Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,39
have you published?”
“My first was published about two months ago.”
“Is it in bookshops?”
Her flurry of questions and her excitement made him even more self-conscious. He lifted a shoulder, dropped it. “In many of them. I don’t know if it’s in all of them.” His sister Fancy, the Countess of Rosemont, owned a bookshop, the Fancy Book Emporium. She’d ordered in about a thousand copies. Or so it had seemed.
“What is the title?”
“Murder at Ten Bells.” The proprietor of the pub in Whitechapel hadn’t minded his use of the establishment for the setting of the murder. Apparently, the notoriety had brought an increase in business to his door.
Her smile of delight tightened his chest. “That’s the reason you wrote to Mrs. Beckwith what you did. A woman of mystery. Because you write mysteries.”
He viewed what he wrote as more of a detective story than anything.
“I want you to tell me everything.”
What more was there to tell? As he realized where they were, he shifted his focus to something of a more urgent nature that required his attention. He’d meant to inform her after they’d climbed into the cab that they’d soon be parting ways, but then she’d begun her inquisition. “I appreciate your interest. However, it will have to wait. It’s not often that I get to this area of London, and I need to make a stop elsewhere. If you’ve no objection, I’ll have the driver drop me off and carry you on to the residence.”
A flash of disappointment lit her eyes like lightning during a bleak winter storm. Appearing quickly and gone, leaving him to wonder if it had ever been. “No, none at all. Do what you must.”
Leaning back, he called up through the small opening in the roof to the driver. “Deliver me to Abingdon Park. Stop at a flower shop on the way.”
When they arrived at the garden cemetery, with his arm cradling an abundance of colorful blossoms that could only exist this time of year in a hothouse and had no doubt cost him a small fortune, he promised to return to the residence before Althea was to give her first lesson. With the grace and agility that she’d come to expect of him, he leapt out of the conveyance.
After paying the driver additional coins, Benedict told him where to deliver her. As they started off, she glanced back to see him trudging through the gated entrance, his gait slower than she’d ever seen it, and she was struck—as she’d been the night she watched him walk away from her shabby little residence—by the loneliness of him, but something had been added to deepen it. A forlornness hovered around him. And why shouldn’t it? He hadn’t passed through the gates in order to enjoy a spot of tea.
They barely reached the next street when she ordered the driver to circle around to where they’d been. After instructing him to wait, she clambered out of the vehicle and stood on the precipice of indecision. Should she simply wait for his return or join him in order to offer whatever support he might welcome as he visited whoever it was now lost to him? Would he be glad to see her or angry at the intrusion?
In the end, she decided it was worth the risk of garnering his anger on the off chance that he needed her solace.
As she walked along the path, she couldn’t deny the area contained a peacefulness, a quietness, a calmness. A rustling sounded as the slight breeze toyed with the last of the tenacious leaves clinging to the trees. A briskness on the air made her breath visible.
Passing by a statue of a huge stone angel, she noted the words carved at its base indicated it watched over the Duke of Lushing. His widow had married a Trewlove.
Rounding a corner along the path, she spotted Benedict with his dark head bent, kneeling on one knee at the foot of a grave marked with a small, simple headstone, his beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers resting against the black marble with its gilded lettering.
Sally Greene
June 15, 1841
August 5, 1866
Waltzing now with the angels
Stopping far enough away so as not to intrude, but near enough to read the words, she felt a sharp pang of sorrow, wondering who the young woman was and what exactly she’d once meant to him. She wondered at the shade of her hair, the gentleness of her soul. Although she couldn’t quite imagine him with someone who wasn’t as strong,