Page 91 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

The lamps were lit. Somebody’s carriage was setting down at the far corner. And there were a dozen windows with somebody at them, because Mayfair had been given the best afternoon it had had in a decade and was not finished with it yet.

Let them look.

Honeycutt had the door open before we reached the third step. He had met every single thing our family had ever done with the same face. It held for three seconds. Then his chin went. For the space of three seconds, it trembled. But then he got it back under control. He stood aside and bowed me in.

“Welcome home, my lady.”

That was as much as he was allowed before my entire family descended on me with Petunia leading the pack.

She hit me somewhere around the knees. Grandmother reached me a moment later and put both arms around me, which gave Laurel and Holly and Ivy permission to do the same. And then Fox, the man of the house for the moment, came forward and hugged me as well. Chrissie came last.

Once I’d unentangled myself, I held out my arms to her.

“Oh, Rosie.” That was all she managed.

She came into them hard enough to drive me back half a step, and then there were Rosehavens everywhere. Arms and hands and tears and questions, none of which anybody waited to have answered. Petunia had attached herself to my skirts and would not be removed. Grandmother was issuing orders for tea, brandy, hot water and supper. Laurel was crying, and so were the twins. Chrissie simply held on.

Over her shoulder, I found Steele still standing just inside the door.

Grandmother saw him at the same moment. “Steele. You will stay to dinner.”

“Thank you, Lady Rosehaven, but not tonight.”

I looked at him.

“You need your family, Rosalynd,” he said. “And you need rest.”

There was nothing unreasonable in either statement. I disliked them both.

He must have seen it. He also knew what I was thinking. “I will speak to Graves and the solicitors first thing in the morning. The moment there is anything to tell you about Cosmos, I will come myself.”

“The moment?”

“The moment.”

I held his eyes for another second. “All right.”

Something eased in his face. He bowed to Grandmother, then to me. “Good night, Rosalynd.”

“Good night, Steele.” I missed him even as I was saying his name.

Honeycutt closed the door behind him, for once not wearing his censorious expression.

I would need to bathe and change before supper, but it could wait for a little while. For the first time since men had walked into Madame Delacroix’s that afternoon, everyone I loved was exactly where I knew them to be.

Well, almost everyone.

Chapter

Thirty-Four

A Free Man

Scotland Yard spent the next week making up for a very bad year.

There were arrests in Wapping, Limehouse, Hammersmith, Clerkenwell, and three streets in Soho where respectable brass plates had apparently concealed enterprises that were respectable only in the matter of rent. Two warehouses were sealed. Four bank accounts were stopped. Men who had spent twenty years believing themselves invisible discovered that Mercer had kept excellent records.

Mercer himself remained invisible.