For the writer in me it was an unwelcome metaphor of the present situation. I doubled back to the passage and quickened my pace.
Trying to escape, are you?
“Stuff it!” I replied. Yet, that thought returned...WhathadI expected?
I knew Brodie quite well with that typical Scots demeanor, the stubbornness, his temper in certain situations, that he had also accused me of.
And then there was that stinging comment during our last case, that things had changed, that he didn’t want me to be part of?
What the devil was that about? It was something I had thought of countless times during our time apart. Did he regret the marriage?
The toe of my boot caught at the edge of a raised stone in the passage, and I silently cursed again. Let that inner voice deal with that, I thought!
“Mikaela…!”
It was then that I felt Brodie’s hand on my elbow, steadying me.
“Are ye all right?”
A simple question and the immediate thought came—No, I was not all right! I had been caught completely unprepared for this meeting, unprepared for him.
And now?
A driver had not yet arrived and I considered simply leaving, not at all certain at the moment that I wanted to be near Brodie. However, the guard politely asked us to wait inside that fortified, heavily gated entrance.
I couldn’t help wondering how many prisoners, both royal and otherwise over the centuries, had awaited their fate at this precise location. It was quite ironic.
Brodie thanked the warder as we continued to wait, the silence between us almost like a voice shouting at me. He was too close as that familiar scent of cinnamon that was always about him drifted over me.
Bloody damn Scot!
We stood there like two strangers, the warder going about his duties as he signed in an envelope from a courier, received a telephone call that filled the heavy silence, then went to deliver that envelope.
“Ye have been well?” Brodie inquired.
“Yes, and yourself?” I replied, cordial as well, as I shifted my bag to my other hand.
I had thought a dozen times how we would meet after I returned, things that needed to be said. I wasn’t fool enough tothink that he might not be angry. But this? That polite coolness, almost indifference, after our work, after...everything else?
“Yer travels were agreeable?” he then inquired.
Agreeable? And that question, polite, grated like fingernails across a chalkboard, as if it was a trip for health, rather than to get away from that last argument, his overbearing attitude, and that parting comment that he didn’t want me to be part of this any longer.
Our inquiry cases? The marriage? Did he now consider it a mistake?
I refused to be drawn into an argument here.
“My aunt and Lily were quite taken with Africa,” I replied instead.
“No wild creatures brought back to Sussex Square?” he commented.
“Not at all,” I replied.
“And Lily is well?”
“Quite well and now back at her lessons, much to her disappointment that now includes a young woman to teach her, help her with manners and deportment.”
Awkwardness drew out between us and I silently cursed the continued wait.
