Laura Lee Guhrke (36 page)

It wasn’t until she had finished buttoning her nightgown that she finally turned around and faced him. “I’d like to be alone.”

“Too bad.” He leaned one shoulder against the column beside him and folded his arms. “What is this?” he asked. “This is not the same woman I held in my arms five minutes ago. That woman was soft and tender. The woman I’m looking at now is anything but.”

“I’m sorry if my mood displeases you,” she said smoothly and turned away to pick up the teakettle. “All the more reason for you to go back to bed, I think.”

Her peremptory dismissal sparked a flare of anger inside him. “What the bloody hell is going on?” he demanded. “One minute I’m with a loving, passionate woman, and the next I’m with a peevish shrew. Is this what making love with me is going to do to you?”

“Love?” She whirled around to face him again. “What does love have to do with anything?” Her face twisted with pain and anger, and as if she could no longer remain so cooly self-possessed, she turned away
and threw the teakettle. It hit a weeping fig tree and fell, clanging as it bounced across the tile floor. She pressed her fingers to her lips as if shocked by her own burst of anger. She turned again to face him. “There!” she cried. “Now you’ve made me lose my temper. I hope you may be satisfied!”

“Satisfied? No.” He straightened away from the column and walked over to her. He put his hands on her waist. “A few minutes ago, I was very satisfied,” he said softly, “But—”

She pulled herself out of his grasp. “Don’t you dare be glib about our lovemaking!” she cried, choking back a sob as she walked backward away from him. “It’s been the most wonderful experience of my life!”

He was becoming more confused by the second. “Wonderful? From the way you’re acting, I wouldn’t know.”

“How do you want me to act, Mick? Like a starry-eyed lover in a passionate affair? There’s no future in this, and we both know that. I went into this with my eyes wide open, and I will never regret what happened between us. But I know how you feel about marriage, and I know how you feel about me. You said you’re not a marrying man, and you said you think my ability is an invasion. I know you were telling me the plain and honest truth, and I accept it. But where does that leave us, Mick? There’s nowhere for us to go from here. Don’t you see?”

He tilted his head to one side, studying her for a moment, weighing his words before he spoke. “What I see,” he finally said, “is what an advantage you have over other people.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You can sense what people are feeling, sometimes know what they are thinking, know their secrets, understand their motivations and desires. That gives you a very high amount of control over every situation.”

“You think I enjoy this?” She was pale, staring at him in disbelief. “You think I like having these things thrust on me?”

“Like it or not, you seem willing to use them when it suits you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” Mick stepped closer to her. “You seem willing to bring the truth about me, about my insecurities and feelings out in the open. Let’s bring out the truth about you. Maybe I’m not psychic, but I have damned good instincts, and I have concluded a few things.” He took a deep breath. “You are accustomed to knowing things about people, and that’s a very safe place to be. But you are so afraid of being ridiculed for what you are that you never let anyone get close to you. You are terrified that every man who takes an interest is bound to feel as Charles did.”

“You feel that way.”

“I do. Any man would.”

“Thank you for proving my point.”

He shook his head. “No, the point is that you never give any man a chance to get used to it.”

“Really?” she countered, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “Would you get used to it? Do you want to take that time and spend it with me? Do you want to court me, fall in love with me, marry me?”

He opened his mouth as if to answer, but he did not
know what to say. He was forced to admit to himself with brutal honesty that the idea of marrying her had never entered his mind.

“You see?” she said in the wake of his silence. “We both know you don’t want that at all. What you want is an illicit affair.”

There was enough truth in her words that they stung. “I told you I was not a marrying man,” he shot back in sheer defense.

“What you want.” she continued as if he had not spoken, “is to be my lover until one or the other of us tires of the situation and ends it.” She picked up the kettle and put it over the gas ring. Meeting his gaze again, she added, “After all, isn’t that what you want from every woman you meet?”

“Damn it, stop reading my mind! I hate it when you do that!”

