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surrounded them. Mary said nothing in reply, though the air between them seemed to crackle with a low-burning energy, and suddenly he could no longer remain sitting. Standing abruptly, he pivoted away from her and walked back to the window, staring at without seeing the crashing gray waves below, his hands clasped behind him, shoulders rigid.
    “This is the problem,” he asserted gravely. “By every account, my sister was deeply troubled weeks before she died under very strange circumstances, and yet you and I are the only ones who noticed it, though I have yet to speak with Exeter. Perhaps he did, too. My mother and brother were apparently oblivious.” He clenched his jaw as he dropped his voice, but he never glanced away from the far-reaching ocean. “I don’t care if her death was ruled an accident; I want to find out why it happened. I need your help to do that, Miss Marsh.”
    Mary stared at the man, her body going absolutely still after such a passionate revelation that seemed to bring Christine back to life. She couldn’t speak for the moment if she wanted to. The Earl of Renn radiated a harsh power, and yet he didn’t act overly authoritative or cruel, and she sensed a deep compassion in him, something she didn’t often relate to men of his stature. And then, fairly knocking the breath from her, she understood his conviction with profound clarity.
    “You didn’t leave Cairo because of her upcoming wedding, or her

    death,” she said with soft intensity. “You left to come and help her.”
    He didn’t turn around, but she knew instinctively that her words had struck him deeply. Moments later, he gruffly acknowledged, “Upon docking in Plymouth, I learned I was too late.”
    A sense of horror washed over her—at what he must feel, the anger, the rage at being unable to help his sister that had to be burning within him. He had missed Christine by a mere two weeks. The news had to have devastated him.
    “I’m so very sorry,” she whispered.
    The wind roared beyond the brick walls of Baybridge House; a shutter banged, and still he didn’t move from the window.
    Awkwardly, Mary stood where she was, facing his desk, unsure where to go, not wanting to leave his presence, though anxiously needing to retreat to the privacy of her bed chamber. She gazed again at the plates hanging on the wall—at least two dozen of the finest Renn china, in every color and style imaginable, displayed for their beauty in this dark, cold room. She shivered.
    “Christine was my responsibility, and she depended on me,” he disclosed at last, his resonant voice slicing the air. “She was the youngest, the delight of our family, and I cared deeply for her. I owe it to her memory to discover, if nothing else, what she’d learned that was so frightening she couldn’t risk telling me in a private letter. Perhaps it had nothing whatever to do with her death, but that’s what I need to find out. Because she trusted only you, I’m asking you to stay in Cornwall as my guest and help me, Miss Marsh.”
    She didn’t want to help him. She didn’t need to be here any longer, and everything inside her warned against her remaining at Baybridge House, shoulder to shoulder with the Longfellows, beside the earl’s commanding bearing day after day.
    But her refusal didn’t come. She couldn’t voice her desires because beneath it all, this surprising proposition by the Earl of Renn provided her with the much-needed reason to prolong her stay. This sudden opportunity wouldn’t be her preferred reason for lingering in the country a little while longer, far from it, but it was the only one she had at the moment. In the end, selfishly, she had to work through her personal doubts and concerns, coming to terms with them before she once again faced her own family. This gave her more time, and she needed it.
    For the first time in minutes, the earl turned and faced her, standing tall and stately, his vivid, revealing eyes penetrating hers. Mary