AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you.” He offered her a gentle smile in an attempt to ease her wariness and watched to see what she would do.
Was her nervousness down to a dislike of having strange men around? If so, why did she run a lodging house full of men?
Was she worried because her, and that brother of hers, had something to hide? He didn’t know yet, but he was damned well going to find out before he left.
Just the thought of uncovering all of Jessica’s secrets made his body start to twitch. He shut those particular thoughts out before he embarrassed himself, and went in search of a drink.
“I will go and help myself then,” he said gently but felt strangely reluctant to leave her.
There was something indefinable in the air. A crackling tension, bristling with desire. Expectancy, maybe? Anticipation? For the first time in a long time, he wanted to take the time to get to know a woman, and it had nothing to do with the investigation.
How does she do it? You have been in the house all of five minutes, and am already distracted by her; he mused as he left for the safer confines of the sitting room.
Jess watched him go with a mixture of relief and consternation. Wariness warred with disbelief that anybody could make her forget her mind so quickly. This powerful response to anybody had certainly never happened before. But then, none of the other guests were as handsome as this one.
“I had better be careful around you, I think,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Ben called.
She threw a dark glare over her shoulder at him, silently warning him that their conversation was far from over, then hurried upstairs to remove her belongings from her bedroom.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dinner was a very odd affair. Marcus had never seen such an eclectic group of people gathered in one place in all of his life before. He was used to his colleagues from the Star Elite. They were who he dined with if he wasn’t alone. They were rambunctious, lively, always teasing and jocular, and always talking.
The group of men seated at the dining table tonight was nothing short of peculiar. Not least because they clearly didn’t want to be there and hardly talked about, well, anything.
To his left was Mr. Gillespie, a rather aged man who appeared to be as blind as a bat. How on earth he could bird watch during the day as he claimed to do was anyone’s guess because he could barely see the plate Ben set before him. Whatever the man did, Marcus doubted it was ornithology. Although his hair was white, his face was relatively unlined; youthful even. At first appearance, his age was around sixty. However, the more Marcus studied him, the more he suspected the man was more likely in his early forties.
Bemused, Marcus moved on to the next man, Mr Brammall.
He was nothing short of effeminate. Even down to the pink cravat he wore, and the rather vacant look on his face. He fluffed his hair every two or three minutes and tended to ramble on in a way that most ladies would have associated with should there have been any. He didn’t work, but couldn’t explain what he did with his day.
Overall, Mr. Brammall appeared to be a seemingly helpless individual who posed little threat to anyone.
The quiet, studious man beside him, Mr. Ball, had yet to take his eyes off his food. He ate with a careful precision that defied belief. The small neat square
s dotted at equal lengths on his plate were placed that way by a man who had a little too much time to think as far as Marcus was concerned. He watched the man cut each piece of his food to precisely the same shape and size as the others. He then lined up the pieces on his plate and then proceeded to eat from the top left corner down to the right bottom as one would read a book.
Seated directly opposite Marcus was Mr. Abernathy, a banker’s son who had just returned from a day’s work as a clerk in Retterton, apparently. As if to prove this, his fingers were liberally stained with ink. Marcus had tried several times to find out where the man worked but received nothing more than vague answers. Mr Abernathy appeared to be in his forties but at times seemed considerably older. His shoulders had become stooped from long hours bent over a desk, and there was an abstract vagueness about him that was intriguing. It was clear from the bespectacled way he peered at everyone that he was struggling with his eyesight. How he managed to work with books and paperwork was anyone’s guess.
With eyesight as bad as his, there is no possibility he would be able to pick his way through an uneven forest floor in the dead of night; Marcus mused as he watched the man peer at his food.
What he had observed throughout the evening, and what bothered him the most, were the rather cautious looks everyone threw at each other whenever they thought nobody was looking. The furtive flicker of eyelids didn’t leave Marcus, himself a man who was always watchful, with any ability to sit back and simply enjoy the meal.
Thankfully, the delicious repast was well cooked, and Marcus ate his share. His only criticism was that the amount they had was hardly plentiful. Just enough had been served to feed each man what they could eat, but very little had been to the kitchen.
In spite of this, he was now warm and fed, and eager to get some sleep.
Making his excuses to the table at large, he pocketed an apple and a pear from the fruit bowl beside the door and went in search of the landlady. He found her scrubbing down the empty kitchen table.
“Hello,” he murmured.
Jess jumped and whirled to face him. She hadn’t realised she was no longer alone. It shocked her at just how stealthily this big man moved. Making a mental note to be a little warier when he was in the house, she nodded politely to him.
“Is my room ready yet?” Marcus asked without preamble.
He eyed the small tendrils of hair that had slipped out of the loose top-knot she wore and fought the urge to touch them. He suspected that if he did, she would scurry off like a frightened rabbit.