But she turned her back on him and did not reply. He watched her for several moments more, and he knew with a bitterness he’d never felt in his life before that her psychic senses were working perfectly. He turned away and strode out of the conservatory, feeling like an absolute bastard.

Sophie knew she had done the right thing, but instead of easing with his departure, the ache in her heart only seemed to worsen. “I did the right thing,” she whispered, but there was no one there to agree.

She turned away from the windows, grabbed her shears, and walked over to a tall iron pillar covered with masses of bougainvillea vines that badly needed cutting back.

With each vine she ruthlessly pruned away, she reminded herself that there was no future for her with Mick.

I invade his private thoughts, and just like any man would, he hates that
.

Snip.

I knew how he felt. I knew and I did it anyway
.

Snip.

But I don’t want an affair. I couldn’t bear that
.

Snip.

What if there’s a child? He doesn’t want to marry me
.

Snip.

He doesn’t really want to marry any woman
.

Snip.

He’s looking for the perfect woman, a woman who doesn’t exist, a woman who will make no demands on him, a woman who is always beautiful, never difficult, always amiable and willing to please, never frustrating, always passionate, always desirable
.

“Good luck,” she muttered.

Snip.

He isn’t in love with me
.

There it was. The truth. She’d finally said it. Sophie looked down at the huge pile of cut vines she had just removed from the plant, vines covered with masses of bright pink leaves that lay in a tangle at her feet. Then she looked up at the nearly naked pillar in front of her and burst into tears.

The next day at Scotland Yard, most of the men who worked in CID thought Mick was ill. Any police officer on the force who had ever worked with him
knew that he never let anything in his private life affect his work, so they all assumed his lack of concentration, his inattention to conversation, and a tendency to lose his temper over trivialities were due to some physical ailment. It would never have occurred to most of them that Mick might be having woman troubles, especially not with Sophie Haversham.

Most of the men he worked with in CID had been astonished, frustrated, and angry when he’d brought Miss Haversham into the Yard for such a ridiculous meeting, but they had also recognized the importance of the letter she had been sent through the post. Many of his colleagues were sure Mick had far too much sense to be romantically involved with a woman who was a witness in an ongoing investigation and who also happened to be as nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, but there were those who thought otherwise.

All of this was conveyed to Mick by Henry Thacker at about eleven o’clock that evening, because the sergeant had brought him a cup of tea for about the tenth time that day, and Mick had finally snapped at him, “Henry, why in Hades do you keep bringing me tea?”

The sergeant had responded that tea was good for someone who was ill and went on to explain that Mick’s volatile behavior over the course of the day had prompted a concern for his health. Thacker added that there were a few officers who believed Mick was having a love affair with Miss Haversham.

After the accusation Sophie had hurled at him the night before, Thacker’s words flicked him on the raw. “I’m not having an affair with Sophie Haversham!” he
shouted. “Am I the only one who understands that she is our best connection to the killer?”

Thacker looked at him with patient gravity. “Sir, some of the men believe she is the killer and wrote those letters herself.”

That idea was impossible as well as ludicrous, but Mick wasn’t going to argue about it. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his fingertips over his tired eyes.

“Why don’t we call it a day, sir?” Thacker suggested. “It’s quite late. Everyone else on this floor left hours ago, and with you being ill, I’m concerned.”

Mick knew he wasn’t ill. He was coming apart.

He shoved back his chair and stood up. “You’re right, Henry. It’s time to quit for the day.”

The two men left Mick’s office and went downstairs together. Outside the gates, Mick hailed a cab. He asked if Henry needed to be driven home, but the sergeant shook his head. “No, sir, my flat is only a short walk away.”

Mick gave the driver the address of his own flat in Maiden Lane.

That seemed to surprise the sergeant. “You’re not staying at Mill Street?”

“Not for the time being.”

“If you’ve moved back into your flat, you should have told me, sir,” Henry said severely. “With your life in danger, we need constables to watch your flat if you’re staying there.”

