Chapter Eighteen
Adelaide would have gladly taken a turn in watching over Solomon, but it was clear that his wife did not want her to. That may have been down to simple jealousy, but Adelaide suspected there was more to it. Constance was suspicious.
As the evening wore on, Adelaide knew she should go to bed, and yet she sat on, gazing into the parlor fire and wondering if she had said and done the right things, made the right choices.
She did not hear him approach until the door snicked shut, keeping the warmth in the room.
“Am I disturbing you?” David asked.
“If you are, it is a good thing. I should go to bed, but I don’t seem to be tired.”
“Perhaps a nightcap? May I pour you one?”
Adelaide was conscious of a flicker low down in her belly. She recognized the danger, for she had felt it all too often in the past around this man’s brother. They looked too alike. And yet she could not dismiss this as an echo. She was older, wiser, and David was very different from Solomon.
It was time to leave before she complicated her straightforward life. And yet she didn’t move.
“Thank you,” she said, scaring herself all over again.
She should at least have returned to gazing into the fire, but she didn’t.
She watched him prowl toward the decanter, still there since this morning’s medicinal crisis, and pour reasonable measures into two glasses.
The butterflies in her stomach leapt higher, for she liked the way he moved—freer than Solomon, less controlled, perhaps, but no less graceful or efficient.
He walked toward her, a glass in each hand. She should have asked him to set her glass on the table beside her, but she risked holding out her hand to take it from him, and when their fingers touched, awareness thrilled through her skin to her veins.
“How is Solomon?” she asked, mostly to give herself a reason for remaining in his company. If Solomon had relapsed, after all, she would have heard about it.
David sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. “He seems fine. Constance had a nap earlier in the evening and is with him now. I expect he will sleep with her beside him.”
“Did he not sleep on your watch?”
“No. We were talking some of the time. For the rest…it still feels a privilege to share silence with him. I like being in his company, even for such a reason.”
“He likes being in yours.” So do I, God help me. “It must be strange for both of you, when you were once so close as children and yet have grown up far apart.”
He seemed to think about that, sipping his brandy. “It is a good kind of strange. We are both restless in spirit, so we enjoy changes.”
“Is that why Solomon ignores the businesses that made him rich and turned to investigating?”
“From what he says, he began it to be near Constance. But I think it quickly became a passion for both of them.”
She frowned in incomprehension. “Poking their noses into the minutiae of people’s lives? That is not the Solomon I remember.”
“Isn’t it?” David said. “Isn’t that what he did when he helped you in Jamaica?”
Adelaide closed her mouth, then took a drink to give herself time. “Perhaps,” she admitted. “I wanted to think he did it for me.”
“He did. And now he’s doing it for the Harveys.”
She hadn’t thought of it quite like that either. “He has no need of Harvey’s money,” she said slowly. “Nor anyone else’s.”
“Neither has Constance, I gather.”
She felt his gaze on her face and strove to keep her expression neutral. “And if they find a truth that Harvey does not like?”
“It will still be the truth. Do you think it’s likely?”
“What? That they find things to Percy’s discredit? And to his father’s? I suspect they already have. Percy was not well liked, and with reason.” She took another sip of brandy and raised her gaze to his. “Do you believe they will find the truth?”
“Yes. They always have so far.”
“And do you help them?” she asked curiously.
“I have done on odd occasions, more to do with watching Solomon’s back in dangerous company.”
“You are not afraid of that, are you? You have been in dangerous company yourself.”
He shrugged. “I have a different idea of danger to most. But I would always defend my brother.”
What did he mean by that? Was it some kind of warning? A suspicion…such as Constance’s?
“I did not shoot Solomon. You know that. Do they?”
He didn’t answer directly, but still he held her gaze. “They know you have not been entirely truthful. That can be misleading.”
Her fingers tightened on the glass. “If I have kept something back, it is nothing that can help their investigation.”
“Are you the best person to judge that?”
The pause went on too long.
“No.” She set down her glass on the table. “People do not accept me here. They tolerate me at best. As a result, when someone stands up for me, speaks to me like a human being rather than an alien interloper with no right to my home, then I consider him a friend.”
“A friend can still be a murderer. Or been in a position that tells them who is. Solomon and Constance need to know.”
