Kincaid closed his journal and leaned back in his chair. “I’ll have to interview your driver. The staff. Your mates at the club. Anyone and everyone who can corroborate the events of that night as you’d told them to me.”
“Then you’ll take my case?”
“I will.”
“And you believe we’ve a fair chance of proving my innocence?”
Kincaid hesitated. “I do.”
For the first time since he’d entered the office, Sterling’s mouth, always more prone to smirks than sneers, stretched in a grin. “I hope so. Lord knows I’m far too handsome to hang.”
*
After a longnight of rain, the morning dawned bright and clear with nary a cloud in sight. Her waning spirits bolstered by the weather—and the knowledge that she was soon to be in Kincaid’s company again—Joanna carefully avoided a line of puddles on her way to her new place of employment.
Tucked between two larger homes, the detective’s townhouse maintained a gruff sense of charm, not unlike its owner. White paint was beginning to peel off the brick exterior, but the flower boxes in the windows were blooming with color and the large slabs of slate leading up to the blue front door had been freshly swept of debris. While the chimney was a tad crooked and could have used some repair, the balcony jutting out from the second floor looked like a lovely place to sit on a warm summer’s evening and watch the sun set over the Thames.
Letting herself through a metal gate that squeaked on its hinges, Joanna walked briskly—she had never perfected the art of small, ladylike steps—up to the front door and lifted the gold door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Three successive whacks and, from somewhere within the house, she heard Kincaid beckon her inside.
Taking off her frock coat and bonnet, (“It’s London, you absolutelyhaveto wear a hat,”Evie had chided when Joanna had tried to sneak out without one) she laid them neatly over her arm, then turned her focus to the foyer. It was the first room a client would see when they walked through the door. It should have radiated warmth and invitation. But despite Kincaid’s office being an eclectic hodgepodge of disorder, the rest of his house—and the foyer in particular—was cold and barren.
There were no paintings on the white walls. No rugs on the oak floors. No benches to sit on. No magazines or books to read. What was a person supposed to occupy themselves with while they waited for their appointment? Stare at the cracks in the ceiling?
“This won’t do,” she murmured as she opened a door to her left and peered into a larger room that was just as empty save a rectangular table and a single chair. “This won’t do at all.”
Returning to the foyer, she opened another door and discovered the kitchen which led into a small parlor. The parlor, at least, had a sofa and footstool in front of the fireplace. But both were covered in a thin layer of dust, indicating they hadn’t been used in quite some time, which led her to assume Kincaid lived exclusively upstairs.
She wondered what his bedchamber was like. A hapless mess like his office? Or was it as sterile and unwelcoming as the foyer? Did he neatly make his bed every day, or leave the sheets in a rumpled pile that smelled of him?
Sandalwood and citrus, she recalled, her cheeks pinkening with another damnable blush as she unwittingly envisioned Kincaid’s long, lanky body sprawled from one end of the mattress to the other, his scowl lost to slumber as his chest rose and fell with each heavy breath.
His scent was sandalwood and citrus.
And she had absolutelynobusiness imagining him in bed.
After waiting for the redness in her cheeks to subside (any more blushing and she’d turn into Claire), and then waiting some more for Kincaid to come out of his office, Joanna made up her mind to go in. She knew the rules of polite society dictate she wait for an invitation, but she had a feeling she would be waiting for a very long while. And Joanna waited for no one, least of all a man.
Even ones that made her tingle.
Rapping her knuckles against the door to give fair warning of her impending entrance, she let herself into Kincaid’s office without bothering to wait for a reply and found him sitting behind his desk, his brow furrowed as he studied something he’d written in the leather journal she’d seen him carrying yesterday.
“Miss Thorncroft.” Visibly startled by her appearance, he rose halfway out of his chair, amber eyes widening behind his spectacles. “I was…I was coming to let you in.”
“Alas, here I am. Regrettably, patience is not a virtue of mine.” She flashed him a smile as a peculiar fluttering filled her belly. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think she had swallowed a butterfly and the poor thing was flying around inside of her trying to find a way out.Make that twenty butterflies, she thought silently when Kincaid raked his fingers through his unruly hair and a brown curl tumbled across his brow.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but it seems punctuality is. I wasn’t expecting you this early.”
“You told me to return in the morning,” she pointed out, folding her hands behind her back after she’d hung her coat and bonnet on the hall tree shoved into the corner.
“Yes, but I didn’t…” He glanced at the window, where the sun had barely crept above the horizon and the sky was still turning from orange to blue. “Never mind. I suppose it’s a good thing I am an early riser as well, or you might have walked in on me only half-dressed. Wait.” His tone turned slightly panicked while Joanna tried—and failed—not to picture Kincaid without his shirt on. “That’s not what I meant to say. I…dohave a seat, Miss Thorncroft. Would you care for some, uh…coffee?”
Her nose wrinkling at the sight of the cold, brown sludge sitting in a clear pot, Joanna gave a firm shake of her head. Sweeping her skirts to the side, she sank gracefully into the same chair she’d occupied the day prior. “This isexactlywhy you need a secretary, Kincaid.”
“I will admit, the idea never occurred to me,” Kincaid revealed as he sat down at his desk. “But we did have one at Scotland Yard.” His gaze swept across Joanna and the corners of his mouth tightened imperceptibly. “A quiet, elderly widow who made the best sugar biscuits I’ve ever tasted.”
It was clear by the flicker of disapproval in his eyes that Kincaid would have preferred a secretary who fit those qualifications. A doddering old grandmother type who patted him on the head and said things like,“There’s a good lad”and“Have another treat, my boy, you’re much too thin”.
Instead, he had…well, he hadher. A brash American who was rarely quiet, often spoke before she thought, and couldn’t bake a sugar cookie to save her life.
