Deepest Desires of a Wicked Duke(77)

“Stay there,” the Duke of Sinclair commanded. “Where I can keep watch over you every moment.”

She did, her skirts whipping and snapping around her in the wind. She watched him return to the body. He crouched. Touched the wet earth. Then straightened and carefully and deliberately placed his foot in a muddy spot. The footman lay near the edge of the terrace, where there was a spot of wet mud between the stones and the lawn.

“A man’s footprint,” he called. “Slightly shorter than mine.”

“Could it be the footman’s prints?” she shouted back.

Sinclair shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think he walked out here from over there.”

“So we know it is a gentleman.”

“Or a woman wearing a man’s boots.” He grimaced. “No clue gives us certainty.”

“Would a woman have done that?”

“An angry, jealous, scorned woman might.”

She met his gaze as he straightened and strode toward her. “Perhaps,” she yelled, over the roar of the wind. Portia had never hurt so much she could turn to violence. But maybe some women did. “We are running out of suspects. Soon we’ll know—because there will only be us and . . . and the killer.”

He moved quickly, running to her. Her voice had become panicked. He caught hold of her hands. “No, it isn’t going to be that way, love. No harm is going to come to you.”

“I can’t simply rely on you to do that.”

He looked hurt.

“I have to rely on my wits as well. I have to think a way out of this.” She looked out toward the sea. “Is there any way we could get to shore?”

“No boat. Sax checked that this morning. And I doubt any boats will come out to us. The seas are too high. I would have tried rowing back if there was a boat, but that’s because I’m more desperate than anyone from the mainland coming to us.”

“Are you certain there are no boats?”

He jerked up his head, silky brown hair falling across his brow. “You think Sax lied?”

“If he is the killer, he could have done.”

“Sax is no madman.”

Of course he would think that about his friend. “The hair ribbons. This is about a girl. Whatever our sins are, they are related to a girl or a young woman. Could there be a young woman in Saxonby’s life that he is willing to kill for?”

Her words impacted Sinclair. He stepped back as if they’d struck him with force. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ve been friends since Eton days. My father sent me there, even though our side of the family had been disowned. But I have to admit—I don’t know about every detail of Sax’s life.” He looked to the open kitchen door and she looked too. Framed in the doorway was the pale, wounded cook. “We should go back to the house.”

“Not yet. I can’t go back yet. As mad as it sounds, I feel safer out here. I feel is if someone in the house is waiting, watching us, preparing to strike.”

“Portia.” His arms went around her, comforting her. “That’s what I don’t understand about this,” he said softly. She realized he was leading away from the horribly mutilated body, but not toward the house. They were still out on the open lawn, where surely no one could sneak up and attack.

“What don’t you understand? The whole thing seems a perplexing, horrible mystery to me.”

“I don’t understand why you are here. What sins could you have? You rescue children.”

“Maybe this is about a child I couldn’t rescue.” The idea came to her suddenly. She had been brought here very deliberately. It hadn’t been for an orgy, she knew. It had been to make her a victim.

“What do you mean?”

She met his darkly lashed, stunning brown eyes. “A child who died at the home, perhaps. Sometimes that happens—from illness. Or, when we rescue the child, the poor thing has been so starved or abused, the child can’t recover.”

Those were the worst agonies.

“But that would mean we all have this particular girl in common,” he said. “What girl would we all have in common?”

“I don’t know. Willoughby ruined innocents. The old madam snared young women for brothels. You gave orgies. It could be a girl who went to orgies.”

He stiffened. “I never allowed young girls into my events. I employed dutiful servants to ensure the only women in attendance were of an appropriate age.”

She saw hurt in his eyes, but an indignant one, not a vulnerable hurt. He felt judged. “I mean, I have been rescuing children since I was eighteen. A girl of ten then would be twenty-one now.”