He went to his desk and retrieved his revolver from the right-hand drawer, carefully checked it as he always did, then thrust it into his pocket.
I returned to the office as well. There was more to that startling announcement, and I was determined to hear it.
He had donned the cap he wore when the weather demanded it, that dark gaze meeting mine again with the same expression that I’d glimpsed only moments before.
“Who…?” I started to ask, only to have the question silenced as he kissed me.
It was not the same as the night before, but gentle, with some thought that lingered unspoken as his breath met mine. And then he was gone, and I was left standing in my chemise and underdrawers.
“Oh, bloody hell.”
While I knew nothing about the latest development in the case Brodie was pursuing, I did have information from myvisit with Mr. Burke, a name that someone I knew might have knowledge of.
I quickly dressed, seized my long coat along with my travel bag that contained my notebook, then locked the office door behind me.
“Did Mr. Brodie say where he was off to?” I inquired of Mr. Cavendish as I reached the alcove by the street.
“I did overhear him tell the driver that he needed to get to the law courts at the Old Bailey.”
Most interesting.
“Will you be needing a driver as well, Miss Mikaela?”
Mr. Jarvis had just come on shift. Mr. Cavendish waved him down and he pulled to a stop at the curb.
He tipped his cap. “Mornin’, miss. A fine day to be out and about,” he announced with a fair amount of sarcasm as icy rain turned to snow. “Where will it be this mornin’?”
“Sussex Square, Mr. Jarvis.”
“And will the hound be joinin’ you?”
Said hound was not to be seen.
“He’s been out all night,” Mr. Cavendish informed. “He’ll be a bit out of sorts and no good to anyone when he returns until he’s had a nap.”
With that, I climbed into the coach.
I discovered rather early on that my great-aunt was an astonishing source of information about a great many things. As she once commented, no one could live as long as she had without learning some very interesting and delicious things about the class she had been born into.
“I find people most interesting, particularly those of the upper class: quite pretentious and not above committing certain transgressions, including some of the most delicious scandals,unlike those of the lower class who make no pretense what they are about.
“Not that we haven’t had our own share of scandals.”
I had learned about some of those scandals after our great-aunt took my sister and me to live with her, following the scandal our father had created before his demise in the horse barn by his own hand. A scandal that left us each with the dresses we wore and little else after he gambled away the family fortunes that included our family home.
In the aftermath, I had vowed to never attach myself to a man. I had succeeded quite successfully in that until…Brodie.
“Good morning, Miss Mikaela!”
I had not bothered to telephone my great-aunt before leaving the office on the Strand and was met with more than a little surprise at the entrance to Sussex Square by Mr. Symons, her head butler.
“Good morning. Is Aunt Antonia up and about?”
Both my sister and I had long ago taken to referring to her as such, as most of the servants at Sussex had been with her longer than ourselves and were very much like our family as well.
“She was in the solar earlier, attempting to coax the sun out on this very cold, miserable morning. However, I believe she has removed to the small parlor, as she had one of the footmen light a fire in the fireplace.”
I thanked him and made my way to the ‘small’ parlor, which was somewhat of a misnomer.
