Gray’s jaw tightens, and I bristle. Davina has hit a tender nerve. I am Gray’s assistant. I’m also his friend. And while I might like there to be more to it, there isn’t. Yet that’s not what people see, and it’s becoming an ever-greater problem.
Gray might be a very successful man—runs the prosperous undertaking business he inherited from his father, has degrees in both medicine and surgery, and is an increasingly respected forensic pioneer—but he’s also illegitimate. And not white. That can lead to the misconception that he might have trouble finding female companionship, which he absolutely does not.
Yet for many people, it makes perfect sense that a “brown-skinned bastard” might resort to hiring a pretty girl as his “assistant” while having her assist in satisfying other needs.
Last month, he’d come up with a solution. We’d get married. Yep, clearly that would fix everything. Initially, I’d been . . . I don’t even know what I’d felt. How do you react when the guy you’ve fallen for offers to marry you for purely practical reasons? Not well, is the short version.
We’ve backburnered the idea, in hopes of finding a better one, but with McCreadie finally wooing Isla, our time is running out. McCreadie will propose, and I can’t stay in the town house once Isla leaves it.
“Davina,” I say, my tone steady. “I do not care whether you believe I am actually Dr. Gray’s assistant. If you are trying to threaten us, then I don’t see the point—as you said, people already suspect it.”
“Threaten Dr. Gray?” Her eyes widen. “Never.”
“So you are threatening Catriona?” Gray says, his voice a low growl.
“I am asking for her help, sir. One friend to another.”
“You tried to have me killed,” I say.
That stops her short. She stares at me in what looks like honest confusion.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean,” I say. “I found the notes you wrote Constable Findlay. You said I’d betrayed him and promised—for a fee—to lead me into an alley so he could take his revenge. Which he did by strangling me and leaving me for dead.”
Gray goes very still, and I realize I’ve made a misstep. He didn’t know this part. I was the one who found the messages in Findlay’s room. But I’d never told Gray that I knew who’d written them.
“You did what?” he says to Davina, enunciating each word, and she finally has the sense to step backward.
“It— It was not like that. How was I to know he’d try to kill her?” Her gaze shoots to me. “You sold his trinkets and his police information, but he should not have killed you for that, just . . .”
“Knocked me around?”
“Yes.” She jabs a finger my way, missing my sarcasm. “He is supposed to be a policeman, and he tried to murder you?”
“One might argue,” I say, “that a constable is even more likely to kill a woman who betrays him. Do the police always treat you well, Davina? Never handle you roughly? Never smack you around?”
She goes very still, and I know my barb struck harder than I intended. It’s still the early days of law enforcement, but I can already see the divide that will plague us into the modern world. The split between the idealists who want to serve and protect, and those who found a way to parlay schoolyard bullying into a professional career. In this era, it doesn’t help that the training, as McCreadie not-jokes, consists mostly of “Can you swing a cudgel? You’re hired.”
“I—” Davina swallows. “You always spoke well of the constable, Catriona. You said he was kind. I did not expect . . .” She seems to find herself and straightens. “But you survived. He didn’t kill you.”
“We’re done here,” Gray says, gently taking my elbow. “Miss Davina, I would strongly suggest that I never see you again. I would even more strongly suggest that Catriona never sees you again.”
“Wait!” She moves quickly into my path. “You said you had lost your memory and wanted information on your past. You were going to come back when you had money.”
“I don’t need that anymore.”
“Don’t you?” She walks backward in front of me as we head down the hill, which really is a feat in Victorian garb. “Have you regained your memories? You may not know all, and you really ought to know all. You made enemies, Catriona. Would it not help to be warned against them?”
Gray stops sharply enough to make her step back.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” she says. “I did not mean?—”
“How much?” he says.
“Sir?”
“How much are you asking for this information? If the price is reasonable, I will pay it. If not, we are leaving. Consider carefully.”
“Last time, she offered twenty minutes for a sovereign,” I say.
