Sir Avery’s men and the others reappeared, leading several men and a woman between them. A half dozen more police vans rolled forward. Those captured were quickly loaded inside with a great number of mounted police alongside.
“Stay here,” Alex told me. “I’ll see what I can learn about what has happened.”
He set off toward the main entrance of that Gothic hall that loomed up out of the mist with lights ablaze throughout. There was a brief exchange of conversation at the perimeter of the police at the park, then he was allowed to proceed across Whitehall Road.
Far too impatient to wait any longer, I followed. If something had happened to Brodie… if he was injured… I was done with waiting!
“Sorry, miss. No one is allowed past this point,” a police officer stopped me.
“I am with Mr. Sinclair. You will let me pass,” I insisted. I might as well have been shouting into the wind for the unmovable expression as his face.
“Sorry, miss,” he repeated.
I glanced past him to the entrance. I would find a way to slip past the guards there, then…
I pulled the revolver from my bag and marched toward the entrance, then suddenly stopped.
Was that Alex returning already? What had he learned?
My stomach knotted as I looked for that shock of dark hair and a nervous hand as he pushed it back, that shy expression behind those glasses. It was a wonder he hadn’t shot himself earlier…
However, the man who walked purposefully across Whitehall Road wore dark clothes, the mist from the river wrapping around him, as Brodie appeared through the crowd that lingered.
“Bloody hell!” I swore and ignored the startled expressions of those nearby as I ran to him. “What took you so long?”
Was that my voice that shook uncontrollably, a mixture of pent-up anger after waiting for hours and some other emotion?
“Business that needed finishin’,” he replied in that cryptic, cynical way.
“Is it finished then?” I asked.
That dark gaze met mine. “Aye.”
That cold knot in my stomach slowly loosened.
“Sir James?” I then asked.
He nodded and that knot that had tightened at the sight of that stretcher with the body on it finally unwound completely.
There was no remorse, only a vague sadness. How could there be anything else with what Redstone had intended? And then something far more important to me.
“You’re not hurt?” I managed to disguise the emotion in my voice. Almost.
“No more than the black eye ye gave me.”
I managed a smile. “You did deserve it.”
“Verra likely.”
That easy familiarity with that sarcasm was there again. I was very glad for both the familiarity and the sarcasm that was so typical at moments like this. And of course, for him.
I once heard something about marital bliss shared by two people. I supposed that this was ours— the end of our inquiry case though not the ending Helen Bennett had hoped for, a plot averted, and several hundred lives saved.
Not a bad day’s work, I thought.
“And wot were ye thinkin’ ye were goin’ to do with this?” Brodie asked as his hand wrapped around the revolver in my hand.
“I thought you might need assistance,” I replied.