She sighed. “I have been coming, gradually, to that conclusion.”
He raised his glass to her and drank. So did she. Then she looked at him, a smile that was part frustration curving her lips.
“You won’t even ask me, will you?”
“No. But I am willing to listen.”
“Would you tell them?” she asked.
He smiled and finished his brandy, and rose smoothly to his feet. “No. But you will.”
“You are very sure of yourself.”
He didn’t answer, merely walked the few paces to her chair, while her heart seemed to skitter in anticipation. He held out his hand, and her breath caught. Slowly, she placed her hand in his, and his fingers closed around it. He drew her gently to her feet.
It was important to have him on her side. But that wasn’t why she raised her face to his, nor why her whole being pleaded. She counted the beats of her own heart while neither of them moved.
And so I have misjudged, again, and deserve…
He bent suddenly, almost desperately, as though it was his last chance—and perhaps it was. But when his mouth touched hers, it seemed as inevitable and as natural as the dawn after darkness. A soft, tender kiss, asking nothing, just giving. A kiss that did not rush. A kiss, surely, to build upon.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“I am not sure of myself,” he said. “But I like that you haven’t told me to go.” He touched her hair, her cheek, butterfly light. “I like it very much.”
“It is I who should go.” She released his hand, to which she had still been clinging, and he stepped back at once. She felt his gaze burn into her nape as she walked to the closed door, and the need to return the gift of his kiss clamored.
She paused, her hand on the door. “I like you, David Grey,” she said softly, and went out.
*
Without meaning to, Constance must have fallen asleep to the rhythmic sounds of Solomon’s breathing, because she woke to birdsong and daylight, and a crick in her neck from her head falling awkwardly against the wing of her chair.
She sat up straight, rubbing her neck and looking at once toward Solomon, who had turned onto his side, facing away from her. Hastily, she stood up and leaned over him, feeling for his breath, for any feverish heat in his skin.
He smelled warm and peaceful, and he smiled at her touch. “Good morning.”
“Good morning. How are you?”
“Lonely,” he said, turning over with only the faintest wince. He flung out his arm, snaking it around her waist. “Come to bed.”
“That would not be appropriate,” she said primly, “with David about to relieve me at any moment.”
He sighed. “It’s time to go back to Channing House.”
“Not until the doctor has seen you,” she said firmly. “How is your head?”
“Better than it was. You have had an uncomfortable night.”
“You have done the same for me, as I recall.”
He kissed her hand, just as a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Constance said, straightening the bedcovers while Solomon looked amused. She ignored him, greeting David, who entered looking tousled in his shirt sleeves.
“You’re awake,” David remarked, and to Constance, “How is he?”
“Present,” Solomon said, raising his hand, “and perfectly able to answer for myself.”
“I prefer the sound of your wife’s voice.”
“I think he’s fine,” Constance said dryly. “If you want to sit with him, I’ll go in search of tea and toast.”
She paused only to splash water on her face and tidy her hair before leaving the room. Now that fears for Solomon had receded, the case was occupying her mind, particularly who had shot him, possibly by accident.
Somewhere, she registered that she did not feel sick—perhaps because she had only dozed, and in an upright position.
One of the bedroom doors was open, and through it, she could hear Clarence singing to himself. That made her smile and glance through the door. He was sprawled on a rug before the guarded fire, still in his nightgown, with an open robe over the top, drawing with great concentration.
An idea struck Constance.
“Good morning, Clarence,” she said, pausing in the doorway.
He looked up and grinned. “Morning, Mrs. Grey!”
“What are you drawing this morning?”
“Look.”
She went in, and he sat up to show her.
“It’s Mama,” he told her, showing a sticklike human perched on a four-legged chair with a high back. “I can draw you, too.”
To prove it, he quickly drew another stick body with a neck, arms, and a wide skirt. He gave her eyes and reached for his yellow crayon to draw in the shape and color of her hair.
Then he paused, frowning. “You’ve got gold hair. Mama’s is black. But in my picture, you still look the same. David’s picture looked like Mama.” He rummaged through the sheets beside him and came up with the sketch he had seen before. “I can’t draw her like that.”
“It’s just the detail,” Constance said. “If you keep practicing, and trying, you’ll get more and more detail. But I can tell that is your mama, and that is me.”