Laura Lee Guhrke (12 page)

He knew he wasn’t going to get any more information out of her just now, but he couldn’t seem to move away. Beneath his hands, he could feel the whalebone pattern of her stays and the smooth coolness of her muslin apron, and he imagined her in his hands without all that fabric in the way. The thought made him burn, and he wondered if maybe he was the crazy one here.

He stepped back, letting his hands fall to his sides. Sophie started to move past him but had only taken one step before the sound of tearing fabric made her pause. Her skirt was caught on the thorns of the roses behind her.

Mick started to reach down to assist her, but she jerked her skirt free before he could do so, tearing the fabric even more. Free of the thorns, she stepped around him and walked to the basket he had tossed aside. She knelt beside it. “Do you manhandle all the women you meet?” she asked as she began putting the roses he had spilled back into the basket.

He started to deny it, but inconvenient memories of the night before flashed across his mind. He
had
manhandled her. Worse, he wanted to do it again. He thought again of those long, long legs. He imagined the taste of those lips. Sweet like cherries, he’d bet.

He caught himself up sharply at the dangerous direction his thoughts kept taking with this woman. He wasn’t here to bed her, for God’s sake. She knew who wanted him dead. She might even be behind the whole thing. If he let himself be persuaded of her innocence in all this, he could very well end up a corpse. No woman, no matter how luscious, was worth dying for.

“It isn’t that I think of you as a criminal,” he said. “But to me, your actions are suspicious. You are involved in all this somehow. That’s a fact.”

“Yes, I know that better than anyone,” she said with a bitter edge to her voice. “I haven’t had any more premonitions about your death. If I do, I’ll be sure to tell you, despite your disbelief.”

He knelt beside her. “I don’t deal in premonitions. I deal in facts, in truth, in things that can be proved.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I’ve known that, sir, from the moment we met.”

She reached for the last flower, dropped it in the basket, and started to stand, but something caught her attention, and she knelt down again. “Damnation!”

The unexpected curse from a woman who had just accused him of forgetting the manners of good society made him chuckle under his breath.

He watched as she leaned forward and began pulling at some sort of vine that was tangled around one of her roses. She yanked the roots of the plant out of the soft, damp earth, and dropped the tangle of vines, roots, and dirt into her basket.

“Part of dinner’s centerpiece?” he asked.

“Bindweed,” she answered with loathing. “It’s irritating, persistent, and invasive.” Looking over at him, she added, “A bit like you.”

He grinned. “Thank you for the compliment. -You’ve just listed all the qualities needed for a good detective.”

She did not reply. Instead, she continued to pull bindweed out of the ground and away from her flowers with such ruthlessness that Mick couldn’t help wondering if she was taking out her frustration with him on helpless plants.

When the weed problem seemed to be solved, Sophie stood up and returned her attention to him. “I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you.” She rubbed her fingertips against her cheek in an absent-minded gesture that left a streak of mud on her face.
“I’m not trying to protect anyone, and I’ve answered every one of your questions truthfully. I can’t help it if the truth sounds unbelievable to you.”

She sounded so earnest, and she was so clearly unaware of the dirt on her face, that Mick couldn’t help smiling.

She saw that smile and stiffened, misinterpreting it. “I see no humor. Inspector, in trying to do the right thing. In going to the police, my only motive was to prevent the murder I envisioned.”

“Miss Haversham, I’ve seen so many fraudulent mediums and spiritualists take advantage of people and exploit their grief over dead loved ones, it’s difficult not to be cynical on the subject.”

“And you think I’m one of those?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t believe there are any legitimate fortune-tellers or psychics or mediums. I just don’t believe it.”

He could tell that his skepticism rankled her, but he couldn’t help that. He didn’t believe in magic, or wishing on stars, or blissful, everlasting love, either.

She folded her arms, oblivious to the mud she was smearing on her sleeves. “You want to see proof of my ability with your own eyes? Name whatever proof you want. What will convince you that I truly am psychic and that I can see future events, but that I have no idea whatsoever who is trying to kill you? What proof will make you go away for good?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps if you stopped evading my questions it would help. If you’re not protecting someone, and you’re not afraid of what I’ll find out, why arc you so opposed to my presence here?”

“Because I don’t like you.”

Her swift, acerbic reply made him laugh. “Then things arc going to be a bit difficult for you. After all, we have to see each other every day. And your aunt did invite me to Ascot.”

“I don’t know what Auntie was thinking.” She straightened her arms, bent down, and grabbed her basket. “You at Ascot.”

“Don’t worry. Despite what you think, I have been known to behave like a gentleman on occasion.”

“You’ll need more than gentlemanly behavior.” She studied him with a critical eye, her head tilted to one side. “You’ll need a new suit.”

“I might have been born within the sound of the Bow Bells, but even I can manage to find a suit for Ascot.”

She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to be insulting. That was rude, and I apologize.”

He suddenly wanted to reach out and brush away the streak of mud on her cheek, and he wondered what her reaction would be if he did. Shock, probably. She might be poorer than he, but men of Mick’s class did not often get the chance to touch a woman like her. Maybe that was what made the temptation to do so almost irresistible. His mouth went dry, and he tried to remember all the things about her that he didn’t like.

She was crazy. She said she could see the future and read people’s minds. When she tried to explain things, it took her forever to get to the point. She always walked around with ribbons untied or buttons unfastened, looking as if she’d forgotten to finish getting dressed.

Oh, God
.

A tiny frown knit her brows. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, frowning at him.

He’d wager his last quid her cheek was as soft as the petals on those roses in her basket. He started to lift his hand to touch her face.

She knows who’s trying to
kill me
.

