Woodhaven was. She pitied him. All her husband had left him was a title tainted by scandal and weighted by untold debts.
“I—I should like to go home,” she said, hating the plaintive wobble in her voice.
“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.” A second masculine voice announced the arrival of Nora’s recently acquired brother-in-law, Sir Carlton Morley.
He’d pulled the sheet behind Titus aside, and held it so his wife could duck around and rush to Nora before he reached out to greet Titus with a firm and familiar handshake.
Prudence, striking in a fitted day dress striped with gold and burgundy, took her place next to Nurse Higgins on Nora’s uninjured side.
“There’s so much to say,” she whispered, kissing Nora’s knuckles in a very uncommon display of affection for members of the Goode family.
Prudence had always been like that, however. Just a flower in need of rain, one who’d bloomed beneath her husband’s protective, demonstrative care.
“Why can’t Nora go home?” Mercy asked, cutting to the salient point as she was wont to do.
Though Titus stood a few inches taller than Morley, the Chief Inspector maintained the air of a man who commanded not only a room, but the largest and most organized police force in the civilized world. His midnight blue suit turned his glacial eyes an impossible, arresting color, and, unlike Titus, his cravat was perfect and not a single strand of fair hair would dare disobey.
The Chief Inspector was a famously contained man, but he’d demonstrated that his heart was true, and his love ran deep. He’d been prepared to die for Pru.
He’d killed for her without hesitation.
Nora wondered if he blamed her for her husband’s actions. If he suspected her of involvements in William’s crimes. As it was, his sharp, angular features were softened with concern as he delivered distasteful news with care. “We obtained a warrant to search your house for evidence of your husband’s cohorts, and we found it ransacked.”
A sudden dizziness had her tightening her grip on Prudence’s hand. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No. Needless to say, your butler’s resigned his position, as have your housekeeper and several other staff. It’s not safe for you to return home, Lady Woodhaven.”
A sudden headache stabbed Nora behind the eye, and her shoulder throbbed in earnest now, a burning pain adding to her discomfort.
But she’d been hurt plenty of times, and had to pretend that everything was fine.
She could do it now.
“What cause have you to worry that the burglars will return?” Nora asked.
He glanced at his wife, who threw warning daggers at him with her eyes.
“Tell me,” Nora demanded. “I must know.”
“There…was a note left by the invaders,” Prudence conveyed with palpable reluctance. “One demanding the crate that William had apparently neglected to deliver to them. They threatened to take it out of his flesh, Nora. Who is to say if they’ll come for you now that he’s…” She didn’t say the word dead.
“Lady Woodhaven.” Morley clutched the lapel of his coat, the only sign he had to fortify himself for the next question. “Do you know where your husband hid that money?”
“There’s never been any money,” Nora croaked, her anxiety dashing to the surface. “I’d taken to selling my jewels to pay the staff, and William squandered whatever salary he drew from the shipping company. He bragged that his newest venture was profitable, but I never saw the proof of it. I didn’t believe him, all told.”
She’d thought this was over. That she was finally free of him. How typical that even in death he could still threaten her safety and any chance at peace or happiness.
Morley’s critical assessment was more invasive than any medical examination she’d endured, but she was too tired and soul-weary to be troubled by it. “You truly have no idea who would be after your husband?”
Nora searched the white sheet draped as a canopy above her bed for answers, noting some of the plaster from the ceiling had dislodged and peppered shadows on the fabric. No doubt, the reason the canopy was hung in the first place. “I knew he had a new venture, but he wanted to keep his whereabouts a mystery to me, and I didn’t care to pry. I was stupid, I realize, but whatever took him away from the house…I encouraged it.”
Her voice broke on the last word, not from tears but from fighting increasingly unrelenting pain. Her breath began to catch in spasms as a burning sensation ripped through her shoulder with gasp-inducing zings.