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“No offense, but your brothers kind of suck.”
He shrugs, a grin stretching his lips. “Sometimes. I think they’d like you, though. You’d fit in well with that lot.”
I feign a casual tone. “That right?”
“Yeah.” He laughs. “You’re all completely mad.”
We stop off in a small village to grab a bite to eat. At a table by the window, I watch the foot traffic and the old man at the bus bench feeding the crows. A shopkeeper from the convenience store argues with him, shooing the birds away from his door with a newspaper. Undaunted, the old man tosses nuts on the ground from his paper lunch bag.
“What about Josephine?” Jack asks, digging into his roast beef sandwich.
I sigh glumly. “Well, I’d hoped Ben’s suggestion that Robert might have been living in Ireland would give me something more to go on. It’s such an important clue. But I haven’t found any new information. If the Ireland thread is true, then his secret’s stayed safe all this time.”
“Is that it? A dead end?”
“I still have to turn in something for my assignment, so I’ve got no choice but to move on to researching the other Tulleys at this point. Unless Ben comes back with anything new, I think Josephine will stay out of reach.”
The painting is now at the museum in Rye, courtesy of the Abbey Bly collection, but it mocks me in my memory, this ever-presentsmirking mystery amused at my feeble attempts to unravel its secrets. A total pain in the ass in fact.
“Speaking of Ben Tulley.” Jack’s casual tone is betrayed by the tensing of his jaw. “How was the ball?”
“It was fun. I’m glad I went, but I wouldn’t want to do that every weekend, you know? After the shine of the famous people and nobility wears off, it ends up being just another stuffy party in shoes that hurt your feet.”
“He didn’t…” Jack stops, then changes course. “You don’t get a bad feeling about that guy? Tulley?”
“No, why?”
“People say things.”
“Not everything people say is true.”
He frowns. “There’s pictures of him doing wild shit all over the internet.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Why don’t you just ask what you really want to ask? Am I hooking up with Lord Tulley, right?”
“That’s not what I wanted to ask,” he says stubbornly.
“Uh-huh. Sure.”
He’s staunch in his protests. “It’s not. That family is a bunch of black sheep. I was making sure he didn’t try anything.”
“And if he did?”
Jack narrows his eyes. “Did he?”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my God. Just fucking ask, Jack.”
“None of my business.”
He’s so infuriating sometimes. And in my exasperation, I straighten my shoulders and give him a smug look. “Since you’re dying to know—we did almost kiss, but we got interrupted.”
His jaw ticks.
“What? No lecture?”
“Do you want one?” he asks.
“Not particularly, no. Because I didn’t do anything wrong.” I push the rest of my sandwich away, my appetite gone.