Mick thrust his hands in his pockets. “Why don’t you show me my room?”

“Very well.” She stepped around him and started back up the path to the house without a word. She paused to wash her hands at the pump, then went inside the house. Mick followed her into the kitchen, where she set her basket down on a table. “Marjorie?” she called.

A rotund little woman stuck her head around the corner of the larder. “Aye, Miss Sophie?”

“Put the roses in a vase of water, please, and dispose of the bindweed. I’ll arrange the flowers before dinner.”

Marjorie nodded and cast an inquiring glance at Mick.

“This is our newest lodger, Detective Inspector Dunbar. Mr. Dunbar, our cook, Marjorie Willard.”

Mick did not miss the look of disapproval from the stout little woman, but he had a thick skin.

Sophie led him out of the kitchen, across the foyer, and up the stairs. He followed her, trying not to look at the tantalizing gap of her undone buttons that showed her corset, or the tears in her skirt that revealed her petticoat, but he could not stop thinking about the curvaceous body beneath those lacy underclothes.

They reached the top of the stairs, and she led him to a door halfway down the hall. She opened it, and he followed her into a bedroom nearly the size of his entire flat at Mrs. Tribble’s.

His valises had been placed beside the door. The room was done up in blue willow and white, with a plain iron bed, sturdy walnut furnishings, and only one fern. Mick breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. Unlike the other rooms he had seen in Mrs. Summerstreet’s house, this room had no crystal vases, no cabbage rose wallpaper, and no Mechlin lace. There were no pastoral murals, no cherubs, and no pink flowers. Thank God.

Sophie turned to him, and he thought he caught a hint of amusement in her eyes. “I took out the embroidered silk pillows, lace curtains, and beaded flowers,” she said, almost as if she really had been able to tell what he was thinking.

“For an unmarried woman, you seem to have an unusual understanding of how men think.”

With a little laugh, she said, “Perhaps that is one of the talents of a mind reader, but it hasn’t helped me to matrimony, much to my mother’s disappointment.”

Her tone was light, but Mick could hear a hint of regret behind it. That wasn’t surprising, since to most women and their manias, getting married meant everything.

She cleared her throat and spoke again. “Hannah will bring you early tea every morning around seven if you wish it, and she’ll bring you hot water and towels, too. Breakfast is usually between eight and nine o’clock. If you plan to be in for that meal, let Marjorie know the night before.”

As she explained the rules of the house in a brisk and efficient way, one of the tiny silver combs fell from her hair. Mick picked it up from the floor and straightened. Reaching out, he grasped the tendril of her hair that had come loose. It felt like threads of silk in his fingers. She stopped talking and stood utterly still as he pinned her hair back in place.

It took everything he had to pull his hands away.

Clearing her throat, she went on, “Tea is usually about four, and dinner at eight. Sheets arc changed each week. We will do your laundry for a charge of half a crown per week. The rent is due on the first clay of each month, and you pay it to me. If you smoke, please do not do so inside the house. Fridays and Sunday afternoons are the days out for all the servants. . .”

Mick listened to her ramble on, and he couldn’t stop thinking about those buttons. He told himself they offended his sense of neatness, but he knew it was a lie. He grasped her shoulders and turned her around, cutting off her talk in midsentence.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“You’re coming undone.” He buttoned her shirtwaist with his eyes closed, taking his time, stripping away the layers of her clothing in his mind and imagining the woman beneath. The smooth planes of her bare shoulders, the dent at the base of her spine, the curve of her buttocks.

He leaned closer to her, inhaling that delicate fragrance she wore, becoming addicted to it. He opened his eyes and let out his breath against her neck, making the short wisps of hair at her nape flutter. “I couldn’t
let you go back downstairs with your buttons undone. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I had made improper advances toward you, or-—”

“As I was saying,” she interrupted desperately, pulling away the moment he was done buttoning her back up, “the servants’ days out are Fridays and Sunday afternoons.”

She turned around to face him but fixed her gaze on a point past his left shoulder, her cheeks even pinker than before, her voice even more brisk and efficient. “We fixed it that way because Marjorie and Hannah like to do things together. On Sundays, the servants attend early service, and the rest of us second service, Church of England, just around the corner.”

He smiled. She’d told him herself that she rambled when she was nervous. It was true. “I’ll try to remember all that,” he said when she finally stopped talking.

“Then I’ll leave you to unpack.” Despite her words, she didn’t move. He gave her a questioning look, and she said,

“About Ascot, I hope you aren’t planning to interview everyone in Lord Fortescue’s box, and ask them all sorts of embarrassing questions.”

He would make no promises of that kind. “You’re so unhappy about your aunt’s invitation to me that perhaps you shouldn’t go with us.”

“And leave poor Auntie and the others to your questions and implications?” She shook her head and turned to leave. “Never.”

He couldn’t resist teasing her a bit. “It could be a problem for you, Sophie,” he pointed out, following her to the door. “People might think you have a new
suitor,” he said, his hand curling over hers on the door handle as she tried to turn it. “What a scandal that would be. A mere policeman, a man orphaned as a boy, a man with no family and no connections. They’ll be horrified.” He leaned closer, his chest against her back, his lips only inches from the dab of mud on her cheek. “They’ll talk about us.”

She turned her head to meet his gaze, and there was a hard look in those chocolate brown eyes of hers. “I am not a snob, Inspector Dunbar. Despite what you may think, it isn’t your station in life that I dislike. It’s you.”

Mick could resist temptation only so long. He lifted his hand and brushed away the bit of mud on her cheek with the tips of his fingers. Her face was just as soft as he had suspected. “What a pity.”

Six