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“I don’t think so, Mr. Castelan,” she said, then turned for the door.

“I know that this pursuit Inspector Reid has undertaken is quite hazardous, Miss Spencer. And that he wasn’t there in his capacity as a Scotland Yard detective, was he?” came the nettling man’s reply. “I wonder…who sent him?”

A chill slowed her legs, pulling her to a stop. She looked over her shoulder at Mr. Castelan, who appeared satisfied to have affected her.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Castelan.” Leo left his office without another backward glance.

Chapter Eleven

The study inside Number 23 Charles Street was the room Jasper gravitated toward each evening after he returned home. His bedroom, the kitchen, and dining room were the only other rooms within the large townhouse he normally entered, though Mrs. Zhao kept the front parlor dusted in the unlikely event he received a visitor, and a single guest bedroom ready for the same reason.

The study, however, was where he felt most at home. The reason why wasn’t complicated: It had been his father’s favorite room. No matter the season, as night fell, Mrs. Zhao stoked the coal brazier and lit the lamps, a routine she’d kept with Gregory Reid and one that she continued now with Jasper.

That evening as he tossed his jacket onto the sofa, Jasper glimpsed the leather swivel chair behind the desk. He’d yet to sit in it since his father’s death. For some reason he couldn’t explain, the idea of sliding into the button-tufted leather chair, the seat soft and worn, felt disrespectful. As if sitting there would cause the memories he held of his father to fade, or even to erase.

Gregory had been gone nearly a year now, and yet, Jasper sometimes still caught himself expecting to see his father in that chair. To hear his voice greeting him as he walked into the study. Jasper touched the chair’s arm and gave it a nudge. It turned on its base, revolving outward as if to beckon him to sit.

“Well, this is becoming ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, and then before he could change his mind, he settled into the chair. Jasper shifted and leaned back.

It turned out, it was just a chair. Sitting in it hadn’t changed anything.

Sighing, he opened the file Sergeant Warnock had delivered to his desk just before the end of the day. The young detective sergeant had succeeded in finding the death certificate for Mrs. Victoria Herrington at the General Register Office at Somerset House. However, in Warnock’s enthusiasm, he’d also taken it upon himself to visit the records room at Scotland Yard. It had proved to be an astute move.

Not only had the attending doctor, Mr. Henry Gray, signed Mrs. Victoria Herrington’s death certificate in a broad and scrawling hand, but Warnock had found a police report on the woman’s death filed in the records room. A single-page report described a concern brought forward by Mrs. Herrington’s maid, who believed her employer had been poisoned by her new husband.

There had been little additional information written in the report, and it had been filed as unfounded, meaning the investigating officer had determined the alleged crime had not occurred. However, as the investigating officer had been Inspector Bruce Tomlin, Jasper had even less confidence that the finding was correct.

Now a lead inspector in the newly formed Special Irish Branch, Tomlin had been a detective inspector at the CID in December of 1883, when Victoria Herrington had died. Tomlin’s shoddy police work during the Scotland Yard bombing last May had nearly led to an innocent woman being tried in court for treason and attempted murder. Thankfully, Jasper and Leo had discovered and arrested the true perpetrator behind the bombing. It had caused Tomlin some embarrassment and cemented his hatred for Jasper, but it had also proven that Tomlin’s lazy police work could not be trusted.

A knock at the study door fired up Jasper’s spine, and he sat forward in the swivel chair. He knew his housekeeper’s knock—a single rap of the knuckles. This was three quick taps—Leo’s knock.

She entered the study, her coat and hat already discarded, her cheeks flushed from having been outside in the December evening air. Jasper stood, and Leo tucked her chin, a trace of surprise in her tentative smile.

“You were in the Inspector’s chair,” she observed.

Jasper stepped out from behind the desk. “It was time.”

She had noticed, it seemed, that he’d been avoiding it. She crossed the room, toward the table of decanters in the corner.

“Mrs. Zhao says dinner will be served in ten minutes,” Leo announced as she upended two glasses and poured them each a drink.

She had begun to join him in sipping whisky rather than the sweet cherry brandy she and Gregory had shared a preference for. As she brought him his glass, and their fingers met briefly, Jasper thought how satisfying it would be if this was what he could look forward to every evening. Arriving home from work, having Leo join him for a drink before dinner. And then, instead of having to put her in a cab and sending her back to Duke Street…she would stay. All night, by his side.

Watching Leo sip her whisky and claim the desk chair for herself, he was grateful that she could not read his immodest thoughts. He hoped Gregory, wherever he was in the afterlife, could not read them, either.

How the Inspector would feel about Jasper and Leo becoming romantically involved still concerned him. He wanted to think Gregory would approve, but the truth was, Jasper’s blood ties to the Carters put Leo at risk. The Inspector would expect Jasper to do whatever was necessary to keep her safe. Marrying her would only further mire her in danger.

But it was something he didn’t want to think about right then.

“How was your luncheon with Superintendent Monroe?” she asked as she slowly swiveled side to side in the chair.

Jasper’s stomach only grew more leaden at the question. “Uncomfortable,” he answered honestly.

“What did he want?”

Jasper downed half his whisky in one toss. His throat afire, he answered, “To praise my successes.”

There was no need to mention Miss Rose Monroe had been present.