Page 46 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

Sidney glanced over the page and took her pencil. “You’ve made a mistake right there.”

“This is the part,” she said brightly, “where I strangle you if you keep me in suspense too long.”

Sidney erased a line of her scrawl and rewrote it with painstaking precision, but the corner of his mouth was flirting with a smile when he returned the pencil. It was an unprecedented, if minute, amount of good humor for the man, and an effervescent feeling brimmed inside Ginevra. She had quickly realized he was not a chatty sort of person and did not engage in the jovial repartee of most Oxford men, but she now regarded his intense quiet like an iceberg. While there was a great deal about Sidney she did not fathom, she was quite sure he would wreck anyone foolish enough to ignore his presence.

“I hadn’t noticed you’re left-handed,” she said.

Sidney rubbed at the back of his neck. “Despite my first teacher’s best efforts. She didn’t like how I shape the letters differently.”

Gin tilted her head. “It’s subtle, but I suppose I see it. It’s still much neater than mine.” She frowned, reading his correction. “You know German?”

“Enough to eavesdrop and decipher messages. The sound of it always appealed to me more than French.”

“You prefer guttural, phlegm-clearing noises to the most beautiful, romantic language in the world?”

“You’re studying German.”

“Yes, but I’m already fluent in French—”

“And very humble.” Sidney turned the notebook back around, and leaned forward. “The Rook wants to meet.”

“Here?”

“Wolvercote Cemetery, three o’clock.” His eyes flicked to her notebook. “I can go alone if you need to study.”

Gin rose in an instant, shoving her things into her satchel. “Absolutely not.”

The bus ride across town was uneventful, though it amused Gin greatly that Sidney insisted she sit on the top level while he remained below. He disembarked last and pretended to tie his shoe on a nearby bench until he seemed satisfied that no one had followed them, but it left Gin milling about waiting for directions. When at last he strode past her, hands deep in his pockets, she scuttled after him, tutting.

“Are you really worried about spies in Wolvercote?”

“We’re in Wolvercote.”

“But we’re not spies. We’re only helping out.”

“Which makes you an agent, no matter how you got drawn into this mess. If you’re interested in a proper job with the Security Service one day, you need to shift your mindset now.”

“Danger lurking around every corner, you mean?”

Sidney looked at her sidelong, his gray eyes dark with warning. “Sometimes.”

He led them across the road, and they entered a large cemetery ringed by fir trees. A path through the tidy sections of gravestones ended at a small chapel in the heart of the graveyard where a spare figure in black holding a briefcase waited by the door. The Rook regarded them with a censorious expression Ginevra well remembered from her Honoria House teachers. The bus had made them only a few minutes late, but minutes might as well have been hours.

“I was beginning to worry about you,” the Rook said. “You’re sure you weren’t followed?”

“I’m sure,” Sidney said, which was good as Ginevra hadn’t the faintest idea. She had to give his observant eyes credit for excellent performance under pressure.

The Rook gave a clipped nod and ushered them through the chapel door.

The soft, ethereal light streaming through the leaded glass drew Ginevra back to the dreary day of Tolliver’s funeral and the discomfort she’d felt over his death. Her intuition had been correct, if misplaced: His death wasn’t as simple as it seemed. And while she might not have been able to stop his heart attack, she could find his murderer now.

At the Rook’s direction, Ginevra slid into a pew, and Sidney sank down beside her, the woodsy scent of northern pines accompanying him. The rainy night outside St. M’s must have washed it away when she’d kissed his cheek, and she’d been too intent on her pique to notice when he swept her out of Malwyn Hall like a Byronic hero. Though if she was being honest, his tender care for her wounded leg had stretched her pique till it was flimsy enough to pop at the slightest hint of apology.

Gin caught herself leaning toward him and hastily fussed with her gloves when Sidney’s head began to turn. Acknowledging her partner’s pleasant smell and broad shoulders was all well and good, but had she not given herself a lecture about unnecessary distractions mere weeks ago? Working for the Rook was an opportunity she did not want to squander, and she would do well to remember that—no matter how nice a man smelled.

Ginevra cleared her throat and sat straighter.

The Rook entered the next row and turned to face them. “You two have been very busy.”