No, she was not a murderer. She must not put that label on herself. She had pushed him and he had fallen and caught his head on the corner of the hearth and been killed. It had been an accident. She had been defending herself. He had been going to hold her at Matthew’s signal. She had been struggling to free herself.
Matthew had used the word “murder” after examining the body. It was that word and the shock of seeing the chalky dead face that had sent her fleeing blindly instead of continuing with the plans she had made.
She tried not to think of it. Perhaps there had never been any pursuit. Perhaps, after all, Matthew had explained it as an accident. And even if there had been pursuit, perhaps it had been called off by now. Or perhaps she would never be found. It had all happened seven weeks before. But she had felt safer in London.
She half-smiled again. Safer!
She tried to picture little Miss Kent in her mind, and the child’s mama and papa. She placed them mentally in a cozy manor, a close-knit family group held together by love—rather like her own parents and herself as a young child. She tried to picture herself being drawn into the group, being treated almost as one of the family.
She would make up to them for the great deception she was perpetrating against them. She had not answered Mr. Houghton’s question honestly. When he had asked how she had been employed since her arrival in London, she had pretended that she had had enough money with which to keep herself. She had not told him of the only employment she had found.
But she would put it behind her. No one need ever know. The only person she would ever feel obliged to tell was a future husband, and she did not imagine that she would ever wish to marry. Not now. She thought briefly of Daniel, but pushed the image of his kindly smile and blond hair and clerical garb from her mind. If circumstances had been different, she might have married Daniel and been happy with him for the rest of her life. She had loved him.
But circumstances were not different. There could be no going back to him now, even if she could suddenly hear that Matthew had not called that death murder. There could be no going back. For now she was a fallen woman. She closed her eyes with brief regret and opened them in order to study the scenery that was bouncing past the windows of the carriage—or past which they were bouncing, to express the matter more accurately.
She was beginning a new life, and she must be forever grateful that it had been made possible for her, that she had called at Miss Fleming’s agency during the precise hour when Mr. Houghton was there to conduct interviews. She could wish and wish that he had appeared there just five days earlier, but he had not, and that was that. She would not be ungrateful for the gift of a new life and a fresh start. She would show her gratitude by being the very best governess that a family had ever had.
MATTHEW BRADSHAW, LORD BROCKLEHURST, had taken bachelor rooms on St. James’s Street during his stay in London, preferring not to take up residence with his mother and sister during all the bustle of a London Season, though he did call on them with the news, which did not surprise her in the least, his mother had said arctically. She had always known that Isabella would come to no good.
He did not at first anticipate that his stay would be a long one. Isabella had thoroughly frightened herself and disappeared from the neighborhood of their home in Wiltshire. She had not even run to the Reverend Booth, he had discovered when he had pursued her to the parsonage. She must have come to London. It was the only possible destination she could have chosen. She would have thrown herself on the mercy of his mother or of some acquaintance, though she could not have many in town. She had not been from home a great deal during her life except for the five years when his mother had insisted on sending her away to school to be rid of her.
He had found no trace of her, though he had searched for more than a month and made endless inquiries. And of course she had not run to his mother. It was stupid of him to have expected it.
Finally he had been driven to desperate measures. The stocky, red-faced man standing feet astride in his parlor two mornings after Fleur left London, his cravat none too clean, his greasy-looking hat turning and turning in his hands, was a member of the Bow Street Runners. The two of them had been talking for some time.
“That’s what will have happened, sir, mark my words,” Mr. Henry Snedburg assured him. He had refused to be seated, explaining that his time was a valuable commodity. “She will be hiding in the poorer quarters and looking for employment.”
“The search will be hopeless, then,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “The proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“No, no.” The Runner raised a hand to scratch the back of a large red neck. “I would not say that, sir. There are agencies. As a lady, she would have thought to try one or more of those. All I need is a list, which I daresay I have filed away somewhere, and off I go. Wanted for murder, you say, sir?”