Chapter Seventeen
“Darrow is watchingus from across the road,” Solomon murmured. He sat opposite Constance for once, so that he could see out the back window without twisting. “Do you suppose he is working up the courage to confess?”
“I don’t think he lacks courage,” Constance said thoughtfully as the carriage swung around the corner. She used her umbrella to knock on the carriage roof, and the coachman pulled up the horses.
Solomon leapt out and strode back toward the corner, mingling with other pedestrians. A few moments later, he loped back and ascended smartly, and the carriage moved on.
“Well?” Constance demanded.
“He just strolled past the shop, then sped up and kept walking. He hasn’t tried to find the way in at the back.”
“Then what the devil is he up to? Trying to intimidate us, like our prim neighbors in Grosvenor Square?”
A couple of months ago, when they had returned from Venice to find two bodies on her establishment doorstep, there had been something of an intimidation campaign conducted against the house of ill repute. That storm had been weathered. But if Darrow truly was a murderer, he had a lot more to lose.
“I don’t know,” Solomon said. “But I think I shall interrupt his morning practice to ask him.”
“What if he comes back during the night?”
“I doubt he’d be that stupid,” Solomon said. “But we could catchup with him easily enough to ask.”
Constance hesitated. “No, you’re right. And I’d rather make sure my mother is still where she should be.”
“I’m not sure Darrow’s the confessing type,” Solomon mused. “But he might have decided to tell us something new, particularly if it reflects badly on Montague.”
“I wonder…” Constance frowned. “If Montague was suspicious of his wife, did he go searching passenger bookings too? Some paper was burned in Caterina’s grate, surely around the time she died. It could have been travel tickets.” She answered her own question with an irritable hand gesture. “Couldhave been. Always could. There is noevidencein this wretched case!”
“Stop thinking about it,” Solomon said, shifting across the carriage to sit beside her. “This evening is just for us.” His fingertips glided over her wrist and inside her glove.
“I like that idea,” she said huskily.
Solomon peeled back her glove and softly kissed her wrist, exactly where he had already made the skin tingle with his caress. “Good. The shop is still open.”
Constance blinked, having lost track of where they were. The carriage slowed and she pulled down the window. Gerry was outside the shop with a customer, showing him something from the front display. But in the way of street boys, he saw her at once and grinned.
Constance mouthed,Where is she?
Gerry jerked his head toward the inside of the shop. And indeed, Juliet’s familiar bright dress swept past her line of vision.
“She’s fine,” Constance said, refusing to admit the strength of her relief as she raised her hand to Gerry and closed the window again.
“Don’t you want to go in?” Solomon asked.
“No. I want to begin this evening that is just for us.”
Solomon gave a slow smile, his dark eyes warm with promise. And suddenly it was easy to banish everything but him from her mind.
*
“I wonder ifshe knew she was dying and came to say goodbye.”
“I have several of his notices and reviews…”
“I never heard the man play—always in the wrong place at the wrong time…”
“She wanted to go over old times…”
“We talked mostly of music and musicians.”
