Page 44 of Secrets of the Heart

After he had bowed out, leaving them alone, Rachel turned to her companion, saying accusingly, “You told him you were Michael, didn’t you?”

Hobson shrugged. “I told you no one would think it odd to see you dining with your husband. Besides, it got us a private room. You wouldn’t want to be stared at by the common mob, would you?”

“I doubt there is a mob in this inn,” Rachel pointed out, then admitted, “But no, I would prefer to dine alone.” She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. “How often do you do that? Pretend you are Michael, I mean?”

He grinned, his eyes dancing with merriment. “Only as often as it helps me—and I can get away with it.”

“You are utterly shameless,” Rachel scolded, although it was all she could do not to return his grin, there was something so engaging about it. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that you profess to disdain the man, then use his identity whenever it will get you something you want?”

He shrugged. “It isn’t as if I steal anything from him. I don’t even do anything that would reflect badly on him: I always pay my shot. I just use his name to get me the things that it gets him. He got that name from his father, didn’t he? It isn’t as if it was somethin’ he earned, now, is it? He was born to it. And since his father is my father, it seems to me that there’s nothing wrong with me getting a little bit of that, even if I didn’t happen to get the name.”

“You have a way of making things sound very reasonable,” Rachel replied.

“That is because I am a reasonable man.” He picked up the bottle of wine the innkeeper had brought to them and held it over her glass, raising his brows in question.

Rachel hesitated. It was also not proper for a well-bred lady to be drinking wine, especially so early in the day, and even more especially with a strange man. But who would know? And she felt so invigorated by her activities this morning, so much freer and more daring, that she could not resist trying something else that was not proper.

She nodded, and he poured her half a glass. Rachel took a sip. It was not very good wine, rather sour, actually, but she drank a few sips, just to do it.

Rachel leaned back in her chair, leveled a serious gaze on Hobson, and said, “Now, then, tell me why you are wanting to talk to Mrs. Birkshaw’s maid.”

When he hesitated, she prodded, “It’s only fair—I told you why I was there. And if we are to work together…”

“Yes. Of course, you are right.” Except, of course, Michael thought, that he could not tell her the truth—that the husband she thought incapable of pettiness was so jealous and suspicious that he saw the possibilities of murder in what had in all probability been a simple, natural death.

“I was hired,” he said, using Cooper’s explanation of Bow Street’s involvement, “by a cousin of the late Mrs. Birkshaw, who thought that her death was suspicious.”

“But Anthony was not even at home when she became ill, isn’t that true?”

Michael nodded, watching her with narrowed eyes. “Still, there is always some suspicion when a person dies at a young age…and when the spouse stands to inherit a great deal of money.”

“And who would inherit the money if Anthony Birkshaw were to be found to have killed his wife?” Rachel asked shrewdly.

“You are right, of course. The cousin would inherit, so there is self-interest behind his request.”

“I wonder if we could work together, then,” Rachel went on. “Would we not be working at cross-purposes—you to prove that Mr. Birkshaw did it and I to—”

“I would hope,” he put in, leaning forward and looking earnestly into Rachel’s eyes, “that we would both be looking for the same thing—the truth.”

Rachel felt as if it were suddenly difficult to breathe. She could not move her eyes from his, and she was unaccountably warm all over. They were talking about Anthony and a murder, but her wayward mind seemed to want to turn only to the kiss she had shared with this man yesterday.

“Yes, of course,” she said, scarcely noticing what she was saying.

His hand lay on the table, palm up, and she reached slowly across the table and touched the tips of his fingers with her own. His eyes, still locked on hers, darkened. He turned his hand so that their palms faced each other and slid his fingers through hers, interlacing them. His skin was searing. His eyes drew her in. Rachel leaned forward, too, stretching instinctively toward him.

12

The handle of the door turned noisily, and both of them jumped at the sound. Rachel sat back in her chair, clasping her hands together in her lap as the innkeeper backed into the room, carrying a large tray. After him came a lad carrying another tray.

They busied themselves setting the trays down on a sideboard and bustling over to set the dishes of food on the table before them. Rachel looked away from Hobson, seizing the opportunity to bring her breathing—and her thinking—back under control. What had she been about to do! If the innkeeper had not barged in, what would have happened? Was she so weak, Rachel wondered, so unable to control her baser impulses, that she would have kissed Michael’s brother again? She could scarcely believe that she would have, yet neither would she have believed she would have reached out and taken his hand!

By the time the innkeeper had laid out their lunch and retired from the room, Rachel had her face set in calm lines again. She did not look at James as she dished out food onto her plate, but chattered in an aimless manner about how good the food looked, how delicious it smelled, how little she would have guessed that such an unassuming inn would turn out such fare.

It was a relief to her to stop talking and begin eating. She thought, with an inner spurt of amusement that it was probably a relief to Mr. Hobson, as well.

By the time they had finished eating, Rachel was able to look Hobson in the face again. She knew that she should not work with the man on the investigation any longer. Obviously, she thought, she had some sort of bizarre reaction to Michael’s half brother, some sort of…attraction, though she could hardly bring herself to think the word.

For his part, Michael was wondering what sort of insanity had prompted him to offer to let Rachel work on the case with him. There would be so much more possibility of his identity being discovered, not to mention the fact that he would be putting his gently bred wife into situations and places that were far from anything she had ever experienced in her sheltered life, even, perhaps, into possible danger, should it turn out that Birkshaw’s wife actually had been murdered.