Page 18 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Now, finding her in there again, standing by the glass-fronted bookcase, threw him afield. A few paraffin lamps had been lit for her to see by, and she had opened one of the bookcase’s glass doors. She pulled out a volume.

“You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you?

” she asked by way of greeting. Her attention slipped over his drenched appearance, but she didn’t comment on it.

“Charles Darwin is something of a hero to Mr. Quinn, and I haven’t yet read On the Origin of Species .

He does go on about it, and it would be good to know how to discuss it with him. ”

At the mention of the new city coroner, the hot, stirring sensation Jasper had felt just seconds ago turned into a hard coil.

“Take it,” he said, more sharply than intended. She went to her handbag and put the book inside.

“I said I’d report back, but I figured you would only shout at me if I dared come to the Yard.”

“I wouldn’t have shouted,” he said, inexplicably irritated as he walked toward the center of the room, searching for a decanter of whisky. There wasn’t one in sight.

She eyed him with apprehension. “Maybe not, but you would have certainly growled at me like you’re doing now.”

“What did you learn from Esther Goodwin?” he asked, wanting to get on with it.

Leo’s expression went flat as she turned from him and commenced her report.

“No one liked Martha Seabright,” she began.

“Not her sister, nor her children. Esther was appalled when Martha gave her children to the orphanage. She’d offered to help care for the children, but Martha was insistent on sending them away.

Esther suspected Martha did it to be rid of them.

Possibly because they reminded her of her husband, whom she’d hated and who had been abusive—Connor and I found old scars consistent with cigar tip burns all over her body. ”

Jasper grimaced. Those sorts of injuries were common among abused women and children, and they never failed to sicken him.

“Esther took in Paula once she left the orphanage at sixteen, but Gavin went back to his mother, only to leave shortly afterward because he’d discovered Martha was prostituting herself.”

Jasper forced himself to focus on the information rather than the way Leo had walked around one of the two armchairs, her fingers trailing along the top seam of the faded rose-pink fabric.

“She hadn’t spoken to Martha in about seven years. Esther isn’t in contact with Gavin, but she’s close with Paula, whose husband pays for her placement at Gunnerson’s Rest Home,” Leo continued, her hand falling away from the chair as she walked toward the window.

The curtains in the room weren’t drawn, leaving an open view of the street. Thinking of the orange-hatted man, Jasper overtook Leo, reaching the window first.

“That fits with the Blicksons’ residence on Park Crescent in Marylebone. It’s a nice place,” he said, while tugging the rope on one of the maroon drapes. Freeing the next rope, he let the curtains fall forward to shutter the window.

“You spoke to Paula?” Leo asked, peering sideways at him as he moved to the other window.

“No. She was out.”

“Or she was avoiding you.”

He’d considered that. If Paula Blickson still wasn’t in when he went first thing tomorrow, he’d try another tack. He loosened the cords on each of the drapes with more force, irritated that his day had turned up so little other than a new dead body.

Descriptions of the stolen jewels would print in tomorrow’s Police Gazette , and once distributed to other divisions across London, there could be word from constables checking in at pawnbrokers.

The men Jasper had sent out to some of the finer jewelry shops, however, had come back that evening with no matches to the stolen items.

“You never said if Sir Eamon was able to tell you what he and Mrs. Seabright were discussing so seriously just before she was killed,” Leo asked. “Was it anything useful to the case?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. After finding the body in Gavin Seabright’s rooms, Jasper hadn’t pondered his discussion with Sir Eamon any further. “She wanted to know if a nurse at the orphanage was still employed there but didn’t explain her interest. A Nurse Radcliff.”

“That is curious,” she replied. “I wonder if Gavin or Paula would understand why she wished to know about the nurse.” Leo crossed her arms, her fingers tapping her elbow in thought. “I also wonder if Gavin might be at his mother’s home, hiding.”

Empty as Martha’s home would now be, it was an obvious place for him to hunker down. However, if Gavin was wise, he’d know it was too obvious.

“I have constables keeping an eye on the place,” he replied.

“Has it been searched? There might be something there that could explain?—”

“Leo.” He turned sharply from the shrouded window, ready to tell her to let him handle the investigation. Her challenging glare hinted she expected that very response. “It has been searched. Nothing of importance was found.”

The glint in her eye eased off, and she accepted his answer with a nod. She crossed her arms again, her fingers drumming her sleeves in a quick rhythm. Jasper knew many of her tells, and this one implied that she was thinking of something but choosing not to voice it.

“What is it?” he asked.

The drumming stopped. “Nothing,” she said, much too quickly. “Though I was thinking about the woman Mrs. Beardsley saw with Gavin. She might be connected to the robbery at the benefit dinner. Perhaps they were planning it together.”

Jasper pinched the bridge of his nose, exhausted. He was cold, wet, and hungry and felt as if he’d accomplished little except gaining a new dead body. “That is pure speculation.”

“How can we not speculate? We don’t know anything for certain just yet. There are too many questions and not enough people to give answers.”

“That is a common occurrence in inquiries, unfortunately. It just means we need to look harder.”

His mistake in saying we blared in his ears, and he knew Leo had heard it too. He braced himself for her to jump on it. But when she spoke, it wasn’t about his blunder.

“Why did you pull the drapes?”

He didn’t want to tell her about the man who’d been following him. She would only worry and then set her mind to figuring out who it was and what he wanted. Jasper already had his suspicions, and he didn’t want Leo anywhere near it.

“Privacy.” At the parting of her lips, he realized the word sang differently aloud than it had in his head. “This is a ground floor room. The pavements are busy this time of evening.”

She seemed to weigh his logical answer as she turned back toward the glass-fronted bookcase, her fingertips again skimming the tops of the chairs. Her hands were slim and graceful, and though it wasn’t wise, Jasper easily recalled what they had felt like, pressed flat against his chest.

