“In this life,” he murmured with mock complacency. “Shall we?”
Along with the clop of horses arriving home to the mews for the night, she could hear the soft, distant voices of grooms and, closer, accompanying a moving light, Max’s unmistakable laughter. He was used to acting and good at it.
She and Solomon strolled down the narrow path as though interested only in each other. Solomon paused beside the raspberry bush, but as he spoke, Constance slipped her hand free and advanced another few feet to cut off their intruder’s path to the gate.
“You had better come out, you know,” Solomon said to the raspberries.
The gate opened, flooding the dark shadows and the apple tree with wildly swinging light. There came a startled grunt and sounds of intense scuffling.
The raspberry bushes waved and rustled, and a female voice commanded, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t dare hurt him!”
Janey’s two lanterns, held up to shine on the speaker’s face, clearly blinded the female intruder, who emerged with one arm held across her eyes.
Even so, Constance could see she was young, no old harridan. She was sure she had never seen this person in her life before. But Solomon had. His intake of breath betrayed startlement as well as recognition.
“Let him go!” the young woman insisted, panic in her voice.
Jeremy and Max held the other intruder by the arms, marching him up the path to the others. To be fair, he no longer struggled. Constance doubted he ever had, for there was not a hair out of place on his handsome head, or a crease in his well cut evening coat.
Hanibal Cordell.
Constance began to laugh. “Sir, how unexpected. Then this must be Miss… But no doubt discretion is the better part of this revelation. You may release him, gentlemen, and return to your duties.”
She regarded Miss St. John in some consternation. Under no circumstances could the girl be seen inside the house. Yet there was little privacy out here, where anyone could be lurking beyond the garden walls.
Miss St. John reached up somewhat defiantly and pulled a thick mourning veil from the top of her hat to cover her face from brow to throat.
“Well,” Constance said, “you had better come in.”
The girl seized Cordell’s freed arm, and Constance waved Janey and the lanterns forward in front of her. Solomon, presumably, brought up the rear.
There was no privacy in the kitchen, where servants came and went all the time while supper was served. Withoutinstruction, Janey abandoned the lanterns at the door and led the way through the kitchen to the stairs. At the top, she pushed the baize door open a crack and peered out. A male voice and a female gurgle of laughter faded, and Janey led the way through to the small parlor, where she turned on the gas lamps.
“Thanks, Janey,” Constance said, and her assistant reluctantly departed. “Do sit,” she invited her guests, “and explain.”
“Must we?” Cordell asked, with a trace of his familiar arrogance. “I am, after all, your employer.”
“We shan’t dispute terminology,” Solomon said without softening. “But I never heard that any employer had the right to invade an employee’s private property.”
“We couldn’t come to the front door, could we?” Cordell said reasonably.
“Because of me,” Bella St. John said.
“You,” Constance said without sympathy, “should not be here at all. And you, sir, should not have brought her.”
“He was meant to go in alone and bring you out to the mews,” Bella said. “But I went in before he could stop me.”
“Why?” Constance asked, baffled. “Do you imagine a brothel is an interesting or romantic place?”
Bella’s face heated to a fiery red. “No, of course not.”
“Perhaps you were seeking adventure?”
“I was seeking the truth!” Bella burst out.
Constance blinked. “About me?”
“About me,” Cordell said with a crooked smile. “I was seen by the Willow creature a few houses up from yours, entering this establishment yesterday evening, and of course she and her crow of a sister could not wait to impart the news to Bella and her mother. They also revealed that Mr. St. John was found here, something we had been keeping from the ladies.”
