Page 72 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

"You see," he said softly, leaning nearer, and his hand came up toward my cheek. "There is nothing monstrous here. There never was⁠—"

I raked my nails across his face.

Three lines, cheekbone to jaw. The blood came at once, shockingly red against that trustworthy skin. He went back hard against the squabs with a sound I will keep—not a cry, an intake, the hiss of a man whose ledger has thrown up an error. For one bare instant the gentleness was gone and what lived underneath it showed—something old and cold, and done waiting. His hand rose. I do not know to this day what it rose to do.

But before it could do what it intended, the near door wrenched open.

"Milady!" A plain man, breathless, one boot on the step, one hand reaching in. The far door was already swinging, and the man who said he loved me was gone through it, down into the bedlam, hat brim low, handkerchief pressed to his cheek, mask vanished into a fist. Between the flank of the dray and the crowd he went, unhurried, and disappeared into the crowd.

"After him,” I said to the plain man. “Light coat, silver cane.” But his partner was already gone in pursuit, his footfalls saying it was hopeless before he was out of hearing.

"Bowen, milady. Mr. Finch's man." He was gray-faced with more than running. "Are you hurt?"

"No." My voice came out from a great distance, level. I looked down at my bare right hand, at the red under three of my nails, none of it mine. "The gentleman is."

“We will get you home in no time.” And with that Bowen climbed up beside the coachman. It took time, but the dray was hauled aside, and the street unknotted itself.

Once we were on our way home, the shaking arrived—my hands first, then all of me, in long slow waves. I sat straight against the cushions and did not permit one tremor to reach my face, in case the street was still watching. He would have men in that street. He had men everywhere. He had loved me since the river, he'd said. What he felt for me was not love. I knew what love was, and it was not that.

Grosvenor Square finally opened around the carriage, green and gold in the late afternoon light, absurd with peace. We drew up before Rosehaven House, where the steps of my own home, my own door, and my own dark room waited for me at the top.

I had spent the better part of my life carrying things through that door. Up those stairs. Into that room, alone, with the lamp out and the bolt home, where they could frighten no one but me.

Not today.

I came down from the carriage, I turned my back on my own front steps, and crossed the square.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

A Vow Made

The report reached me nine minutes before she did.

Finch's second man was in my study before Milford could finish his name—Hicks, hatless, still heaving. An obstruction in the streets north of Belgravia. Arranged, by the look of it: too neat, too complete, the way clear behind and blocked before. A man had entered her ladyship's carriage. Bowen had reached the door inside two minutes. Her ladyship was unhurt. The man was lost in the crowd.

Unhurt. The word did its work badly. It told me her body was whole and told me nothing else. Two minutes of that man in a closed carriage with her. Every arrangement I had made, the watchers and the warnings and the three weeks I had paid for with everything I owned, worth exactly the width of a carriage door.

I was rushing toward the study door when she appeared in the doorway, exactly as she’d arrived eleven days ago—no gloves, her hair down on one side, upright by sheer act of will. I crossed the room and took her in my arms in front of Milford and Finch's man, who quietly quit the room. She allowed it, gripping my lapel with one hand, hard.

Then she straightened. Of course she straightened. "I am not going to faint, Steele. I did not faint in the carriage, and I decline to do it in your study."

Milford brought brandy without being asked and left without being told. She drank half of it standing, then set it down, and took the chair by the hearth, lacing her fingers in her lap.

She gave me the whole of it, in order. Her gift under fire. Terror makes her sequential. The streets narrowing past the mews. The world coming apart in barrels and screaming horses. The door opening, and the man in a light summer coat seating himself opposite her as though the seat had been kept for him.

And then the offer, term by term, in a flat carrying voice. Crane's murderer delivered to the Yard with proof no jury could look away from. Cosmos free within the week, his name restored, Dodson ruined as a gratuity. Claire's secrets kept—all of them.

“The price is me," she said at the end. "Not as his wife. He would not insult me by pretending. He has loved me since the river.” She scoffed at that.

I had thought, across all these weeks, that I had taken this man's measure. That I knew the limits of my anger toward him. I had known nothing.

What came was not heat. It was something I could not name. It went down through me, floor by floor.

The man who could open Cosmos's cell with a word had weighed that word and set its price, and the price was her—priced like his wharf and his straw man, one more acquisition for a collector who never appeared in his own ledgers.

I stood very still because she was watching. And because if I moved, I was going to break something.