He was insistent, gently taking her arm. “You don’t have money. Did you forget?”
She had forgotten. “Right. Yes, okay. Do you mind if we leave now? My bag is by the door.”
“Of course. I’ll get my keys.” Carson left the room.
Peyton followed, backing out. She didn’t know who had killed her parents, but someone in that room had. But why? She needed Tarron.She needed Alistar.
Carson adjusted the heat in the car, then reached over and rested his hand on Peyton’s.
“I can’t seem to get warm,” she said, her teeth chattering.
He squeezed her hand.
Someone in that room had killed her parents. Who would do such a thing? As quickly as she blinked, her tears replenished. “Did you know her?”
“Sarah Christine? Yes. I was thirteen, I think, when she and Django died. She was sweet. She taught me to paint and sculpt. Of course, I never rose to her level.”
“Like me,” Peyton said softly. “I’m an art critic, despite my liberal arts degrees.”
“Yes.” A companionable silence settled in the car. Even with the traffic, even as the rain fell, the space enclosing them felt… safe.
“Tell me about them. My parents.”
“They were caring. Even Django—”
“What do you mean, ‘Even Django’? Was he mean?”
“No, nothing like that. He was of gypsy descent and my—our—family is not the most open-minded when it comes to mixed marriages, I’m afraid.”
She pulled her hand away and shifted her body toward the door. “Mixed marriages? They were married in 1995, for God’s sake.” How positively medieval. “It shouldn’t have mattered regardless. They were in love.”
“How did you know that? That they were married in ’95?”
“It was in the investigation agency’s report.”
“Ah.” He paused a bit before going on. “Well, anyway, I think she worried for me and my brother—”
“Your brother, Cameron. He was older. I’d forgotten him. Where was he this morning?”
“Cameron died a few years ago, riding a motorbike. Recklessly so, I fear.”
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his and tightened her grip. “He was protective of you.” She shot him an impish grin. “I think.”
Carson glanced over at her and then back to the road. “He was.”
They reached the outskirts of London, and the traffic eased as silence once again filled the car. The rain was a soft patter of comfort.
“The family has been searching for you forever, you know.”
“Really?” That didnotring true. “How was it that I was put into foster care, then?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps the authorities got to you before the family. As I recall, you weren’t very coherent. You couldn’t remember anything, right?”
“Right,” she promptly agreed.But you just made your first mistake, Mr. Deeds. You saw me not long after my parents’ demise, didn’t you?She didn’t know much about the nobility, but there was no way the granddaughter of a baron would not be searched for if her parents were lost at sea. Her insides quivered, an onset of a dawning apprehension that she had to mask. “What do you know of this curse Alistar is under?” Mainly she asked to quiet the panic sitting at the edge of her own sanity. Her steady tone impressed even her.
She caught his smile. An indulgent, condescending twist of his lips. “Do you really believe he is cursed?”
“How do you explain each of his ancestors going crazy at the age of thirty-three?” she asked.
