Page 90 of Deceiving an Earl
Something else? What the devil else was he supposed to be talking about?
“Please, Oliver. Tell me.”
So he told her everything. From attending the autopsy, to the subsequent search and discovery of the dead body at the assistants’ home.
She listened silently, her hands clenched in her lap, her face pale, and her dark eyes wide and unblinking.
“He could walk away from this with merely a scratch to his reputation,” Oliver said. “He can deny ever knowing about any of this, and his assistants will take the blame and probably hang for it.”
She sat in silence, still as a statue.
“Ellen, love.” Oliver went to one knee in front of her and put his hand over her clenched fingers. Her hands were ice cold, and he could feel a fine tremor running through them. “Look at me.”
She turned her dark gaze to him, but there was nothing in there. Her eyes were a blank slate.
“Are you all right?”
“I… This is all so… I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. I thought you should know. If you break it off with him now, before the press finds out, then your reputation can be saved.”
But she was shaking her head before he’d even finished. Frustration welled within him. How could she deny this? How could she stay with a murderer?
“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said. “Promise me, Oliver. Promise that no one will find out.”
He sat back on his heels, stunned. “You can’t mean that.”
She turned her hands over so that they were cupping his. “For me. I’m asking you to do this for me. For what we once meant to each other.”
He yanked his hand free and stood to pace a few feet away. “For what we once meant to each other?Once, Ellen?” Good God but how many different ways could this woman break his heart?
She stood a bit unsteadily. “I have to marry him.”
“No, you don’t. Marry me. Or don’t marry me. But for God’s sake, don’t marry a man who condones the killing of innocent people.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them there was determination and a hardness he’d never seen before. “You said yourself that he will probably walk away from this unscathed. Maybe he didn’t know about the killings. Maybe he trusted that his assistants were collecting these bodies the right way.”
“He knows, Ellen. He knows exactly how he’s getting those bodies.”
She turned away to circle the room, tapping her index fingers together in thought. She had acquired some strength in the past moments and a determination that confused him.
From across the width of the couch she faced him. “I’m asking that you don’t tell anyone about this. Let the assistants be arrested quietly.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What if I beg?”
“Bloody hell, Ellen. What is happening here? This is not like you. Do you truly love him that much that you would marry him, even knowing he’s a killer?”
She lowered herself, painfully, slowly, to her knees, holding the arm of the couch for support.
“Ellen, for God’s sake. Get up.”
“Please, Oliver.”
“Stand up.”
“I’m begging you.”
