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“I’d just be joining him on a case for one day. One evening at the most, he said. If it will help you find Cillian, it will be worth it.”

Restless to move, Jasper pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “You are going to do this no matter what I say or think, aren’t you?”

“If you would please stop trying to control everything around you for a moment, including me, I believe you would agree this is a good idea,” she argued.

Dismay sealed his boots to the floor. “I do not try to control you.”

Did he?

Leo gaped at him, and then she let out a tinkling of laughter. She covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry, you just looked so offended. I know that you don’t mean to be controlling, but it is what you do. Especially when you think something is dangerous.”

“I want to protect you. Is that so wrong?”

Leo pushed back her chair and stood, as he had. “I want a partner, not a protector.”

He swallowed whatever argument he’d been about to make. Her statement walloped him as good as a smack on the back of the head. She’d spoken one sentence, just a few words, and yet they’d laid out the flat truth: He’d been an idiot.

In the corner of the room, the steady rhythm of the old tall case clock’s pendulum marked the passing seconds. Jasper gestured for her to retake her seat, and then he did as well.

“I want you as my partner too,” he said once they were seated adjacent to each other again. He slid his hand across the corner of the table and was bolstered when Leo slipped her fingers into his palm. “I will always tell you if I think something is dangerous,” he said. “But I will work on trusting you to make your own decisions.”

She squeezed his hand as an effusive grin formed. “Thank you.” Leo retracted her hand and picked up her spoon once again. “Now, I really am starved for Mrs. Zhao’s cooking. I propose no more talk about investigating, at least until we finish dessert.”

Jasper accepted the proposal, especially looking forward to after dinner drinks in the study. “On that, I wouldn’t dream of arguing.”

Chapter Twelve

The address listed in the police report for Miss Isabelle Chandler was not, as it turned out, where Jasper found her the next day. He spent the morning crossing the Thames into Kennington Cross, only to learn that Miss Chandler had given her sister’s address as that had been where she’d lived for a short while after Victoria Herrington died. Thankfully, after her sister heard Jasper’s reason for seeking out Isabelle, she told him where he could find her. And so, he’d gone back across the river up to Clerkenwell, where the modestly well-to-do Mr. and Mrs. Jones employed Isabelle as a housemaid at their home on Percival Street.

He’d wasted more time than he cared for when he finally arrived at the servant’s entrance, and it put him in an unusually surly mood. The weight of disappointment seemed to keep stacking up on his shoulders. He had wanted to find Sebastian Lawlor alive, not dead and unable to give up the identity of his accomplice, the false doctor. There were already so few leads to begin with. Then, there was the search for Cillian Carter that had stalled out, and Leo’s decision to accept Castelan’s cleverly dangled bait. Jasper would have much rather worked with Leo to find the missing Tabitha Pierce, which he agreed would likely lead him to Cillian. However, if his involvement in the case had reached Castelan’s agency, how long until it reached someone within the Yard? He didn’t need anyone connecting him to the Carters, least of all a shrewd private detective like Castelan.

The one thing that lifted the pall of frustration was last night’s dinner with Leo. Or rather, their time in the study before and after dinner. It had been alluringly comfortable sitting with her on the sofa, nursing a whisky and reading through the Illustrated Police News together. Leo had leaned against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. He’d remained gentlemanly, of course, though he’d wanted to kiss her, touch her… Hell, he’d wanted to scoop her into his arms and bring her to his bedroom with a fierceness that could have easily silenced his good judgment. Perhaps that was why he’d held back and, after finishing their drinks, walked with her to the cabstand and paid a cabbie to take her back to Duke Street.

Determined as he was to not let his personal frustration interfere with his interview with Miss Chandler, Jasper quieted all thoughts of Leo Spencer. He brought down his fist on the servant’s entrance door. A maid greeted him, and when he showed her his warrant card and asked if he could speak with Miss Chandler, the young maid fetched a matronly woman who looked him over with a skeptical sniff.

“I’m Mrs. Seymour, housekeeper here. What is it you want with our Miss Chandler?”

“I have some questions for her.” When it appeared the housekeeper would not permit him to step inside the house, he added, “I will only need a few minutes of her time.”

“Has she done something the mister and missus should know about?”

“Not at all,” he said, understanding that a Scotland Yard detective turning up did not shine favorably upon the maid. “This has to do with her former employer, Mrs. Herrington.”

Mrs. Seymour cocked an ear toward him. “Oh, that business, is it?”

“You recall the lady’s death?”

She pondered a moment, then stepped aside, allowing him over the threshold. Jasper entered the warmth of a kitchen redolent with the scent of baking bread.

“It was strange, is all. Miss Blake, as she was called before she married, had been the picture of health. Had her home near here, on King Square. A big place, all to herself, spinster as she was.”

The suddenly chatty housekeeper snapped her fingers at the maid who’d answered the door and told her to fetch Isabelle.

“What can you tell me about her husband, Mr. Herrington?” Jasper asked the housekeeper.

“Heard he was a solicitor,” she said. “Rumors were that he’d married Miss Blake for her fortune.”

“Was it a substantial fortune?”