Page 30 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

Pleasure caught at her throat, depriving her of words, even his name. She opened the door wide, still hiding behind it, and he slipped inside, shut and locked the door, and took her in his arms.

His kiss was unexpectedly fierce and hungry, and she wallowed in it.

He still wore his overcoat, and even his tall hat, which made her want to laugh, and his bold caress deprived her of breath and thought.

Throwing her arms around his neck, she kissed him back with everything she felt and yearned for, and grew dizzy with delight.

Her nightgown had vanished when her back landed on the softness of the warm bedsheets.

Her mouth was still fused to his and she didn’t even think of resisting. Love, intense and inevitable, surged and claimed them. Even so, there was tenderness in his urgency and her own fierce response.

This was how it should always have been since the first time. Without words or doubts, without self -doubts and even thought. Sheer instinct, sheer feeling, the giving and receiving of joy.

It could not last at such intensity, and it didn’t. But God, it was necessary and wonderful and more than she had ever dreamed, even after the first time.

They held each other bonelessly, recovering their breath.

“At least your hat fell off,” she said unsteadily, and they both began to laugh.

She helped him out of his coat, and then the rest of his clothes, until they could be skin to skin at last. And then, it all began again, this time with slow and leisurely worship.

*

Solomon had not intended their reunion to be quite so urgent, but the sight of her, the feel of her yielding in his arms, returning his passion… Well, for once in his life, he’d abandoned thought and control and gloried in the result.

By the time they were ready to talk, all their personal issues, the inexplicable distance he had been unable to fix, had been solved without words. He was hers, and she was his.

“I saw a house I think you will like. And I applied for a special license.”

She had been lying draped over his chest, but at this she levered herself up, her warm, sleepy eyes brightening with excitement. “Really? Tell me!”

“No, I want you to see it for yourself without my influence.” He hauled himself up against the pillows and settled her against his shoulder, his arm around her. “Tell me first about the case.”

“I think I’ve found a thief, and it’s not Nell Dickie. I’m sure whoever wrote the letters must live alone, because apart from Miss Mortimer’s, they were all delivered during the night or very early in the morning. How is David?”

“I think I know who the culprit is, but I’ve left Inspector Omand to find him so that we can try to prove it.

” He told her what Janey and Lenny had discovered at the Crown and Anchor, and their list of Chase’s investments, then moved on to Captain Blake and the story of the Mary Anne and its stolen cargo.

“That must set David’s mind at rest, at least. You don’t suppose Omand will call at your house if and when he finds this Drayman?”

“Well, he might,” Solomon said. “I could hardly tell him not to. So we had better finish here quite quickly, if we can. Jenks already knew David was not me, so I can’t rely on Omand’s failing to notice the differences either.

I suppose,” he added reluctantly, running his fingers through her hair, “we should get up and dress. After you’ve told me about your thief… ”

Oddly, it was only as he rose from the bed at last that he noticed the bruises on her arm and shoulder, and caught her around the waist.

“Did I do that to you?” he demanded, staring in horror.

“No, of course you did not! I forgot all about them…”

“What happened?” He skimmed a gentle hand over the soft, discolored skin. “Those look nasty.”

“Oh, they look worse than they feel, although I admit it was sore at the time. I fell downstairs at the manor.”

He knew there was more, but forced himself not to tense.

She examined the bruises. “It was slightly swollen just after it happened—”

“Which was when?” he interrupted.

Her gaze lifted to his. “The card party.” She turned, sliding both arms around his neck and pressing her cheek to his. “I couldn’t tell you. You wouldn’t have gone to London.”

“I wouldn’t have,” he said, pulling back to search her face, “and you wouldn’t have hidden it if you had merely tripped. Constance—”

“I was pushed. When I was returning from the retiring room. Someone had put out the lights and lay in wait. I fell only to the half landing, twisted my ankle slightly, but landed mostly on my elbow and shoulder. Sophie Chadwick saw me fall and ran up to me. My attacker fled down another staircase.”

