Frovtunes’ Kiss (35 page)

“My sake?” She treated him to as cool a glare as she could produce. “It's your future at stake, isn't it? You who must single-handedly save a civilization's history. Far be it for the likes of me to stand in the way of that.”

“What are you going on about?” His hands closed around her shoulders. “I stopped us because it didn't seem right, not with you so upset, so devastated by what we learned yesterday.”

“What we learned. Ah, you mean that even the best of men betray their families. That none can ever be fully trusted.”

He replied with the knotting of a facial muscle, the beading of his jaw. His hands fell to his sides, leaving her shoulders feeling exposed and chilled. “You can trust in this, Moira. I intend taking care of you. And your mother. Neither of you need ever worry.”

“As my stepfather took care of us?” A laugh escaped her, harsh, acerbic, beyond her control to prevent.

He pulled back if she'd slapped him. “I am not your stepfather.”

With that he stepped around her. A lick of remorse sent her reaching out, fingertips grazing his shoulder.

“Forgive me. I didn't mean that.”

He faced her again, and they simply stood there saying nothing, each harboring emotions they could not or would not share. They seemed to have reached some barren place where neither understood the other, where they all but spoke different languages. Part of her knew he'd been right for stopping their lovemaking. Part of her hated him for it. Her heart threatened to choke her.

Clutching her skirts, she swept past him and hurried from the room.

Graham stood in Moira's room for several minutes trying to collect his composure, attempting to still the tremors running hot and cold through the length of his body.

Good God. By all that was holy, he'd wanted her. Wanted her so acutely, even now, the rage of his need threatened to send him after her, refute his damned principles, and take her wherever he found her.

When exactly had he grown this burdensome thing, this conscience, and what sort of devil was it to drive him to insult a woman by
not
making love to her when she all but begged for it?

Had he been wrong? She'd certainly made him feel wrong. A true cad. But the act would have seemed too much like…sex. Like groping, lustful sex devoid of the tenderness that should accompany lovemaking. He hadn't been altogether certain they'd done the right thing at Monteith Hall, but it had
felt
right. Had felt like heaven.

This had felt entirely wrong.

He wondered who was at fault. Him? Everett Foster? Certainly not Moira. Her world had fallen apart. Her faith in people had been thoroughly dashed, cruelly, leaving little in its place but hurt and confusion. Ironically, he knew exactly how she felt. Understood firsthand how that sort of disillusionment made a person's heart twist and bleed and finally shrivel, impervious and numb to future hurts.

Ah, but not completely numb, at least not to Moira. She'd taught him something these past weeks. Despite the disappointments and betrayals of his past, he could, indeed, still feel. Still hope.

Still…God help him…love.

But he hadn't been able to say it. Hadn't been able to convince himself it
should
have been said.

Her pronouncement the other day at Monteith echoed through his brain. You and I are so very different… You are reckless and daring and bold… I am cautious and practical…

Why fight the truth? Why pretend he was more than he was? Whom would it benefit? Moira? He shook his head as he traversed the corridor to his bedroom suite. She deserved a better sort of man. Not a reckless, cynical blackguard.

Alone in his room with the door closed, he poured a brandy. Then another. It didn't help, didn't dull the sense of failure that hounded his every thought. He finally set the snifter down and strode from the room.

His feet took him to Freddy's suite. Freddy, another of his failures. Baxter had assured him earlier the worst of Freddy's illness had passed, and he'd slept through the night. Graham would just poke his head in the door, to make sure.

He never expected to find the room occupied by both Moira and Letty, seated side by side in armchairs next to the bed. Less expected was the sight of their clasped hands bridging the small gap between them. Their backs were to him.

“Mama doesn't know,” Letty was whispering. “The truth would make her distraught, so I told her only that Freddy felt under the weather. She sat with him before supper last night, while he was awake. Somehow he pasted on a brave face and attributed his ailment to corrupt oysters.”

“I shan't breathe a word to the contrary,” Moira promised.

“She wasn't at home when we brought him in. Good thing, too, for he became ill shortly after.” A shudder traveled her shoulders. “Violently ill.”

“Perhaps that was best, to purge his body of the poisons.”

Letty nodded. “Poor Freddy. I didn't realize how unhappy he's been.”

Graham winced at the simple comment, knowing his absence from England was at least partly to blame.

“We all have our trials.” Moira tightened her hold on Letty's hand.

“Yes, but I should have sensed that he needed help. I am his twin. That makes me closer to Freddy than anyone. But I've been selfish, too immersed in my own affairs.”

“Perhaps you haven't been happy, either, dearest. It's difficult to watch over others when our own needs go untended.”

“Perhaps.” Letty paused, regarding their brother. “But if I don't look after him, who will? I am the elder twin, after all.”

The assertion stabbed at Graham's conscience. Ah, Letty, berating herself for what should have been his task. His responsibility.

His privilege.

“The years since Papa died have not been easy for us,” his sister added.

God, no, especially when their elder brother had abandoned them, as well. All those years he had considered himself the injured party. Even upon returning home a few weeks ago, he had griped about his self-indulgent brother, spoiled sister, and spendthrift mother. His hand closed around the door frame; he wanted to rip it from the wall.

“Oh, but who am I to complain,” Letty went on, “when you've only just lost your father?”

He saw Moira's shoulders go rigid. “Stepfather.”

“Yes. How cruel to have lost two fathers.”

Cruel, indeed, yet Letty had formed the observation without drama, without the histrionics Graham had come to expect from her. It had taken a near-disaster to reach her, but the true Letty, the better Letty, had been roused from her slumber. Her courage made him proud.

And rather ashamed for lingering in the hall, eavesdropping while assuming he wasn't needed or wanted inside. The same useless convictions had sent him from England and his duties all those years ago.

