“It would have been hard to blend in as a widow if I’d chosen black trousers instead of skirts.”
“Does that mean you’ll return to wearing trousers once you’re back in Montana?”
She threw up her hands. “You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that, but I’m not returning to Montana. And not that I should have to point out the obvious to you, Arthur, but finding you in my carriage after depositing Mrs. Mills at her sister’s house seems to be a tad stalkerish on your part.”
“I told him you wouldn’t be pleased,” Ivan said from where he was sitting next to Arthur on the opposite seat. “But since his carriage left him behind, I didn’t feel right leaving him standing outside since it’s begun to rain. He did, after all, assist you at the asylum.”
“A little rain never hurt anyone.” Eunice caught Arthur’s eye. “Besides, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not in the proper emotional state to engage in what will clearly be a tumultuous conversation with you. I spent a day and a half in an insane asylum, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I just had to leave a weeping Mrs. Mills in the care of her sister, even though Mrs. Mills still seems to think her dastardly husband isn’t that dastardly and longs to return to him. It took a great deal of effort to resist shaking some sense into the lady, although I’m relatively certain Mrs. Eastman will not hesitate with any shaking that needs to happen to keep her sister from returning to a reprobate. With all that said, I’m in desperate need of a bath, a nap, and a decent meal. I assure you, you won’t enjoy what I have to say next if you keep pressing me about returning to Montana right now.”
“Would you be more agreeable to discussing the matter after you’ve had a bath, nap, and a decent meal?”
“Probably not.”
Arthur’s lips began to curve. “Which is not surprising and means, since I have the sneaking suspicion you’ll disappear again to avoid further conversations with me, I’m now going to chance your ill humor and continue to press you about Montana.”
“I don’t want to talk about Montana. But because there’s little likelihood that you’ll spend our ride through the city in silence, Iwilltalk to you about something else.” She leaned forward. “How did you figure out my identity, how did you find me in the asylum, and better yet, why did you track me down? You could have blown my cover.”
“Tracking you down was unavoidable because you were obviously going to great lengths to avoid me.”
“For good reason, since I’m the woman you wanted to hire the agency to find.”
“Well, quite, but you would have made everything much easier on yourself if you would have simply tossed up your veils after I explained the situation at the agency. Clearly I’m no threat to you, but since you didn’t disclose your identity, I had no choice but to take the unusual step of seeking you out at the asylum. And, to address the business of blowing your cover, you did that without any assistance from me.”
Judith cleared her throat, wincing as she looked to Eunice. “Not that this speaks well to my skills as an inquiry agent, but I’m to blame for Arthur learning you were undercover at the asylum. Granted, I wasn’t actually the one to tell him where you were—Mrs. Eastman did that. And then Elsy and I tried to convince him he’d come to the wrong conclusion about who you were, but he skedaddled out of the agency before we were successful with that.”
Eunice’s brows drew together. “I thought we’d agreed you’d avoid the agency until Arthur left town.”
Judith’s shoulders slumped. “I left my sketchpad there. But I did think about not going to retrieve it for an entire hour before I gave in to the longing to fetch it. And not that you’ll understand this because you’re not an artistic sort, but I needed my sketchpad because I’ve begun an oil painting of Arthur’s face. I wouldn’t havebeen able to make much progress if I didn’t have the sketches to work from.” Her shoulders slumped another inch. “It was horrible luck on my part that I just happened to dash into the agency while he was waiting in the receiving room. It went downhill fairly quickly from there, especially when after I escaped from the receiving room without divulging anything, I made the poor choice of returning to the room because I thought Elsy needed help dealing with Arthur.”
“You’re doing an oil painting of me?” Arthur asked.
“Pretend he didn’t ask that question, Judith,” Eunice said. “We don’t have time for a lengthy dissertation on your plans for that painting right now. Instead, we need to discuss exactly how he was able to track me down because we’ll need to devise a better plan in case a similar situation arises in the future. We can’t very well have random clients running us to ground while we’re out on assignment.”
“I’m not a random client,” Arthur argued. “I highly doubt anyone else would ever have to go to the lengths I went through to locate you.”
Eunice shrugged. “We at the Bleecker Street Inquiry Agency believe in learning from our mistakes, and having you locate me while I was out in the field was a mistake if there ever was one. The identity I’ve been diligent with hiding for years has also been revealed.”
“And wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to me months ago when I voiced objections to the inquiry agency for exactly that reason,” Ivan said.
“I know, Ivan,” Eunice said, blowing out a breath. “And you should glean a great deal of satisfaction from learning you were right. However, I was becoming stifled by the restrictions I’d placed on myself over the past seven years, and the agency lifted the ennui I’d been experiencing because of them. I now have a noble purpose to pursue, which is one of the reasons why I won’t be returning to Montana.” She glanced to Arthur. “I have a business to run.”
“You have two business partners who I’m going to assume are capable of running the agency in your absence.”
“You met Daphne. Did you really get the impression she’d be good at seeing after the more mundane aspects of the business, such as billing and scheduling?”
“An excellent point, but you do have another partner, Gabriella.”
“Who is currently off on a case, one that centers around a young lady who foolishly decided to run away with the family butler. The last telegram I had from Gabriella and her husband said they were in Florida, so there’s little hope she’ll be back in time for me to get to Montana by my birthday, the date you told me the family was going to have me declared dead.” She turned to Judith. “You may continue with your story. I believe you stopped at retrieving your sketchpad, which led to your encounter with Arthur.”
Upon concluding her side of the story five minutes later, Judith released a dramatic breath. “Clearly I failed miserably today and fully expect you to toss me from the rank of inquiry agent, even though I don’t do much inquiry work.”
Ivan sat forward and settled a rather un-Ivan-like smile on Judith. “No one is going to toss you from the inquiry agency. You weren’t solely to blame for the debacle that happened today. Truth be told, it sounds to me as if you handled yourself magnificently under what can only be described as the most daunting of circumstances. You did, after all, take it upon yourself to dash off to Blackwell Island with Elsy, and that right there shows your dedication to the agency as well as your concern for Eunice. Although it might be best if you don’t man the receiving room again.”
“Judith doesn’t enjoy manning the receiving room in the first place,” Eunice pointed out as a blush began staining Judith’s cheeks right as she and Ivan began staring at each other in a way that was definitely going to demand further contemplation at a later date, especially when Ivan’s cheeks turned a bit pink as well.
“Should we step out of the carriage?” Arthur asked.
Eunice’s lips curved. “If it wasn’t moving, I would say yes.”
