Why wasn’t it possible? I wondered as I drifted in a faint wine haze and closed my eyes.
But the wine, the warmth in the room, and the bed... The question was there, then slipped away with the wine and heat from the fire, and that long trip across the channel.
BRODIE
He rose from the chair then went to the hearth. The fire hadburned low once more and the room had grown cold. He put more wood on it, poked at it until it caught and burned brightly, then turned toward the bed.
She was asleep, lips slightly parted, her head resting on one hand on the pillow, the fingers of her other hand wrapped around the edge of the blanket.
He crouched low beside the bed. If he closed his eyes, she was still there, as she had been the past months—the curve of her cheek, the stubborn angle of her chin. Those eyes that were not quite green but not quite gray the way they had been when she had stared back at him in anger that last time.
But when he opened his eyes, she was still there, asleep now, her breathing slow and even, her lips slightly parted with something she might have said.
There was a faint smile, she would want the last comment. She did like to have the last word. Not in anger but something she wanted him to know. To understand?
It had taken all those months apart, countless times that encounter at Scotland Yard had tortured him, and his worst fear had been that he might lose her. In the end he had caused it himself and she had left.
He touched the ring that he had placed on her hand with those few words so many months ago. She still wore it in spite of everything that had passed between them.
Impossible, he had thought, when he told her of his feelings and wanted her for his wife. Impossible for a woman like her and a man like him.
Yet, she had accepted his proposal, had accepted him. And she trusted him. Hadn’t she told him so?
That last time, before she left, when he was beaten and chained, she asked him to trusther.
He did. It was himself that he didn’t trust to be able to keep her safe...if she was out there alone. And the rage that had followed—at Abberline, at himself, and at her!
And now? How did he take away the hurt he saw in her eyes that last time? How did he make her understand that he did trust her? That he needed her there at the office, at the blackboard with her scribbles and her notes, across the desk from him at the end of a day as they shared a dram of whisky. Needed her argument over one reason or another when he was wrong about a clue they’d uncovered, all the other ways that he’d come to know her...neededher, when he’d learned not to need anyone.
When he would have returned to the chair before the hearth, her fingers gently closed around his as they had countless times in the past. That simple gesture that had connected them after long days, a frustrating case, and other strong words. It was difficult to know who was holding onto whom.
It didn’t matter as he gently eased down onto the bed beside her, then pulled her close.
If she wakened, there were no words, just that quiet way they had found with each other in the past as she stirred and somehow moved closer, then slept once more, trusting him...
Ten
CALAIS TO PARIS
The compartment wasfull as the morning train continued our trip to Paris. Brodie sat across the way.
He had already left the room at the inn when I wakened, dressed, and then joined him in the small dining room of the inn. We ate with only a word or two that passed between us. However, more than once I looked up to find a frown on his face and that dark gaze watching me.
As now, then it was gone as he stared out the window of the compartment, conversations flowing around us in a mixture of French and English.
There were comments about the weather that had set in steadily as we left Calais, the unexpected delay of our departure, a family that had made the crossing from Dover, the mother attempting to soothe her restless young daughter who squirmed.
When would they arrive? What about Titou? Would grand-mére be there?
She eventually ran out of questions, laid her head on her mother’s lap, and closed her eyes.
So very simple, I thought, to be a child and the only thought was of a beloved pet or one’s grandmother.
We were soon pulling into the Gare du Nord station.
It was a central point of travel in France and beyond, and there were attendants who spoke both French and English. He secured a driver and gave him the address of the hotel where Sir Avery had made reservations for our stay.
I had stayed at the Hotel Westminster at the Rue De La Paix in the past as I returned from one of my trips abroad. It was built by the Duke of Westminster, an acquaintance of my great-aunt, in the style of an English manor house with rich dark woods, marble floors, and fresco ceilings, with suites and rooms in six stories that dominated 13 Rue De La Paix.