As he stepped into the room, their heads turned, noses nearly brushing as each peered over her shoulder. A hesitant nod of acknowledgment from Moira and a quizzical twitch of Letty's brow exhausted the entirety of their interest in him and they turned back to Freddy.

Unwanted, unneeded. The sentiments breathed a cool whisper in his ear. He ignored it, or rather, resolved to endure it. “Can I do anything for you ladies? Do you need anything?”

Before they could answer, Shaun entered the room. “Graham. Miles Parker is here. He's waiting in the drawing room.”

“Parker? Now?” He let out a breath. “Tell him I'll be there presently.”

“He wants all three of us. You, me, and Miss Hughes.”

“Please inform Mr. Parker that I'm currently occupied,” Moira said without turning.

“I'm sure Mr. Parker wouldn't have come all this way if it weren't important.”

A tiny shrug acknowledged Graham's observation while seeming hardly to agree with it.

Letty settled the matter. “Go ahead, Miss Hughes. Perhaps I'll stretch out on the settee for a nap.”

“If you're quite sure…”

Letty nodded. “We'll be fine, Freddy and I.”

Moira rose from her chair, then hesitated. “Miss Foster, we are cousins or nearly so. May we not be Moira and Letitia to one another?”

“No,” Letty said rather severely. Her brows gathered while her lips pursed in her most petulant pout. Then a softer, wholly different expression spread across her countenance, bringing, if not beauty in the classical sense, an engaging charm to her angular features. “We may be Moira and
Letty
. So long as Mama isn't within hearing. She cringes at my pet name.”

“Letty it is.” Moira kissed her cheek. “I'll look in on you later.”

Parker awaited them in a corner of the drawing room, ensconced comfortably in a wing chair and nursing a brandy. Graham poured three more and handed one each to Moira and Shaun.

“I do hope you haven't inconvenienced yourself on my account,” Moira said to the inspector. She settled beside Shaun on the settee, the significance of which was not lost on Graham. He remained standing, leaning against the mantel. “The matter I came to your office to speak with you about yesterday afternoon,” she continued briskly, “has been settled quite to my satisfaction.”

Parker eyed her curiously. “I'm here to talk about Wallace Smythe's murder.”

This announcement met with a collective silence. The inspector cleared his throat. “We've all wondered what happened to Mr. Smythe's clerk, Pierson. I've found a witness who saw a man exit Smythe's offices by the alley door the day of the incident.

“A street sweeper described a man of middling stature, youngish, perhaps twenty-five give or take, with close-cropped brown hair. The individual was dressed, so this street sweeper reports, in the usual plain dark suit typical of office clerks. The street sweeper also happened to notice a flash of sunlight on what might have been a pair of spectacles in the man's hand. I've never met this Pierson fellow. Does the description fit?”

“Certainly sounds like the man I remember.” Graham set his brandy on the mantel. “Was he alone?”

“According to the witness, yes. Here's a clue that may clinch it.” Parker dug into his coat pocket, extracting a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles. “Upon inspecting the alleyway, I discovered these at the bottom of a trash bin. Did Oliver Pierson wear such an item?”

“Indeed, he did, Mr. Parker.” Moira craned forward, studying the eyeglasses in the inspector's hand.

“Oliver Pierson…” Beside her, Shaun rubbed a hand absently across his chin. His eyes narrowed.

“Rather curious, isn't it…a man tossing his spectacles away, hiding them, actually, beneath a mound of trash. Unless…” Parker sipped his brandy, less, Graham thought, out of a desire to moisten his mouth than to prolong and thus heighten the effect of his next comment. “Unless he never needed them in the first place.”

Graham's pulse quickened as he caught Parker's meaning. “You mean they might have been part of a disguise?”

“Precisely. Consider this. What reason would Pierson have to disappear, unless he's guilty of the crime? But why would a humble clerk murder his employer? Secure positions are not easy to come by, even in a city of this size.”

“Perhaps Mr. Smythe sacked him,” Moira suggested, but Graham doubted a mere disgruntled employee would resort to murder.

“Oliver Pierson,” Shaun mumbled again. “Pierson…”

Graham cast him an annoyed glance, then ignored him. “If the clerk was not really a clerk,” he ventured, voicing his thoughts as they formed, “but someone with ulterior motives, murder might be the only way to protect his interests. Especially if his identity or purposes were detected.”

Parker nodded, turning the spectacles over and back. “Yet I keep running smack into a dead end. What could Oliver Pierson's ulterior motives have been?”

“Where the devil have I heard that name before?” Shaun scratched his head, sipped his brandy, stared into the air.

Parker regarded Shaun, and frowned. “Have any of you ever encountered Pierson anywhere other than Smythe's offices? Think. Anywhere at all. Even a bakery, a street corner.”

Graham had a niggling sense…

“Why, at the bishop's house.” Moira thrust a forefinger in the air and for the first time met Graham's gaze. “Remember? When we were…” She trailed off, color suffusing her cheeks. Yes, he remembered pressing her hand to his heart, abducting her out the bishop's window and plying her with teasing caresses.

Ah, Moira, let me tease again, and you can scold me all you wish. Just Don't be bitter and cynical. Don't become like me.

“Who's the bishop?”

He swallowed a sip of brandy. “Benedict Ramsey, bishop of Trewsbury. He's also a cousin of the Fosters.”

“One of Papa's closest friends, actually,” Moira added in a voice tinged with sadness.

“And you saw Pierson at this man's home?”

“He arrived just as we were leaving,” Graham said. “But Miss Hughes says the bishop is also a client of Smythe and Davis, so Pierson's appearance there was nothing unusual.”