“We shouldn’t have–”

“If you say we shouldn’t have done that,” Scarlett murmured sleepily, “I am going to pick up a pillow and bludgeon you over the head with it.”

Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Owen sat up. Twisting, he looked back at her over his shoulder and lifted one wry brow. “Something tells me you’re not in any condition to lift a single finger, let alone a pillow.”

Grinning, Scarlett stretched like a cat, sending the white sheet she’d thrown haphazardly over herself slithering down to the floor. When Owen’s eyes heated her grin widened and she reached across the mattress to playfully pinch the top of his left buttock. “Keep looking at me like that and I will somehow summon the strength. Although I do not think I shall waste it on throwing pillows.” Her eyebrows wiggled suggestively and with a half groan/half laugh Owen stood up.

Leaning back on her elbows Scarlett watched him unabashedly as he collected his clothes. His dark hair was delightfully disheveled. His eyes still a bit glazed. And was that a bite mark on his shoulder? She bit her lip. Why yes, yes she believed it was.

Another long, languid stretch and she joined him in sorting out their attire.

“Everything is still damp.” Pulling her chemise out from beneath a chair she gave the wrinkled undergarment a little shake, then wrinkled her nose. “And it smells like the pond. I’ll have fresh clothes brought for you after we clean ourselves up.”

Owen stilled. “I am not wearing anything that belonged to your husband.”

“Nor would I ever ask you too.” Taking note of the sudden tension in his expression, Scarlett sighed. She had known their passionate tryst wouldn’t miraculously fix everything, but she’d hoped their unspoken truce might have lasted for a little bit longer. Yanking the rumpled coverlet off the end of the bed, she walked across the room and handed it to Owen. “We are going to talk,” she said when he looked down at the coverlet in confusion, “but I will not be able to concentrate if you are naked.”

He wrapped the coverlet around his waist and she did the same with a sheet. Tugging it up until it covered her breasts, she perched on the edge of the mattress and hugged her legs against her chest. Owen remained standing. They stared at one another for a long moment, and when they finally spoke they did so at the same time.

“I want to apologize for the way–”

“I need to tell you how sorry I am–”

The corners of Scarlett’s lips twitched. “Should we both acknowledge that we have treated one another poorly and move on from there?”

“No.”

“Owen, I do not want to fight. Can we please just–”

“No,” he repeated, cutting her off. “We cannot move on until I have said what I came here to say. Or did you think it was merely a coincidence that I happened to be at the pond?”

“Come to think of it, why were you there? Not that I can find any fault in your timing. Unless you were the one who pushed me in.” She grinned, having spoken in jest, but by the way Owen’s jaw hardened it appeared he did not seem to find her very amusing.

“You must know I would never harm you, Scarlett.”

She arched a brow. “Oh really? I cannot imagine any greater harm than having one’s neck stretched. I’ve never seen a hanging, but I have heard stories. It sounds very harmful.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” he scowled. “No one is going to hang you.”

“And what do you think happens when a woman is found guilty of murdering her husband? The Magistrate gives her a tap on the wrist and tells her not to do it again?” she said incredulously. The sheet slid down when she threw her hands out wide, exposing the creamy tops of her breasts. It was to Owen’s credit that he glanced down only once. “You have to know I did not kill Rodger.”

“I know.”

“Because if you insist on pursuing you’re ridiculous… what did you say?”

“I said I know. That you did not kill Lord Sherwood,” he elaborated when Scarlett looked at him blankly. “That is what I came to tell you. And to apologize for the way I acted at the inn.”

“I... I do not know what to say.”  

Now it was Owen’s lips that twitched. “I think I like you like this, scantily dressed and speechless. You should try it more often.”

“You really do not think I killed Rodger?” she whispered.

“I know you did not,” he said confidence.

“Then why did you ever accuse me to begin with?” She punctuated her shriek by picking up a pillow and throwing it with all of her might at his head.

Owen ducked.

The pillow went sailing past him and hit the wall in an explosion of goose feathers.

“Let me explain–” he began, holding up his hand, but Scarlett was having none of it.

“Do you know what people would have said if they’d had even an inkling that I might have murdered my husband?” she demanded furiously. “I would have been ruined! I never would have been able to show my face in polite society again!”

Owen’s eyes turned cold. “And we couldn’t have that, could we? Rest assured you can continue playing the poor, grieving widow while I look for Lord Sherwood’s killer. Polite society need never be the wiser. In fact, with all of the sympathy you’ll be receiving I imagine you will not be wanting for offers of marriage. Should I call you ‘Your Grace’ now or wait until after the wedding?”

“Owen.” Scarlett took a deep breath. She had been meeting his anger with more anger of her own, but the hurt she saw in his eyes… it cut her down to the bone. He still had so much pain inside of him. Like a wolf with its paw caught in a trap he was lashing out at anyone who came too close, and she’d come the closest of all. But she of all people knew what it was like to ache so much inside that it made you bitter and angry, which was why she was not going to let her temper get the better of her. Instead of yelling at the wolf, she was going to remain calm. She was going to finally say what was in her heart. And she was going to get that damn paw out of the trap once and for all.

“What?” Owen snapped, shifting restlessly from side to side.

Sliding down off the mattress, Scarlett held her sheet up with one hand and tucked a thick curl behind her ear with the other. “Do you know what I was thinking about when I was in the pond? When I thought – no, when I knew – I was going to drown?”

His mouth twisted into a sneer. “All of the dinner parties you were going to miss?”

“No,” she said simply. “I was thinking about you. The same way I have thought about you every day since I made the largest mistake of my–”

“There is no need to revisit the past,” he interrupted. “We were both there. We know what happened.”

