Page 46 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

It was the truth. It was also a hedge, and no one alive hedged successfully against Rosalynd Rosehaven.

"And she gave it to you just like that? Amazing. You must have brought a strong argument for her to grant such a request."

"I explained that the man was the mastermind behind drug trafficking, behind the young women who were taken to the Thames House to be used and abused. She agreed such criminal activities could not be allowed to continue." I was on safer ground here. Maybe she would believe me. Maybe she would probe no further.

Rosalynd believing convenient things had never once occurred in my experience of her.

"And that was your only reason?"

"Isn't that enough? The man is a menace to the public good."

She wandered to the stacks and ran her fingers across the book spines. "The public good. A noble cause indeed." When she reached the end of the row, she turned toward me. "And what did you promise the Queen? Her Majesty does not grant favors without expecting something in return."

And there it was. The crux of the matter. "I gave you up."

The words had lived in me for a month, sealed and archived. Spoken aloud, they sounded exactly as bad as I had feared.

"Ah," she said. "In exchange for getting Scotland Yard's cooperation, you and I would no longer have anything to do with each other."

"That's correct." Maybe whatever this new understanding between us was could still be saved. I did not believe it, even as the thought formed. She was three questions from the center of the thing and closing.

She left the stacks and moved forward, stopping but a short distance from me. "I do have one question. Did she propose the separation, or did you?"

The question every interrogator saves for last. The one to which she already knew the answer.

There was no saving this truce. There was only one answer I could give. "I did."

I expected fireworks. But there were none. She stood very still, the way she does when something lands. I would have preferred the fireworks.

"You gave me up, Steele, so you could hunt down the masked man. Because he is a menace to the public good." She rested a hand on my chest.

"Yes."

"Any other reason?"

"What other reason could there be?"

"Me."

"I—"

"Don't bother lying. Your heart is doing the talking for you."

She was right. My heart was beating hard enough that she could very well feel it through my coat.

She stared at me for a long moment.

"You truly believed that was the only way."

"Yes."

“You knew this man was fascinated with me, maybe even obsessed. And you, in your own inimitable way, crafted this plan to keep me from coming to harm."

“Yes.”

She curled her arms around my neck. "Oh, you impossible man.”

I stood in the circle of her arms prepared for every outcome but acquittal. "It was the only way I knew to keep you safe. And he's now engineered a murder with enough evidence to point to your brother."