He licked his lips. “There is no whisky in here.”

Leo reached for her handbag. “I just wanted to let you know what I learned today. It sounds like the rain is letting up. I’ll go.”

Without thinking, Jasper stepped toward the door. He didn’t want her to leave. Not yet. “Why are you in here and not the study?”

He thought he knew, and if she answered honestly, it would mean broaching the topic they’d both been avoiding. It was time.

Leo slipped her handbag into the crook of her elbow and fidgeted with the beaded strap. “I didn’t think it would be…appropriate.”

Her gaze met his but then averted toward the covered windows.

He saw her suspicion in the tense hold of her shoulders: that he’d drawn the drapes for unprincipled reasons.

The stirring Jasper had felt earlier returned, only this time, it had a ravening edge.

He wasn’t going to back away from the matter.

“Because the last time we were in there together I kissed you?”

Leo’s eyes slammed into his. He watched her draw a deep breath, a pink tint blooming on her ivory cheeks. A strangely mercenary feeling of triumph gripped him.

“Yes,” she answered. The succinct reply wasn’t like her.

He took a step toward her. “You said you needed some time to think. I’ve given you time. We need to speak about it.”

Leo’s throat worked as she swallowed and nodded. “You’re right. We do.”

In the next drop of silence, Jasper watched her: her fingers, fiddling with the beads on her handbag; her stare meeting his and then darting away, only to come back again. Her usual composure quavered. He prepared himself, a stone settling in his gut.

She cleared her throat, however, and surprised him with her next statement. “I liked kissing you, Jasper.” Her rosy coloring deepened. “But I feel guilty for it.”

Jasper nodded, understanding why. “Because I’m a Carter. Because I was there that night.” He’d seen her family killed. Hidden her from the men who’d broken into the darkened home on Red Lion Street to slaughter the Spencer family. It was Leo’s worst memory, and Jasper was a part of it.

“Did I betray them,” she whispered, “by kissing you?”

He drew in a long breath, a blistering heat building under his collar.

In the hours, and then days, after kissing her, he’d come up with a dozen reasons why it had been a lapse in judgment: Maybe he’d confused feelings of protectiveness with feelings of desire.

The Inspector would surely be disappointed in him.

Mrs. Zhao too. Not to mention what his superiors and fellow officers at Scotland Yard would think or say.

But the reasons had fallen through him like hollow excuses, while one truth continued to burn steadily: He cared for Leo. He wanted her, as a man wanted a woman.

Jasper stepped forward. “Do you wish you hadn’t kissed me?”

She worried her bottom lip, deliberating. His attention drifted to her mouth and lingered for a few thudding heartbeats.

“No,” she said softly. “But I’m not sure…”

He braced himself, hands clenching into fists. “Is Connor Quinn one of the reasons you’re not sure?”

Leo startled. “Connor?”

It pained him to ask and reveal his jealousy. But he needed an answer. “Is there something between the two of you?”

The corner of her mouth curved into a bewildered grin. “No. We’re friends; that is all.”

Jasper let the tension out of his hands, the release lightening a burden in him. He hadn’t realized his jealousy had been so heavy.

Leo’s composure seemed to rebound as she took a bracing breath. “I was going to say that I’m not sure we should change things between us.”

He shook his head. “Things have already changed. There is no going back.”

“What if it’s a mistake?” she asked, slightly breathless.

“It isn’t a mistake, Leo. I want to kiss you again,” Jasper said softly, holding her stare. “It’s all I can think about. I need to know if you feel the same way.”

Leo’s blush had tempered, though now, a torrent of pink lit the apples of her cheeks.

“I…” She blinked, and her glimmering hazel eyes went slightly unfocused. “Yes.”

The single word burrowed into his chest. A hot surge jolted through him, terrifying and thrilling in its ferocity. Jasper moved toward her, drawn by some irrepressible force.

The complications and excuses for why he shouldn’t want the things he did dissolved in the answering heat of her gaze. What the Inspector would think, had he been alive…what Mrs. Zhao or Claude might say…the scrutiny at the Yard…none of it mattered more than the promise of her mouth under his.

Movement in his peripheral vision knocked cold sense into him instantly. Mrs. Zhao’s small frame appeared in the sitting room’s doorway.

“Miss Leo, will you stay for dinner?” she asked, oblivious to what Jasper had been two strides away from doing.

Rather than come to an abrupt stop, Jasper sidestepped Leo. And instead of dragging her to him and devouring her mouth, he exhaled sharply and raked a hand through his damp hair as he pretended to have been walking toward the window instead of her.

Mrs. Zhao’s question hung in the air, unanswered. She peered between them, waiting. Leo recovered first.

“I’m…afraid I can’t, Mrs. Zhao. Claude and Flora are expecting me.” She started for the front hall, then seemed to remember her manners and turned back to him. “Goodnight then,” she said shakily, without making eye contact. She then spun back around and departed the room.

Mrs. Zhao, dazed by the swift departure, jerked her head as the front door shut behind Leo.

“What on earth did you say to her?” she demanded.

Jasper pulled aside the drape and watched as Leo descended to the pavement and turned for the cabstand. In the rain, now reduced to a drizzle, he searched for the man in the orange bowler. If he was there, Jasper couldn’t see him.

“Nothing,” he answered, too provoked, his blood too high, to conjure a better excuse. “I’ll be to dinner in a few minutes.”

Jasper edged past the housekeeper, uncertain if he should be agitated by the untimely interruption or grateful. He had never felt such an intense, craving desire for a woman before. As he climbed the stairs, he was certain that if he had kissed Leo again, he wouldn’t have wanted to stop.