“But don’t you see? There is every need.” She padded across her bedroom, toes sinking silently into the wool carpet. “You can cut a weed down again and again, but if you do not pull out the root it will keep coming back. Our root started growing seven years ago, Owen. It is finally time we pulled it out. Please,” she said imploringly. “Just listen to me.”

“Lettie–”

“Please.”

His expression softened. “I never could deny you anything, could I? Not when you looked at me with those gray eyes as big as the sky.”

“No.” Her lips brushed across his cheek. “You never could.”

Slowly, brick by brick, the wall Owen had built around his heart began to crumble. Scarlett felt it shudder when he put his arms around her. And she watched it finally fall when he said in a voice hoarse with emotion, “How could you do it? How could you choose him over me? I loved you, Lettie. I bloody well loved you more than anything.”

“I know you did.” She tilted her head back. When she saw his eyes were as damp as her own she raised her thumb and caught a single tear before it had the chance the roll down his cheek. “I loved you as well. But I was a naïve, selfish girl and I did a naïve, selfish thing. I chose Rodger because he was safe, and because he was what I thought I wanted. I chose him because I was afraid of losing everything that I believed was important but in the end it cost me the most important thing of all. You. And for that I am so sorry, Owen.” Her voice broke. “I am so t-terribly sorry.”  

When she began to cry in earnest his grip tightened. “You never lost me, Lettie. I never forgot about you. I never stopped thinking about you. You were with me on the battlefields of France. You were with me with I returned home. You were with me when I stood over the graves of my parents. You have been there, Lettie, every single day, for seven long years.”

Had he ripped Scarlett’s heart out of her chest he could not have destroyed her more completely.

“I wanted to hate you,” Owen continued. “God knows I did a bloody good job of pretending that I did. But no matter how hard I tried, I never could. Not really. Deep down I knew you did not have anything to do with Rodger’s death. It was a convenient way to be close to you. To see your beautiful face. To hear your laugh. To see your smile.” His brow furrowed. “Not that there has been very much to smile about. The way I treated you–”

“Was no less than I deserved for what I did.” She would not let him punish himself on her behalf. In their own way, they had each suffered enough pain and regret to last a hundred lifetimes. Now that they’d come face to face with their past it was time, at long last, to look to the future. “I love you, Owen. I always have and I always will.”

He crooked a finger under her chin and tilted it up. “I love you Lettie.”

Her eyes closed. To hear those words again…

They were worth more to her than any jewel or any title ever could be.

“What should we do now?” She looked up at him beneath a thick sweep of pale golden lashes. “I know you will have to return to London soon but I should remain here, at least until Felicity has found a safe place to land for her and the children. Then I can join you.”

There was a protective gleam in Owen’s blue eyes as he shook his head from side to side. “No. We’re leaving for London this afternoon. Both of us.”

“Oh, but I can’t do that,” Scarlett protested. “I would be leaving Felicity in the lurch not to mention I have had all of my belongings moved here. I’ve nothing left in town, not even a single pair of shoes. At the end of the month I can begin packing and come to Bow Street once everything has been sorted.”

“Someone tried to kill you today. Once they learn they were not successful, they will try again.”

“You don’t know that,” she said even as a chill raced down her spine. Stepping out of his embrace she brought a finger to her mouth and bit down on her nail, worrying it back and forth between her teeth until a tiny sliver broke off. “It – it could have been an accident.”

Owen lifted a brow. “Someone accidentally shoved you into the pond and then left you to drown?”

“Well when you put it that way–”

“There is no other way to put it. Someone killed your husband, Lettie. Now they’ve come for you. Until I find out who they are and arrest them, I need to know you’re safe and there is no safer place than Bow Street.”

“Why do you think it’s the same person?” 

“Had you drowned, it would have looked like an accident. Just like Rodger’s death was meant to. If I’d not discovered his horse’s girth had been cut I never would have suspected he’d been murdered.”

At the word murdered tiny goose pimples broke out all up and down Scarlett’s arms. She had been so focused on Owen that she hadn’t really let herself think about Rodger. Now she had no choice for Owen was right: Rodger’s death and the attempt on her own life were too much alike to be a coincidence.

But who the devil would want them dead? And why not just kill them when they were both together? Unless that was never their plan…

“My earring,” she said suddenly.

“Yes,” Owen said, watching her closely. “What about it?”

“I don’t know why we did not see it before. Well, why you didn’t see it before. You are, after all, a Runner. Granted, you have been a little bit distracted, but I think as a Captain the expectations should be higher than if–”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’ve been set up! Don’t you see? Someone must have planted my earring on Rodger’s body on purpose. How else would it have gotten there? It is the only thing that makes sense. The real killer wanted to make you think I was there when Rodger was killed. But I wasn’t,” she said quickly, less Owen suddenly changed his mind about her innocence. “They never wanted to kill me. They wanted–”

“–for you to be charged with Rodger’s murder,” Owen finished darkly, “and let the law take care of the rest.”

“Precisely. Even if I’d been found not guilty, I would have been completely ruined and no one, least of all you, would have ever suspected who the real murderer was.” Scarlett went absolutely still as a bleak, horrible realization dawned. “But I know,” she whispered. “I know who they are.”

“Who?” Owen demanded. “Lettie, who is it?”

“Someone close enough to know that I had those earrings made specifically for my wedding. Someone who wanted to use you to hurt me. Someone who has an excellent reason to make both Rodger and I suffer. Felicity.” She raised her tear-filled gaze to Owen’s. “It was Felicity.”