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Alessandra didn’t respond. There was no need. She and Kenton were just as much in the dark as she was. Maybe it was a good thing he’d left now, before they could get more serious. Would it have been like this if they’d stayed together? Lawrence running off to fight rogue Cheld or Kenton’s brothers for weeks, months, or maybe years on end? That would certainly be no way to foster a relationship. And then there was the immortality thing.
“It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”
Pretending she meant it, Toni finished her drink.
“So what do you think? Call it a night?”
Laughing at the stricken look on Alessandra’s face, she stood and took her friend’s empty wine glass, prepared to head back into the bar for refills.
* * *
Lawrence wasglad to see the light on in the Henry Hutton Mansion. They hadn’t been earlier. By the time he stood in front of Mary, asking after Kenton and Alessandra, he could see a head of dark hair walking toward him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Mary calmly stepped aside as Kenton stormed toward the door. She truly was worth her weight in gold. “And why are you standing on the doorstep as if you’d not been invited in before?”
Lawrence crossed the threshold and peered down the hallway.
“Is she here?”
He didn’t mean Alessandra.
They moved into the red room, the only one that hadn’t been painted this summer. Alessandra had wanted to preserve some of the mansion’s history, and the story of these walls, more burgundy than red, was as well-known as the house itself.
The original owner, a shrewd businessman, knowing the sense of strength or even danger the color evoked, apparently had the front room painted a deep red to intimidate his guests. Now, Alessandra teased, it was the same color of the sloe gin kept behind the bar.
“No, neither of them are here.”
Dismissing Mary, Kenton slid behind the bar.
“Which you would have known if you’d texted or called first.” Kenton lifted his phone. “Twenty-first-century technology. You should use it.”
Lawrence accepted a drink, touched to see their bar was still stocked with his favorite beer.
“I would have if I hadn’t dropped it on the plane. I can only assume it fell out of my pocket there. Either way—” he took a swig of beer, “—it’s gone.”
Kenton sat on the barstool, watching him with centuries of learned leeriness.
“What are you doing back?”
“Where are they?”
“You first.”
Lawrence grabbed the back of his neck, massaging out the stiffness.
“Once an earl, always a cocky bastard,” he said, unable to resist the jab.
“Says the man who’s looking for information that only I can give.”
Lawrence nodded toward the hallway. “You, or Mary. Or Birdie or—”
“The Elmwood Lodge. Girls’ weekend.”
That explained Toni’s darkened house. When he’d stepped off the plane, he had gone to her immediately, but everything was dark.
“I came by earlier. Your house was dark too.”
Kenton raised his brows. “Missed me, did you?” Taking a slow, taunting sip of gin, he relented. “I passed the time at Murphy’s, if you must know.”
