“Yes, I poured it. But I didn’t want tea just then, so I set it down to drink later.”

“Why did you do that?”

When Louisa didn’t answer right away, Fellows made himself look up from his notebook.

Louisa was staring at him, no shyness in her. The light in her eyes was angry, very angry, but behind her defiance he saw great fear.

“Why didn’t you drink?” Fellows asked again, this time watching her.

“Because I did not want tea at the moment.” Louisa said every word slowly and deliberately. “I was speaking with the bishop. I didn’t want to spill anything.”

“You were eating tea cakes.”

“Profiteroles,” Louisa said. “Choux pastry filled with cream. I took two but I didn’t eat because I was having a conversation. I could not be very dignified stuffing cream and pastry into my mouth, could I?”

Fellows had a sudden flash of her licking cream from the profiterole, then taking a dainty bite. Her red lips would part as her teeth bit down, cream would cling to her lips, then she’d lick it away. Slowly.

Fellows tightened his grip on the pencil. “Continue.”

“That is all. The bishop coughed and fell. I told you, I thought him choking or fainting. I had no idea he was dying . . .” She shivered again.

Fellows wanted to throw his notes to the floor, pull her to him, and enfold her in his arms. He’d stroke her hair, kiss her, shush her. It’s all right. I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.

He remained rigidly on his end of the sofa. “Then what did you do?”

“I rushed out of the tent looking for the doctor. Sir Richard said the bishop had been poisoned and looked at me as though I’d done it. Isabella brought me to the house.” Louisa opened her hands. “And here I am.”

Here they both were. The police had been summoned, and Mrs. Leigh-Waters, likely at the insistence of Isabella, had asked for Chief Inspector Fellows to come and take over.

Fellows closed the notebook and set it on the tea table next to the sofa. He folded his hands and leaned forward slightly, a posture he hoped didn’t threaten.

He was a master at threatening, had had many more than one criminal fling themselves at his feet and beg for mercy. But mercy wasn’t his job. Fellows’ job was to track down and arrest murderers, as he had earlier today, and bring evidence to their trials. Mercy was left to judge and jury.

But he’d do everything in his power to keep Louisa Scranton from standing in the dock at the Old Bailey, facing a jury who’d find her guilty of murder. He’d do anything to avoid the judge looking at her and voicing the awful phrase, Take her down.

Fellows held her gaze. “I need you to tell me the truth, Louisa. Did you poison him?”

Louisa’s eyes widened, then she was up and off the sofa. “No! Why on earth should I?”

Sincerity rang in her every word. She was innocent, Fellows knew it. But he was not who had to be convinced—the rest of the world must believe it too.

“Perhaps you didn’t mean to,” he suggested. “Perhaps you put something in the tea and didn’t realize what it was.”

“I gave him tea. I dropped in one lump of sugar and a dollop of cream. I’m very certain it was sugar and cream. I have served tea before.”

Fellows did not reach for his notebook. He’d had Pierce take the sugar bowl and pour off the cream as well.

“Or you thought to make him sick,” Fellows went on. “You didn’t realize what you gave him would kill him.”

Louisa stared in shock. “No. Inspector, you know me. I would never be so cruel. I am telling you, I did not poison the bishop’s tea, deliberately or accidentally. I would never do such a thing. You have to believe me.”

Her desperation sang of her innocence. But Fellows had heard the same tone from lying murderers—they were masters at it. If Sergeant Pierce were in the room, he’d say, “That’s what they all tell me, love,” and be on his way back to London to apply for an arrest warrant.

Facing a magistrate would be traumatic for Louisa. She needed to understand that. Fellows’ next words were what he knew a stern magistrate’s would be. “You were alone in the tent with him, no one else near. He died, and if we are right about what kind of poison it was, it acted swiftly. That fact will get out. Newspapers like a murder, especially in the upper classes. The bishop had given your father trouble over their financial dealings. No one else had time to put poison into his teacup. Only you. So you tell me what happened, exactly what you saw—who you saw. I will keep you out of jail and away from the courts at all costs, Louisa, but I’m going to have to work very hard to do it.”

Louisa listened to the speech in the same shock, but color returned to her face in a furious flush. “What are you saying? That you don’t believe me? I thought you knew me. Why are you . . . ? How dare you?”

