Page 10 of The Devil in Oxford
“But you came anyway… why?”
Ruan rubbed a hand over his jaw. “The gods must know, because I bloody well don’t. Anytime we are within the same county, someone ends up dead and I end up with a half dozen more scars for the effort.”
“That’s not our fault.” I glanced back toward the funerary box. By now, there were a half dozen uniformed police working their way through the crowd. Lord Amberley was speaking with one near the front door alongside Mr. Owen, who was now gesturing widely—I could only imagine what it was he was telling the officer. I let out a sigh of relief at finally spotting the old man in the crowd. I scanned the room, suddenly realizing that neither Leona nor Professor Reaver were here.
Had they managed to leave before the body was revealed? It had only been a handful of seconds at most from the moment they took their leave of me to when the box was opened—less than a minute. Surely, they couldn’t have escaped the museum that quickly. My pulse quickened.
“Do you suspect her?” Ruan asked, changing the subject from the uncomfortable topic of our thwarted romance back to safer terrain—murder.
“Leona?” I placed my hands on my hips, watching the detectives surround the dais. “No. She hasn’t a violent bone in her body. But I do wish you’d at leasttryto not eavesdrop on my thoughts.”
“Would that I could. But this Leona person is numbered amongst your friends. I have to question that point.”
He had me there.
The edge of his mouth twitched as he fought a smile despite the anger he must have felt toward me. But if hewasangry, why would he come? I turned away. “You may not be wrong on that either, but I don’t think she’s involved inthis. Leona was…” I weighed how much to tell him about her, but this was Ruan. He’d find out anyway—even if we were at odds. “Concerned for Harker… She must have known he was in danger. I don’t think she could have feigned that worry. She must have known something was going to happen here. Known or feared.”
Ruan cocked an eyebrow in challenge.
“I do hate how you do that—it’s terribly unfair. But I am done.” I held up my palms, wiping them in the air to underscore my point. “Done with murderers, done with mysteries. And as soon as these lovely gentleman”—I gestured to the nearby detective questioning a middle-aged matron—“have finished here, I will go home, take a bath, crawl into bed with my cat and my book, and forget this evening ever happened.”
“Will you?”
“Of course.” Though both of us knew that was not to be.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER,I sat in the kitchen of our cozy townhome alone with Mrs. Penrose. Mr. Owen had been deep in conversation with Lord Amberley at the museum, so Ruan promised to stay behind and see the old man into a car and safely home. I tucked my legs up beneath me on the bench, bare feet off the cold floor as my housekeeper poured a kettle of boiling water into a blue china teapot. “Bad business, murder.” She frowned. Mrs. Penrose wore a serviceable woolen dressing gown pulled tight over her own nightdress as she set the teapot to steep on the table between us.
I nodded absently, running my thumb over an imperfection in the wooden work surface. “It’s peculiar. Whoever killed Harker had removed his tongue, then left him in that box to bleed out. Why would a person do something like that?”
“Hungry, my lover?” she asked, the familiar Cornish term of endearment bringing the first smile to my lips in hours. I let out a startled laugh, glancing up from the wooden tabletop. “No. I’m afraid seeing a dead man tonight did in my appetite.”
Mrs. Penrose chuckled. “I suspect it would do that, maid. Have a cup with me. It’ll help you sleep.”
She didn’t bother waiting on my response and set about fixing my tea, then placed it in my hands. She groaned as she lowered herself into a chair across the table. “It’s been a day. I meant to tell you, young Ruan Kivell came by earlier. You didn’t tell me he was coming to stay. I’d never been so surprised in my life to see the lad this far from home.” Her long graying hair fell loose over her shoulder, and I could have sworn that she looked younger in the months since she’d been living with Mr. Owen and me in Exeter.
I frowned. “I didn’t know he was coming either. I only saw him for the first time at the museum.”
“Did he say where he was staying, I was hoping he might—” But before she could continue, the telltale click of the key sounded in the lock. Mr. Owen must have finally escaped Amberley’s attentions. I stifled a yawn into my fist, not bothering to look up from my warm cup of oolong.
“Why, hello there, my ’ansom! Back so soon?” Mrs. Penrose shot to her feet. I turned in surprise to see my housekeeper launch herself across the room, wrapping her arms around Ruan’s neck. Ruan froze, standing half in and half out with his haversack slung over his shoulder and tattered valise in his hand. He wore a low-slung cap over his brow, and a few snowflakes clung to the dark wool of his coat like stars in the night sky.
Mr. Owen shooed Ruan and Mrs. Penrose into the room thenclosed the heavy door, knocking the bits of snow off his boots. “I was telling Kivell here, that with a murderer in Oxford, I thought it best he stay with us. The lad was going to stay at a boardinghouse and I told him that Dorothea wouldn’t allow for her countryman to stay with strangers, not when we were staying in the same town. Didn’t I, Kivell?”
Incredulous, my eyebrows shot up. “Mr. Owen! We hardly have room for the three of us and the cat. Besides, what will people say?” Though truthfully, I knew good and well no one would bat an eye at the unusual living arrangement. Times had changed after the war, upsetting the social order that had placed restrictions upon my sex. Women had entered the workforce, others had taken lovers, and as long as one remained discreet, most of society did not care one way or the other. Especially when one was past the first blush of youth as I was. Of course, my money also went a good way to protect me from social censure—a thought that rankled. For a wealthy heiress who breaks the rules of society becomes an eccentric, but their gilded doors always remain open, as there’s always someone in want of her money.
“Since when have you given a damn what anyone said?” Mr. Owen grumbled. “Besides, you’re here with Dorothea and me. Even inmyyouth, that would be chaperonage enough to protect your virtue.” Mr. Owen’s dark brown eyes glittered with amusement. He knew good and well I did not want Ruan here invading my space, I’d given Mr. Owen the rough outline of the sad affair after we left Scotland. Mr. Owen had urged me to apologize, to fix things before they became irreparable, and I’d stubbornly refused.
Mrs. Penrose held his face in her hands and took a step back with a maternal muttering. “Nonsense, my lover, we have a room in the attic. And I’d take mortal offense if you didn’t stay under my roof, Ruan Kivell. Your mother would never forgive me if I even thought for a moment of putting you with strangers. I will not have it.”
She squeezed him again, and he shot me a helpless look over her shoulder.
Serves you right for not writing.
Then another thought struck me. That empty room in the attic she’d mentioned… it was directly across the hall from my own.
Fabulous. Just fabulous.
Ruan and I would sort out this strangeness between us one way or the other, and Mr. Owen—as usual—would be squarely in the middle of it.
