“No, you need the money.” He hadn’t forgotten her lecture on that score.
“I can’t be your mistress, Harcastle.”
“No, you can’t.” Nightingale had made that impossible. If she was telling the truth, he needed to help her, and he wouldn’t take her to bed if she was only willing because of gratitude. If she was lying, if this was all part of the plot…
“You can’t stay here,” he told her. “But I still have my old lodgings. I’ll give you the key and escort you there. I’ll call on you tomorrow and we’ll decide what to do next.”
“Harcastle…” Her eyes searched his face. Whatever she’d been hoping to see, it clearly wasn’t there. Without conscious thought, he’d shuttered his expression. It was his first instinct whenever he felt threatened. At the beginning of their acquaintance, he’d done it as a matter of course, and he didn’t know when he’d stopped. Only now, with his defenses back in place, did he realize he’d abandoned them. Careless, Alex.
Evie gave a sad smile and he felt as though he’d failed her. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
Logic told him he’d be a fool to trust her in these circumstances, but a deeper intuition warred against it. Distrusting her felt like a betrayal. His heart against his head. The urge to reassure her was almost overpowering, yet what good would it do? He couldn’t change what he was. He doubted her and that was all there was to it.
Nothing either one of them said now would make a difference.
Nothing could be done.
No words would recover what had been stolen.
Nightingale had spoilt what was between them before they’d even met.
Chapter Ten
They didn’t speak as the carriage crawled through the fog to Curzon Street. Their earlier interview had gone about as well as Evie had expected.
Better, since he hadn’t thrown her out onto the street. Distrust rolled off him in waves but she didn’t blame him. She understood. Yet something had died in her when he’d looked at her with such coldness. A foolish hope she hadn’t known she harbored.
Jaw set, he gazed into the night, his expression impenetrable. He’d shut her out, and instead of last night’s burning looks, the illicit touches, or the wicked things he’d whispered, she remembered his hands over hers in the washbowl, rough and not at all loverlike as he’d scrubbed the last remnants of oil of phosphorus from her skin. In that one moment, he had truly cared about her.
No wonder lying had become a way of life for her. No wonder he wouldn’t look at her now. The truth was squalid and so very tawdry.
“My rooms are on the top floor,” he told her when the carriage halted outside a large townhouse. “Go up while I speak with the coachman.”
She suspected he wanted a few minutes’ respite from her company. Since she had no intention of allowing him to see how much that thought saddened her, she nodded and climbed down from the carriage without waiting for assistance.
The front door opened into a large lobby. A wide, sweeping staircase led her up past floor after floor. Her steps echoed as she climbed. She was panting lightly by the time she reached the top. He hadn’t told her the number of his particular flat and now she saw why. There was only one door, which she supposed meant his rooms ranged over the entire floor. What must he have thought when he saw her tiny box of a room?
She fitted the key to the lock but, before she had a chance to turn it, the door swung open. The woman who stood on the threshold, eyebrows arched haughtily, was clearly not a servant. Tall and elegant, she had hair almost as red as Jack’s. “Yes?” she said.
Evie couldn’t speak. She could only think of one reason for the presence of this woman in Harcastle’s bachelor apartment. He had a mistress. Oh God. Was this his idea of revenge? To show her how little she mattered? If so, message received.
If possible, the woman’s eyebrows arched even higher. “What do you want?”
Evie made the mistake of lowering her gaze. The woman was dressed for dinner and the low neck of her gown displayed her ample bosom to perfection. Those generous curves made Evie feel small and plain. Not that it mattered now. What foolish ideas she’d allowed herself to entertain simply because Harcastle wanted to bed her. In her time at Miss Rose’s, she’d seen how unimportant attentions of that sort from a man were, but despite all she’d learned there, she’d let herself believe she mattered to Harcastle.
That some sort of special bond had developed between them.
Stupid, stupid Evie.
“Helen?” Harcastle said from the top of the stairs. Evie had been so distracted by the woman’s bountiful cleavage and her own wounded feelings that she hadn’t heard him ascend. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“A fine welcome, brother.”
Brother? Something loosened in Evie’s chest at the word. Helen, he’d said. Evie recalled the name from Captain’s research into Harcastle’s private life. This must be Helen Carter, the illegitimate half sister who, rumor had it, had spent a decade locked in an insane asylum.
“You knew I was coming, Alex,” Mrs. Carter was saying. “I wrote to you weeks ago informing you. What’s more, I wrote to Jude only last week to confirm the arrangements. I take it you forgot?”
Harcastle frowned. “It’s been an eventful week.”
Mrs. Carter rolled her eyes. “Well, come in then.”
Evie followed Harcastle inside and gaped at her new surroundings. Although Harcastle House had been magnificent, more so even than Lord Stein’s, it was much like the house of any rich mark. Its austere grandeur had everything to do with the Harcastle title and nothing with Alex as a man. Though she usually strove never to use his Christian name even in the privacy of her thoughts, she couldn’t help herself now. The room in which she stood was modest compared to what she had seen in his other home, but completely him.
An entire wall of the vast, high-ceilinged room was covered by bookshelves absolutely crammed with books. Not only the expected tomes on spiritualism and the occult. Even a cursory glance revealed novels, travel books, and scientific treatises all jumbled together.
A large desk stood before a tall bay window, the surface almost entirely obscured by scientific instruments. She spotted a microscope, camera equipment, an electric lightbulb coated with dust, and various wood and metal contraptions she couldn’t even name. Suspended above it all was a large spherical astrolabe of gleaming brass. She felt Harcastle’s eyes on her as she drifted from object to object, touching nothing but taking everything in.
“Who’s the waif?” Helen Carter asked.
“Helen…” The reproachful voice didn’t belong to Harcastle.