Page 45 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“Is he awake?” Ethan asked.
“Not yet. But he’s alive.” Kitty rested the back of her head against the post, looking up at Maggie. “The charcoal saved him, you know? You saved him.”
“No, Kitty. You did. You and Dr. Charles.”
Kitty thought about it for a moment, then slowly climbed to her feet and gave her shoulders a sassy shake. “We rather did, didn’t we?” Then she turned and started upstairs, shouting, “Rupert! I’m taking a nap!” And Maggie couldn’t help but smile because if anyone in the world deserved a nap, it was Kitty. But also—
Sir Jasper was alive! He was alive and... Maggie realized something else.
Ethan was still holding her hand.
“Come on.” He tugged and started down a narrow hallway that led toward the kitchen.
“What was that?” Maggie said, remembering Dobson and the library and the way Ethanhadn’t even put up a fight. But Ethan didn’t say a thing. He just kept dragging Maggie down the hall, then through the kitchen. It felt like walking back in time as he glanced into a laundry room and a pantry, opening old, creaky doors and peeking into shadows, searching, looking—
“What was that?” she said, swatting his arm as he peered into a room that smelled like lavender and was full of fresh linens.
“Ow!” He rubbed one beefy bicep but didn’t even slow down. “You really are shockingly strong, you know that?”
She heard voices then. The duke and duchess were coming, so Maggie grabbed Ethan’s arm and pulled him through the nearest open door.
“Wow. Seriously. Do you have a trainer or...” He looked around the dim, still space. Dying rays of hazy sunlight shone through leaded windows, illuminating the kind of room that probably hadn’t been useful in decades.
There were worn wooden tables and shelves with tools for cleaning game, but Ethan’s gaze caught on the cabinet filled with long, identical guns.
“Hey, you found it.” He sounded... excited. Not at all like a man whose entire world had just turned upside down.
“Why did you tell the inspector we have a motive?”
Ethan glanced away from the gun case long enough to tell her, “Because we do.”
“No! We don’t. Eleanor can’t choose a successor if she’s...” The words almost tasted like almonds as they turned to poison on her tongue.
“Hey.” He dipped down to look in her eyes. “We also have alibis.”
“We do?”
He bit back a smile. “Someone shot at you, remember?”
She wanted to forget. “I remember. I just... I don’t think Dobson believed us.”
A chill reverberated off the windows as they rattled with the wind, but nothing was colder than the sound of Ethan’s voice when he asked, “Doyoubelieve me?”
No, she wanted to say. She wanted to fightand argue and bicker because that was what they did. In stressful situations, people revert to mean, and Maggie’s mean was hating Ethan Wyatt because it was so much easier than hating herself. She wanted to tell him he was a big, cocky blowhard who didn’t even recognize the sound of crashing ice when he heard it. She wanted to say anything but—
“I believe you.”
She wanted to do anything but sway closer to him, shaking with shock and worry because things suddenly felt... real. This wasn’t a novel or a contest or a game.
They were in the middle of twenty thousand acres with no phones and no internet and no help. The bridge was out and there was more than a foot of snow on the ground with possibly more on the way. A man was unconscious. A woman was missing. And—
“Someone Eleanor Ashley invited to Christmas is trying to kill her.”
Maggie had only had two panic attacks in her life. The first was when she was eighteen and alone in a condo in Florida, surrounded by boxes and bills. The second was in a dark room that was so quiet she could actually hear the waves of the Atlantic breaking on the rocky shore. There would probably be a third someday, but not here. Not now. Not in front of him.
There was too much at stake. Eleanor’s life. Their fate. Her self-respect. She couldn’t risk it, but that didn’t change the fact that—
“Dobson thinkswetried to kill Eleanor. But that’s crazy. Isn’t that crazy? I think that’s crazy. Because you areyou, and I amme, and we are not awe?”
