She shrugged, that very Gallic gesture that could mean so many things. “Call it intuition, if you like. Or a sense I cannot explain. But I shall tell you this. Where Elizabeth Napier is concerned, there is no question of right or wrong in this matter. She is looking for simple justice. That is for herself, not for Margaret. And justice is sometimes blind. So—I make my pact with you. And try to spare my husband pain, if I can.”

Holding out her hand as a man might do, she waited for Rutledge to take it. But deep in his mind Hamish was already coming to another conclusion.

“She’s afraid,” he said softly, “because there is something she knows and canna’ tell. Hildebrand would no’ stand for this nonsense—”

Was it that, Rutledge wondered, or the fact that she was sure she could reach him—and so was using him to protect herself by putting on him the onus of betraying her? Using him as Elizabeth Napier was using Simon Wyatt?

“Aye. A woman does na’ think the way a man does,” Hamish told him.

But Rutledge had made up his mind.

He took the hand she held out and shook it briefly. “Agreed,” he said.

And watched the play of expressions across her face. Surprise. A certain wariness. Relief. At the last, a flare of fear.

As if she realized, suddenly and far too late, that perhaps she had misjudged him.…

Rutledge walked back to the gate with Aurore Wyatt without speaking. She had slipped into a silence all her own, as if she had forgotten the man beside her. Her face was withdrawn, her eyes shuttered behind the long lashes.

They could hear Elizabeth Napier’s voice, and Simon’s. Not the words so much as the comfortable rise and fall of a conversation between two people who had much in common. Long years of understanding, respect—love …

Aurore said, tilting her head to listen, “I knew when Margaret Tarlton came here to apply for the position of assistant that, one way or another, she would bring that woman back into our lives. I was right. Only I didn’t see the way of it. Just that it would happen.”

“He married you. That’s what matters.” As Jean would never marry him. It was finished. But then, as Hamish was busy reminding him, Rutledge himself had been the last to let go in that relationship. Why should Elizabeth Napier be any different? If the war years had changed him so much, taking Jean from him, they had also cost Elizabeth Napier Simon Wyatt. Simon too had changed.…