“I count my blessings for it every day.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do I hear sarcasm?”
“Are you stalling?”
“Okay, okay. I went to talk to Bear.” Despite her best efforts, the words came out in a rush. She kept her gaze on Alec’s impassive face. “He might hear talk on the street about the disappearances of actresses or sex workers. Or if there’s buzz about someone claiming to have a cure for syphilis.”
“Bear,” was all he said, without any inflection.
“I need information, Alec.” She gestured to the slate board. “I can’t afford to turn down any resource, and Bear is a valuable one.”
“He’s a bloody criminal.”
“Well, yeah. I’ve dealt with criminals before, you know. It’s standard procedure. Work with a smaller fish to catch the bigger fish.”
“Bearisthe bigger fish.”
“If my goal was to take down his criminal enterprise, yeah, he would be. But I’m not interested in him or what he does. I’m looking for a murderer, Alec. And I need answers.”
“Why do you think that man can provide you with answers?”
She took a moment to consider her answer. “Your world has a class system—”
He paused in taking a sip of his brandy. “And yours doesn’t?”
“It absolutely does. But people can move more easily between the classes. Here, it’s more rigid, and I need to be able to go to every level, to question everyone. Bear knows what’s happening on the street, in the rookeries and flash houses. He knows things that you or the Duke won’t hear in your clubs, and that I can’t learn from Lady St. James or even Lady Harrington.”
She walked over to him and captured his free hand, lacing their fingers together as she met his eyes. “I’ve dealt with a lot of Bears in my life, Alec. You need to trust me to do my job, to be able to handle myself.”
She waited for what seemed like an eternity. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I do trust you,” he finally said.
“Good.”
“I also think that Mr. Kelly could have spoken to Bear. You didn’t have to do it.”
“Alec—”
“And you don’t trust me.”
She jerked back. “That’s crazy! Of course, I trust you.”
“You don’t, otherwise you would have confided in me what you planned to do. Instead, you snuck away from the anatomy school and sent Coachman John home without giving him an explanation.”
She said nothing for a beat, then, “Point taken. But it’s not because I don’t trust you. I didn’t trust your coachman to take me where I needed to go. I didn’t want the argument. But I promise you that I didn’t do it with the intention of hiding it from you.” She searched his eyes. “Do you believe me?”
He brought their laced hands up and brushed a kiss along her knuckles. “I believe you.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I always knew that marriage to a woman from the future wasn’t going to be easy.”
Kendra slowly released her breath. Marriage, she decided, was a mysterious landscape, with continually shifting boundaries.
He said, “Promise me, though, that in the future, you will use our carriage, not a public hackney, when you go about town. No sense spending money on public transportation when you’ve a perfectly good carriage at your disposal.”
She gave him a pointed look. “And a coachman with a blunderbuss athisdisposal.”
“Does he? Why, yes, I believe he does.”
Kendra laughed, then sobered instantly, fixing her gaze on his. “Are we good?”
