a way out of her troubles. There had been that of course, but there had been far more. More that she had no intention of discussing with a bodyguard. Where had Augustus found him? Jared Hunt was certainly no Bow Street Runner for hire. One look at him with his dark, severe clothing, those penetrating eyes had put her on edge, on the defensive.
‘Had your – had Willoughby family, friends?’
So, he had the sensitivity at least not to call Francis your husband. Perhaps this would be like going to the dentist where the one who got on with it, pulled the painful tooth hard and brutally, was the one who caused least pain in the long run.
‘I am not aware of anyone.’ He had told her nothing about a family. I am all alone, Guin darling. You are everything to me, my world. We need no-one else, only each other. It was an effective way of isolating her, controlling her, until she realised there was no-one she could turn to, no friend, no confidante. No help. ‘No-one came forward at the inquest or attended the funeral. There has been nothing in twenty months and yet it was widely publicised at the time.’
‘It was not local, I believe. Not close to Lord Northam’s Dorset estate.’
‘No. It was in the North.’ The money had not lasted long enough to get them very far south of the Border.
‘It is unlikely then that the marriage is at all relevant to your present situation.’ Mr Hunt made another brief note. She was not certain whether that was a statement or a question. It was like having a hawk in the room, a falcon, sleek of feather, sharp of beak and talon. His hair was drawn back tightly at the nape of his neck and braided into a tail, and she found herself wondering how long it was when he released it. It was an unfashionable style, yet his brutally plain clothing was of the finest quality.
That dark golden-brown hair was attractive. So were those amber hawk-eyes and the strong, lean face. Guin realised that she was frightened of him, of the aura of tightly controlled force about him, the awareness that he would be very good at violence, skilled at it. Francis had not been skilled, only angry at life, at her, at everything that had not showered the bounty on him that he thought he was entitled to.