“At least make a show of trying,” Rutledge told her bracingly. “You’ll feel better having eaten.”

“You don’t understand,” she said irritably. “It’s not something I relish, this black hole in my life. It takes a revenge of its own!”

“I think I do,” he answered her.

Their eyes locked. Hers widened in surprise, as if reading the depths of his, and turning away from what she found there. He felt a spreading hurt.

Her voice trembling, she replied, “Yes. Well, is there anything else you want to know?”

“Tell me about yourself. What you do, where you’ve been. Why you have stayed so long in Osterley.”

She grimaced as she tried a forkful of beef, but she persevered. He gave her credit for courage.

“The last is easy to answer. I’ve been looking at old churches, and I found Osterley to my liking. I prefer to stay here rather than pack my bag every few days and move to another hotel. I like the marshes. They appeal to me. The desolation, perhaps. Or their strange beauty. I’ve never quite decided which it is.”

“Do you live in London?”

“Somerset. I grew up there, and I feel at home there.”

“What took you to America? Is that a safe question to ask?”

She turned away. “I had the care of an elderly lady who was the aunt of a friend. She was going to New York to visit her son, and I was asked if I’d like to make the journey with her. As a companion, actually. But she was perfectly capable of looking after herself—”

She broke off and fought to regain her composure, clearing her throat with the effort.

He knew then that her charge had not survived. Which must have added enormously to the ordeal May Trent herself had suffered. Rutledge said, “Then you’d have come back to England in a few months?”

“Yes, that was the plan. I’d never been abroad, except to France a time or two, and once to Germany. I saw it as an adventure—” The words caught in her throat. “Can we talk of something else?”

She soldiered on valiantly through the rest of the meal. He thought perhaps she’d stayed at the table to prove to him that she could. Or because she didn’t want to go upstairs alone.

Where the ghosts in the night lay waiting for her.

It was something that they shared, this fear of being alone. . . .

After a long silence, May Trent put down her fork and considered Rutledge. “How can you bear to question people the way you do? Prying and digging into lives as if none of us possessed a shred of privacy. I should think it would be very wearing, after a time. It’s worse than gossiping or—or eavesdropping.”

Hamish said, “It’s true, it’s no’ a gentleman’s way.”