“Who?” he demanded. Sick anger had closed around his heart and kept squeezing until he recognized fear as well.

And guilt because he had not even noticed.

He had been so absorbed in the case, in David’s, in his own feelings at parting from Constance, that he had not seen her pain.

Not even this morning in the grip of his desire.

“I am indebted to Sophie,” Constance said, “for noticing that Miss Fernie and Peregrine Mortimer left the drawing room shortly after I did. It was because of Mortimer she came after me, afraid I didn’t know that he ambushes women alone.”

His fingers curled into fists, and she caught one in both her hands.

“I don’t think it was Mortimer. I did, at first, but I don’t believe he is violently inclined. He was just never taught to keep his hands to himself, and enough women must have welcomed his attentions.”

“Then you think it was Miss Fernie? Really?”

“I know she is the same age as Miss Mortimer, but she’s fit and strong. And angry.”

“And dangerous, it would appear. Why on earth would she push you? Because she feared you suspected her of writing the letters?”

“I wondered that, but no. I think she recognized my name and made her judgment.”

“A fallen woman,” Solomon said slowly.

“It still counts if you’re pushed.”

“Don’t,” he said painfully, resting his forehead against hers, closing his arms around her. “How dare she?”

“There is some kind of bond between her and Miss Mortimer. Bonds of childhood and shared experience. Thinned and even betrayed at some points—Miss Mortimer did remove her from her school post, after all—but still there. In Miss Fernie’s eyes I insulted Miss Mortimer with my presence, with pretending to be respectable. ”

She shrugged. “I’m guessing. But it makes sense.

Think about it. Miss Fernie is a vicar’s daughter, related to a powerful, aristocratic family who gave her Seasons in London.

She still visits them occasionally, and writes, which must be how she heard my name—and, I think, passed it on to Mortimer so that he would tell his aunt.

Judging by our conversation yesterday, he has certainly learned something against me and wishes to forbid me from his aunt’s presence. ”

There was no point and no time to voice his outrage, because Constance didn’t pause for breath, so eager was she to share her theory.

“Miss Fernie’s family has been generous to her, yet she lives alone in Sutton May, in a little cottage, as if she is no more than an ordinary village schoolteacher. Why? Why has she no companion, like Miss Mortimer has Hannah Jenson? Why does she not live with her family?”

“Because she doesn’t want to be a poor relation? Because she is unpleasant and they don’t like her?”

“Both of those, probably. They are happy enough to write to her at a distance, even have her to stay for a week or two, but I’ll bet they lock up their silver and jewels while she’s there.”

Solomon blinked. “You believe she is the thief that no one in Sutton May acknowledges? Is that not rather a leap without evidence?”

“Possibly, but I’ll bet the evidence is there.

We already know that she embezzled from the school.

” Her eyes gleamed, and he wondered irrelevantly if she had any idea how beautiful she was, so animated, with her red-gold hair tumbling around her naked shoulders.

“She was in the Keatons’ shop when the shawl vanished.

She must have had many opportunities to steal Miss Mortimer’s bracelet.

She visits Mavis Cartwright and could easily have taken her pretty box—she might even regard that theft as just punishment for Mavis’s committing adultery with Miss Mortimer’s father.

She is on all the church committees and visits the vicarage frequently.

She must have had many opportunities to take the vicar’s prayer book. ”

“I allow all that to be true,” Solomon said, “but it could be equally true of anyone. We have never even met half the people in the village.”

“I feel it is her,” Constance said stubbornly. “Remember also when we spoke to the children, they said she chased them out of her garden, furious mad . Would not their old teacher handle such incursions better? Even be pleased to see the children? She doesn’t want anyone near her house.”

“Then no one calls on her?”

“Inside the house, she can control where they go. Keep doors shut. Keep things out of sight. But people peering in windows? Who knows what they might see?”

Solomon regarded her with some unease. “Pure speculation. And no, I will not creep about her garden, spying through her cottage windows.”

Constance grinned and totally disarmed him by kissing his lips. “Yes, you will. We’ll go together.”