Page 19 of Murder in Moonlight
“Interesting,” was all Grey said.
For no reason, that hurt her. She curled her lip. “I am well aware of my true reputation, but he is not. I suppose you think whores deserve to be treated like that.”
He turned his head, focusing on her face. “No, I don’t. I just don’t see why you are so angry. He is young and frightened and might just have killed his father. You are older and wiser and you already know that when it comes down to it, you have me to prove your alibi.”
“After midnight,” she blurted. “Not before.Youcould have done it before you entered the library.”
“So could you. Though I must point out that we probably saw the killer pass from the library window.”
“I only have your word for that.Ididn’t see anyone. You could have made it up to get me out of the library and keepme busy while you carried on searching for whatever it was you sought there in the first place.”
“I could,” he agreed. “But I am not always quite that devious. I had no reason to kill him, you know. I wanted information only he could give me. And he didn’t have time in the end.”
“What sort of information?”
In silence, he walked three paces. Four. “He might have seen my brother when he was in Jamaica.”
Whatever she had expected, it was not that. “Winsom left Jamaica more than twenty years ago.”
“So did my brother. Maybe. Certainly, I have not seen him since.”
Twenty years ago, he could not have been more than ten. How old was his brother? He gave her no time to ask.
He said quickly, “Has it struck you that as the outsiders at Greenforth, you or I might well be the preferred suspects?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “To say nothing of my false pretenses. And your prying into drawers.”
He did not look offended by the accusation. In fact, he might not have been listening. “I have been thinking about your friends, the Tizsas.”
Dragan Tizsa, physician, refugee, and one-time revolutionary, had somehow married Lady Grizelda Niven, a daughter of the Duke of Kelburn. They were an eccentric couple, devoted to art, music, social justice, and mysteries—and to each other, which was rather endearing. Constance had met them the same night she met Solomon, and they had solved the mystery surrounding her old friend Elizabeth…
“We could use their help,” she admitted. “But we can hardly invite them into someone else’s house of mourning.”
“No. But…we could try to solve this murder ourselves. If only we trusted each other.”
“We don’t.”
“True.” He walked on, then glanced back at her. “Do you want to try anyway?”
She didn’t even think about it. “Yes.” She drew a deep breath. “I hadn’t learned what I wished to, either. I thought…”
“You thought what?”
She glared at him, daring him to laugh at her. “That Walter Winsom might be my father.”
*
It seemed shecould always snatch Solomon’s breath. He wasn’t surprised that she had agreed so easily to his suggestion of working together to discover the truth—they needed each other’s support in this house. But in all his speculations as to the reasons for her presence here, he had never even thought of anything so…sad.
The woman ran a bawdy house, albeit a very discreet and expensive one. He knew that beneath the beauty she used as a marketable weapon, she was hard as nails. She had to be. But she looked after her women. She had even looked after Elizabeth and Lady Griz. He allowed her curiosity and compassion. But this… This admission, if true, betrayed a yearning to belong to someone, to have roots and a family, a loneliness and vulnerability quite at odds with her outward character. Loneliness was something he understood only too well.
He too could be guilty of prejudice.
In the dappled sunlight of the woods, she glared up at him, daring him to laugh. Sympathy would be just as unwelcome. And for that reason, he believed her.
“Was he?” he asked, carefully indifferent.
“My father? Who knows? As a youth, he certainly raked around the stews of London. A friend who had dealings with Randolph told me she knew other whores who had known hisfather in the past. Also, that Walter had fathered an illegitimate girl, more than twenty-five years ago. That could have been me.”
