That was different. The other letters had been slipped under front doors during the night, or very early in the morning. “Did you take it directly to her?”
“No, for she had guests to tea. She read it later. And so did I by the simple means of walking into her sitting room and looking. I make a point of knowing everything that goes on in my aunt’s life. I protect her.”
“Do you?” Constance said. “What do you think the letter referred to?”
“Taking responsibility for Hannah Jenson,” he said contemptuously. “It would have been the simplest matter forherto leave an extra letter among the post as though it were nothing to do with her.”
“The same could be said of you. Who had tea with your aunt that day?”
“Lord, how should I remember? The same old faces. It was a Wednesday, when they all come bleating for free food.”
“You won’t make a very bountiful lord of the manor, will you, Mr. Mortimer?” She walked to the hall stand and donned her own coat while he gazed at her with dislike. She placed her bonnet on her head without tying the ribbons. “Good afternoon.”
She drove back to the inn, her head still buzzing with thoughts and excitement, mostly because Solomon might have come back.
He hadn’t, as she quickly discovered. Hoping he would be on the last train, she went up to her room, lit the candles, and spread out her notes again, adding what she had learned.
The first anonymous letter had been delivered to Miss Mortimer before or during her tea party on a Wednesday afternoon. There had then been a gap of a week before the Keaton letter, and the Nolan letter, both of which had been delivered either during the night or first thing in themorning. And then nothing—that Constance knew of—until Mrs. Chadwick’s letter last week. A gap of more than two weeks.
Had the writer meant to give up the practice and then been unable to help themselves? Only the death of a child had set them off again. And that letter too had been delivered during the hours of darkness, when the sender was less likely to be seen.
Who had the legitimate business to be out and about at night? Not children, whatever her original suspicions. Those walking home at night, from the Goose or from church meetings. People who lived alone without spouses or servants to notice their going out at such odd hours.
And the matter of the missing items… Was she right that they were thefts? Was she really understanding the reasoning behind them? It was not truly her or Solomon’s business. They had been hired to find the sender of the anonymous letters.
Solomon…
Her watch told her it was time for the last train from London. She rose and went to the window, opening it a crack until she was sure she heard the familiar rumble of wheels on the railway track, the engine’s distinctive whistle…
Her window looked out onto the courtyard and the street beyond. Several men of varying degrees in life, both singly and in groups, did pass through the arch into the courtyard, but none of them were Solomon.
No one came upstairs or knocked on the door.
Until someone did and she actually jumped. “Come in.”
It was the maid, asking if she wanted to have supper downstairs or in her room.
“Here in my room, I think,” Constance replied.
She told herself it was good he had stayed in London, that he needed time with David as well as time devoted to his brother’s problem. Unthinkable that they allow him to hang…
She began to pore over David’s case in her mind until it became confused with Sutton May and letters, and she knew she was too tired to think anymore.
Solomon…
*
She woke todaylight, and the peace of the countryside, apart from the soft knocking at her bedchamber door.
Blinking blearily, she threw back the bedclothes, feeling without success for her dressing robe. Giving up, she decided to simply hide behind the door and staggered across the room.
She unlocked the door and opened it a crack, peering around it.
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.