Fellows was on his feet, his professional persona evaporating. “For God’s sake, Louisa, help me. My sergeant is even now listening to fifty accounts of you going into the tea tent alone with Hargate. Why did you?”

She blinked, dragging in a deep breath as she tried to calm herself. “I don’t remember . . . No, I do. Mrs. Leigh-Waters asked me to make sure the bishop was looked after.”

“And you do everything Mrs. Leigh-Waters says? You let yourself be alone with unmarried gentlemen to please Mrs. Leigh-Waters?”

“You are making this sound sordid. It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.”

Fellows was over her, the scent of violets that clung to her floating to him. “Then tell me why.”

“Mrs. Leigh-Waters didn’t want him left by himself,” Louisa said stiffly. “And apparently he wanted to speak to me.”

“What about?”

Fellows stood too close to her, could feel the warmth of her body, see the smoothness of her skin as her pink flush deepened. “None of your business what about,” she said. “It was a private conversation.”

“Between friends?”

“Yes. Why are you talking to me like this? I’d thought we were friends. Why are you accusing me?”

Fellows curled his big hands. “Right now, I am the best friend you can have. But you have to tell me everything. What you were speaking about, why you decided to be alone with him. Why I should believe you didn’t deliberately poison him.”

Louisa’s breath tangled his for an instant before she stepped back. She put her hands to her temples, red curls snaking around her fingers. “This has to be madness. I didn’t kill him.”

“You expect me to take you at your word?”

“Yes, I do.” She glared up at him. “An Englishwoman’s word is as good as an Englishman’s.”

“Not in my world.” Fellows made his voice hard. “In my world, everybody lies. They might think it for a good reason, but they lie. And those lies hurt. They can even kill.”

“You come from a terrible world, then.”

“Oh, it’s bad, all right.” Fellows gave her a wolfish smile. “And I don’t want you to be part of it. So tell me, Louisa, why did you go off alone with the bishop?”

The tears that flooded Louisa’s eyes made his heart pound. But they weren’t tears of sorrow, they were tears of rage and embarrassment. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said. “It had nothing to do with his death.”

“You can’t know that. It might have everything to do with it.”

Louisa had opened her mouth to argue, but she stopped. She turned away again, still massaging her temples, moving to the window. The light silhouetted her, her gown gently swaying as she walked.

The vulnerability in her stance nearly undid him. Fellows wanted to go to her, slide his arms around her from behind, kiss her hair when she leaned back to him. He wanted to caress her, as though she belonged to him, and say, It’s all right, love. I’ll take care of everything. You don’t worry about any of it. I’m here.

If Fellows touched her, he wouldn’t let go. He’d draw her into his arms again, crush her up to him, let their mouths meet. He’d taste her, drink her, and let the rest of the world go to hell. He’d take her away with him, anywhere, to be safe, alone with him. Never letting go.

When Louisa turned back to him, her face was blotchy red, the tears wiped away, but one still damp on her cheek.

“You’re a policeman,” Louisa said. “From what Mac and the others have told me, you’re very good at it. A detective first, they’ve said. Like a bloodhound on the scent.”

Fellows dragged in a breath, pulling his thoughts back from burying himself in Louisa and never coming out. “Flattering.”

Ian Mackenzie had once lumped Fellows’ dedication in with the Mackenzie family’s madness, saying Fellows’ focus on catching criminals was as intense as Cameron’s brilliance with horses, Mac’s with painting, or Ian’s with numbers and total recall.

“If I tell you, the good policeman, everything, it will end up in a report on a desk, will it not? The foolishness of Lady Louisa Scranton in black and white, for all to see. Shall I then find it splashed across every newspaper and scandal sheet in London?” Louisa gave a half-hysterical laugh. “Why not? They played out my sister’s marriage and near-divorce there. They’ll quite enjoy themselves over me.”

Fellows held up his empty hands. “My notebook is over there. Whatever you say to me, in this room, will go no further. I’ll write it into no report. What you tell me will be between you and me, I promise you. You’ll have to take me at my word.”

“And why would you, the good policeman, not write down every syllable I say?”

Because I’d do anything for you, Louisa.