Page 58 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“Tonight.”

“Toby will be home tonight.”

“I know.” He said it like that was the point, not the problem, and then he let go and answered the phone in a low flat register that had nothing to do with her at all.

She dressed in the hall so she wouldn’t distract him. One boot was in the study. The other was halfway down the main stairs, which she could not account for. There was a mark along her jaw where his chin had been against it, her hair was a catastrophe, and the gilt mirror in the front hall told her that she looked exactly like someone who’d had the kind of night she’d had.

“Well,” she said to her reflection. “What did you expect?”

She let herself out through the garden.

The gate stood open. Their gate now, she supposed. She went through it and around the greenhouses at the brisk, dignified walk of a woman who wanted to be somewhere before somebody else got there.

She lost by about ninety seconds.

Robin’s car was in the drive with the engine off, and Robin was sitting on the front step with Birdie on her lap, pointing something out to Toby in the flowerbed.

“Mama!”

He hit her at knee height. She caught him and breathed in the top of his head, which smelled of somebody else’s laundry soap and a whole small adventure she hadn’t been there for.

“Did you have fun?”

“Birdie can sit up.” He pulled back to look at her, wide-eyed with the size of it. “She can sit up and hold your finger and if you put a crumb in her hand she puts it in her mouth every single time.”

“Can she really?”

“She did it eleven times.” He held up both hands with the fingers spread and then folded one down, which was as close as he could get. “And she didn’t fall over once. Then she cried in the night and Eric walked her up and down and I heard it and I didn’t even mind.”

“That’s good of you.”

She straightened, and finally made herself look at Robin. Her friend was standing now, her gaze traveling Maris’s hair and jaw and the boot she’d shoved on wrong, and it took her less than two seconds to put it together. Her mouth curved.

“Well,” Robin said.

“Don’t.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You said well.”

“It’s a versatile word.” Robin shifted Birdie to the other hip. “Nice night?”

“I did some work at the mansion. It ran late.”

“Did it?”

“Robin.”

“You have a mark on your neck shaped like Delaware.”

She slapped her hand over her throat, even though it was too late to make a difference. Toby looked up with interest. “What’s Delaware? Is it a dog?”

“A very small state,” she said, “which we are not discussing. Go put your bag inside and wash your hands.”

He went as obediently as ever, and the second the door shut Robin gave up all pretense.

“You slept with Garrick!”