But Jasper wasn’t going to give her an inch. He would keep an eye on Leo as he always had. There were other ways of finding out if something was beingwhisperedabout her.
“Worry about yourself, Mrs. Bates. Leonora Spencer isn’t your concern.”
As he closed the door behind him, he thought he heard a stifled sob.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Leo had built a fire in the hearth, and though it had warmed Jasper’s study, she couldn’t stop shivering. The house had been dark and quiet as she’d climbed the front step earlier. Belatedly, she remembered Mrs. Zhao had gone to stay with her sister. Without her presence, there had been a hollowness to the house when Leo unlocked the door and let herself in.
Lighting a few gas brackets and making her way to the study, she thought about the last time she’d employed her key to enter 23 Charles Street. The Inspector had given it to her long ago, but she hadn’t used it until that early morning visit when she’d barged in on Jasper as if in a daze.
She blushed remembering the image that had, like every other, been trapped in the amber of her mind. Jasper, lying on his stomach in bed, unclothed. The expanse of his muscled back on display, the bed linens resting at his tapered waist. Perhaps that was the state in which he slept every night, but she imagined that he’d been airing out the gash inflicted from the previous day’s explosion at a wallpaper factory. The wound had been the only blemish on his back’s otherwise pale, smooth skin.
Leo was slightly ashamed of how often she’d summoned that image in the months that followed. Thinking of it had been a betrayal of her own pledge to loathe him forever. But she could not deny the truth. He was handsome, ruggedly so. Now, as it did then, thinking of him in any romantic way left her feeling turned upside down. And slightly breathless.
After he’d left her at the morgue, Leo had entered the postmortem room and utterly sidetracked Claude and Mr. Quinn from the corpse they’d been attending. At the sight of her bloody shirtwaist, they’d swarmed her in alarm.
“It is a shallow cut,” she said to calm them.
“My God, Leonora, have you been mugged?” Claude asked.
“It’s a long story,” she said, and after closing herself in the supply closet to partially undress and clean her wound with carbolic acid and surgical gauze, she recited the tale while her uncle and Mr. Quinn listened on the other side of the door. The light of the lamp showed that her wound was, as she’d thought, relatively minor. She wasn’t in dire need of sutures.
When she redressed and opened the door, she found the two men waiting for her. Claude appeared utterly baffled. Mr. Quinn, his arms crossed over his chest, stared at her with a loose jaw.
“I thought you were a typist for the morgue, Miss Spencer, not a police detective.”
He was only being sarcastic, and she shouldn’t have been irritated by the comment. But she was, just the same. “You well know I am not a detective. Nor can I be.”
“Then why would the inspector allow you to be present?” he’d replied. “I think it’s damned irresponsible of him, in fact.”
Leo had pushed past him. “It is a very good thing then that what you think doesn’t bear weight on the situation.”
It had been harsh, and she hadn’t looked to see how he’d reacted. Nor had she much cared. Leo announced she was goinghome to change her clothing, and she spent the quarter-hour walk in a thunderous mood.
She wasn’t a morgue typist or assistant any longer, thanks to the arrival of Connor Quinn. She couldn’t be a detective or anything having to do with the police at all. Apparently, because she was a woman, she wasn’t qualified to do the things at which she was quite good. She found herself on the edge of uncertainty. The last several days, the investigations had occupied her mind, but now, with Mrs. Bates having been taken into custody, there was no avoiding the question: What would come next?
She hadn’t yet settled on an answer, or anything close to one.
The fire in the study now blazed. Leo uncapped the bottle of cherry liqueur she’d given the Inspector in January. But eyeing the cut crystal decanter of whisky beside it, she capped it again. Jasper had once poured her a glass of the amber liquid in his office after they’d thwarted Mr. Benjamin Munson, a deputy assistant-turned-murderer who’d tried to kill them four months ago. Drinking it had been like swallowing fire. She poured herself a splash with the hope that it might douse her shivers.
The hinges on the door to the study squeaked. Leo turned to see Jasper aiming his Webley at her. Her heart stuttered.
“Jesus, Leo.” He immediately lowered the revolver. “I thought the Angels were in my house again.”
She frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’m sorry to have alarmed you.”
He holstered his revolver, then as he came into the room, shed his coat and hat. He tossed them onto the Chesterfield, his attention hinging on the drink in her hand.
“No Grants Morella?” he asked, arching a brow.
Leo swirled the shallow pour of whisky, the sharp fumes reaching her nose. “I decided I needed something stronger tonight.”
He joined her at the sideboard and poured himself a heavy splash, then tapped his glass against hers.
“Cheers,” he said before taking a sip.
Fire coated her throat as she drank, and she was grateful she didn’t cough this time.
