A Secret Surrender - Darcy Burke Page 0,42

light clack. “I must be off.”

“Where to?” Remy asked.

“Things to do.” Harry wouldn’t tell them he was going to The Strand to check in on Madame Sybila. Not after the comment Remy had made.

With a nod, Harry turned and left. His walk to The Ardent Rose was brisk, and not just because a light rain had started to fall. He’d decided it was time to speak with Madame Sybila again, and he was eager to do so.

Or perhaps he was eager to get to the errand he planned afterward.

Harry went into the shop just as the rain began to pick up. Instead of the gentleman greeting him as he’d done last time, the woman who’d also been working on his first visit approached him.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her brow creasing gently. “You’ve been in here before, yes?”

“I have. To see Madame Sybila. I’d like to do so again, please.”

“She is busy, I’m afraid.”

Harry offered a benign smile. “I’ll wait until she’s finished.”

The shopkeeper, an attractive woman of perhaps sixty with bold features, held his gaze. “I believe she will be busy the rest of the day.”

“I require only a few minutes of her time. Perhaps you could tell her I will compensate her handsomely. And you, if that would help.” He pivoted toward a display of perfume. “I’ll just take a look around while you go and speak with her.” Harry took himself off before she could refuse him.

He went to a table where scents were arranged. Picking up a bottle labeled rosy peach, he held it near his nose and inhaled. The woman hesitated, watching him a moment, before finally turning and going back through the curtain to Madame Sybila’s closet.

Wrinkling his nose, Harry set the bottle back down. Moving from bottle to bottle, he sampled them all, not liking a one, until he reached the last. The scent was familiar and more than a bit disarming.

Selina.

He looked at the label—fruit and floral. He smelled it again, wondering if he had it right. Yes, that was her.

Had she purchased it here? She must have. The other day, she’d had a package when they’d met. Harry didn’t like that another woman could purchase her scent. Frowning, he set it back down. He was now in even more of a hurry for his next errand.

The shopkeeper came toward him. “Madame Sybila is just finishing with her client and said you may speak with her for five minutes.” The woman didn’t look as if she approved. Harry wondered why.

“You seem protective of Madame Sybila. Is she a friend of yours?” Harry could perhaps find out the true identity of the heavily veiled fortune-teller, or at least where she lived.

“We have a business arrangement,” the shopkeeper said rather tersely, as if she didn’t want to be linked to the fortune-teller in that way. But if Madame Sybila bothered her, why let her use the back of the perfumery?

“What sort of business arrangement?” Harry began to speculate that there was a reason for this association beyond financial. When the shopkeeper’s brows drew together and her lips pressed into an irritated line, he added, “I’m Mr. Sheffield, and I work for Bow Street.”

The woman’s dark eyes flashed with surprise. Her features relaxed from annoyance into wariness. “She pays rent on her space, and my husband and I help with the people who come to see her.”

“Do you help keep the gentlemen away?” Harry asked this given her behavior and despite the fact that her husband had taken Harry to see the fortune-teller on his last visit. Perhaps that incident had prompted Madame Sybila to ask the proprietors to decline gentlemen access.

One of her silver brows arched. “You, sir, are the only gentleman who has come to see her.”

A woman bustled through the curtain from the back corner into the shop. Harry recognized her immediately. Just as she did him.

“Mr. Sheffield?” She was another of his mother’s friends. Harry had known her for years.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Mapleton-Lowther.”

Her eyes sparkled as she glanced about the shop before settling on him. “I wonder whom you might be buying perfume for.” She smiled expectantly, as if she’d asked a question she wanted him to answer.

“Just browsing,” he said with the same mild smile he’d given the shopkeeper earlier.

“I shall have to tell your mother I saw you here.” Of course she would. Dammit. He couldn’t say he was here to see Madame Sybila, so the assumption was that he was here buying perfume. For whom? None of his sisters,