And then realizations came at her in a brutal cascade:
The very first night she’d seen him, she’d thought she’d heard Hawkes murmur her name while in the throes of fitful sleep. And she’d assumed she’d misheard him.
But hehad, in fact, said her name.
Because that’s what he had come here to do: find her.
Who better than an expert in espionage to find Brundage’s missing fiancée?
And at that realization terror cleaved right through her. For a ghastly instant she was utterly mindless with it. She could find no thoughts in the blackness of her mind.
Hawkes had probably known from the very first sight of her who she was, because he would have hada description of her. And she, in her ignorance, had probably left the kind of trail an expert in espionage could easily follow. He’d probably even spoken to Madame Aubert.
And if that wasn’t enough, she’d helpfully provided a handkerchief, soaked in his blood, with her name stitched right onto it. He must have found it.
Perhaps he was merely trying to keep her here until Brundage could be brought to where she was.
And at that notion her limbs went numb.
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God, please help me. What shall I do?” Her breath sawed painfully.
Reason fought its way through the blank terror.
No. No. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe a man who had saved her, and held her as though she were breakable and precious, and listened attentively to her, even as he surely wanted her the way a man wants a woman... would do anything other thanhelpher. He was a good man. She felt in her very soul that he was good. Nothing in the world was true at all if Hawkes was not good.
But this meant he must know what Brundage was like. It was clear Hawkes suspected something terrible had happened to her. And hecared.
Why would this matter to him at all if he’d merely been charged with finding her? He could tell Brundage immediately where she was.
Perhaps he was merely... undecided.
And at that terrible notion caustic doubt and fear made a cauldron of her stomach.
She struggled to steady her breath.
What would Hawkes do if she showed him the miniature?
What would he do if she claimed she had no idea who the woman in the painting was?
She didn’t know if she could bear to hear him lie about why he had it.
She didn’t know if she could bear to hear the truth.
And worse, far worse, than either of those things...
... she didn’t know if she could bear to leave him.
He needed her. As surely as she’d needed him. She believed this, or was this pure fancy born of a desperation to belong to anyone at all right now?
Tears stung her eyes, which made her furious. She squeezed them closed, as if to blot out a world in which she would need to make still more decisions, now, when she was exhausted. Now, when she’d just been held in his arms and wanted to linger in that feeling.
She knew she simply could not risk it. She could not know Hawkes’s motives for certain, and if he was indecisive about telling Brundage...
She saw no other solution. Freeing herself forever and definitively from Brundage meant running again.
Tonight, if she could do it.
But where would she go? What were the odds that in all of England there was another such place, with kind people, and safety, and delicious scones? How absurdly lucky she’d been.