He knew Henry was right, but the idea of spending the night at his own flat had only just occurred to him. He couldn’t go back to Sophie’s just yet. Not after last night. “I did keep my flat for when the case was over.
When I’m working very late, my flat is closer to the Yard and more convenient than Mayfair.”

“Still,” the sergeant said, “you should have told me. I’ll telephone Bow Street and have them send a constable to your address. He’ll be there by the time the hansom reaches your flat.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your concern.”

“We don’t need you to die too, sir.” Thacker turned to retrace his steps back to the Yard to use the telephone, and Mick went home.

When the cab stopped in front of Mick’s flat, the coster’s cart nearby was still open and he bought a beef and potato Cornish pasty and a bottle of lemonade. Inside his flat, he sat down at the table, but he didn’t eat his late supper. He stared at the empty chair across from him and remembered how he and Sophie had sat here, eating biscuits and drinking tea. He remembered how desperately he had wanted her, and how she had looked at him with a Mona Lisa smile, knowing it all the time.

Mick leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. In his mind, he recalled every curve of her body, every sound she’d made, every word she’d said. He recalled the silken feel of her hair, the scent of her skin, the beauty of her face when he had made love to her.

He remembered how she’d felt beneath him last night, too. On a table, for God’s sake, in her aunt’s conservatory. He sat there for a long time, torturing himself with the memory of a woman he couldn’t marry, a woman he had never even considered as the right woman for him.

An illicit affair. . . isn’t that what you want from every woman you meet?

Sophie had made it quite clear that a love affair was out of the question, and he couldn’t blame her. Most women, regardless of their rank or circumstances, wanted to be married, and though Sophie might have resigned herself to spinsterhood, she was no different from any other woman in that respect.

Mick remembered how his friends had ragged him in the pub the night of his birthday about how he just wasn’t a marrying man. He’d said he was waiting for the right woman to come along, and they’d told him that was bunkum. They had said he didn’t want to settle down with one woman.

Now he knew they’d been wrong, and so had he. All this time, he’d been holding back, waiting, not to find the perfect woman, or even the right woman. All this time, he’d been waiting to fall in love. Now he had. He was in love with Sophie.

He loved her, yes. He wanted her, yes, more than he had ever wanted any woman in his life—but how could he live with having his mind probed on a daily basis?

He understood how the Earl of Kenleigh had felt, loving a woman who at any moment would tell you what you were thinking. Who would know what you felt before you did, who knew your secrets before you had the chance or the choice to tell her. It wasn’t that a man wanted to keep secrets from his wife, but he wanted to have the choice of how and when to tell them to her.

Sophie, of course, had already known that, had appreciated
the impossibility of their situation long before he had. But Mick was sure that long after this case was solved, he would be tortured with wanting her, wanting to hold her, kiss her, make love to her, and not be able to have her. He knew it was a torture he deserved. When the case was over, walking away from Sophie was going to be the hardest thing he would ever do in his life.

If both of them lived that long.

A knock on the door startled him, and he opened his eyes. Through the door, he heard Sergeant Thacker say his name. He walked to the door and opened it to find the sergeant standing there, a case file in his hands. “Henry? What are you doing here?”

“I’m glad to see you’re not in bed yet, sir.” The sergeant held out the file to Mick.

“Why are you bringing me this?” Mick asked as he took the file. “Has something happened?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What does that mean?” He opened the door wider for the sergeant to enter the flat. “When I left you, you were going back inside to use the telephone.”

“Yes, sir.” Thacker stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “I went back in to telephone for a constable,” he explained, “and as I was waiting for the call to go through, I was thinking about the cases we’ve pulled that you, Jack, and Richard worked on together. You know how long those exchange operators can take to put a call through.”

“Forever, sometimes.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, while I was waiting, I got an idea that maybe this was the case that held the key to the whole mystery, so after I telephoned Bow Street, I
decided to go back upstairs and pull out that file. When I read it, I brought it to you at once.”