Page 40 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

He raised a brow as he came politely to his feet but did not ask. I appreciated that. I had spent too many years among men who required an explanation for everything a woman did, as though we could not be trusted to cross a room without rendering an account of our intentions.

I nodded to Miriam on my way out of the drawing room.

“Is everything⁠—?”

“Everything’s fine.”

In my bedchamber, I took what I needed from the desk drawer, along with everything else the night would require.

I returned to find Thorne stirring the fire—a mercy, for the March night had turned bitterly cold. As his eyes found the notebook in my hands, understanding gathered behind them.

I sat but did not yet offer him the notebook.

“You asked me to trust you,” I said. “Not in those words, but that is what you did tonight. You shared your family’s worst secret.”

He said nothing. He waited, as I had waited for him.

“This belonged to Lydia Gray.”

Something shifted in his expression—not surprise, exactly, but a sharpening of attention.

“As you know, she kept a notebook,” I continued. “Her entries are written in a mixture of abbreviations, initials, and what I believe to be a simple substitution cipher for the most sensitive passages. She was protecting herself.” I paused. “Or someone else.”

“How did you come to have it?” he asked, taking his seat once more.

“She left it with me for safekeeping. The last time I saw her, she pressed it into my hands and bade me keep it hidden. She said that if anything happened to her, I would know what to do with it.” My throat tightened. I had spoken of that afternoon to no one but Miriam.

“I did not understand, then, what she meant by if anything happened. I thought her dramatic. Lydia could be dramatic.”

The fire crackled in the silence.

“But something did happen,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

I looked down at the notebook. Lydia’s hand was minuscule—a reflection of the woman, crowding as much meaning as possible into the smallest space. The black ink had faded to brown in places, and the pages were soft with handling. She had returned to these entries again and again, adding, revising, questioning herself in the margins.

“There is something I must tell you before I show you this,” I said. “And I need you to understand why I did not share it sooner.”

Thorne’s expression did not change, but his hands went still on the arms of the chair.

“The notebook mentions your family name.”

“In what capacity?”

“I can’t tell. It is written in a code I have not been able to break.”

A silence. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The fire settled.

“When you and I first spoke, I did not know you. I did not know what part your family had played, or whether you were aware of it, or whether you might be⁠—”

“Complicit.”

The word lay between us like a blade.

“Yes,” I said. I would not soften it. He deserved better. “I could not risk showing this to a man who might be entangled in the very thing Lydia died investigating. Not until I knew what manner of man you were.”

I watched him absorb it—watched him understand that while he had been deciding whether to trust me, I had been making the same calculation about him. That we had been circling one another like two people holding lanterns in the dark, each trying to determine whether the other’s light was a signal or a trap.