Page 31
Audrey’s voice cut through his thoughts.
“How do you know the fourth suspect is innocent? What was the attack about?”
Julius flushed. He had hoped the question would be postponed, perhaps indefinitely, but he owed her the truth. She had been drawn into this mess because of him. She had saved his life. She deserved honesty.
“I … thought to draw the killer out,” he said slowly, twisting his signet ring in a familiar motion of discomfort. “I sent blackmail notes to the remaining suspects, providing each with a different meeting location.”
Audrey’s eyes widened, and her mouth parted in horror. “Julius! You might have been killed!”
He grimaced. “I freely admit it was a poorly contrived plan,” he muttered. “One of the men must have sent someone to follow me.”
“Poorly contrived? It was barely a plan at all! You are pursuing a cold-blooded killer.” Audrey’s voice rang with exasperation, and beneath her breath, she muttered “Daft imbecile.”
Julius’s lips twitched despite himself. Her vexation, bracing as a dash of cold spring water, only deepened his growing admiration for Miss Gideon. A woman of contradictions—calm competence one moment, unflinching courage the next. He recalled the flash of her figure stepping between him and danger, her grip steady on a borrowed sword.
“Yes, but now I know it was one of the three men I attempted to blackmail,” he said, attempting reason. “Which improves my odds. I shall need to study them further.”
“Not today, you shall not.” Audrey crossed her arms and fixed him with a look that had likely quelled many a quarrelsome patient. “You are scarcely stronger than a half-drowned kitten. If that villain appeared before you now, you could do little more than wilt.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps?” he asked hopefully, watching her reaction from beneath slightly raised brows.
She pressed her lips together, clearly weighing the notion. “Mayhap. But only with planning. A disguise, certainly. Your first effort was akin to standing in front of a charging bull, waving a red cloak and hoping for the best.”
Julius drew an exaggerated pout, the expression pulling at the muscles of his face in theatrical dismay. A reluctant giggle escaped her lips, and it skimmed across his skin like the delicate flutter of a moth’s wing. Her laughter held a warmth that made his heart beat faster.
Perhaps this forced marriage would not be such a dire fate, he mused. At least not with a companion such as Audrey—steady, clever, and unflinchingly real.
“Shall we play piquet?” she asked, breaking the quiet.
He blinked. “You carry cards?”
Already she was rifling through her valise with the easy confidence of one well-acquainted with its contents. She held the cards aloft with a triumphant smile.
“What does that bag not contain?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes patients are bored. The cards are in here for those occasions.”
Julius leaned back in his chair, careful of the tender pull at his side. “We can play, but I warn you I will not be gentle.”
He winced almost immediately. The words, harmless on the surface, echoed with a meaning he had not intended to voice aloud. The flirting was inadvertent. Audrey’s nostrils flared, she being a worldly individual who had followed her father into all sorts of patients’ rooms, but she brushed the remark aside as if she had not heard him.
Walking over with the cards, she shifted a chair to face the table where he sat. Her face was downcast, her blonde lashes fanning her cheeks, but Julius did not miss the pink creeping to the tips of her ears.
