Page 12 of Murder in Moonlight
She set her candle down on the desk. “What did you find?”
The tiniest spark of surprise glinted in his dark eyes. “Nothing of great interest to me. Perhaps it is to you. What are you looking for?”
“You first,” she said politely.
His teeth gleamed in what looked like a genuine smile. “You have style, Mrs. Silver. Would you not prefer to join forces than work against each other?”
“Since I don’t know what you are working toward, I cannot say. What is it you suspect of our host?”
“What makes you think I suspect him of anything?”
She lifted her brows. “Solomon Grey has no need to steal anyone’s petty cash. You have already admitted you seek information. At least tell me if you have found what you are looking for.”
There was a pause. “Not yet. You? Shall I move over?” He actually stepped aside to give her access to the open drawer, but even as she speculated whether or not to accept the improper offer—after all, so far, all the wrongdoing was his—his gaze shifted beyond her.
A frown flickered, and he brushed past her so swiftly she had no time to move aside. The echo of distinctive scent teased her senses, half remembered, wholly intriguing.
She found herself following him to the window.
“Did you see that?” he breathed.
“What?”
“Something glinted outside. Then a shadow vanished into the trees.”
“I don’t see anything,” she said, truthfully. “No lantern lights.”
He did not answer, merely strode back to the desk, snapped the open drawer shut, and snatched up the nearest candle—hers—before making for the door.
Intrigued, Constance fetched the remaining candle and hurried after him.
Without blundering into any furniture, they got to the French windows of the drawing room. Constance unlocked them as shehad seen Mrs. Winsom do, and again he brushed past her, either from rudeness or for her protection. She reserved judgment as to which.
He set off purposefully along the garden path toward the trees. She hurried with him. Her candle flickered out, but it made little difference. The full moon seemed to flood them with light, making the familiar landscape new and different and more than a little uncanny.
Country noises were different to a town’s. Constance had known both the dangerous, dark alleys of the London slums, and the street-lit, well-patrolled streets of Mayfair. She survived well in either, because the threats were always distinctly human. Here, her imagination ran riot.
The shadows were new. Night creatures scurried and called in the distance. Trees loomed, menacing from above, reaching out with their branches and whispering leaves. Hedges hid unknowable, lurking risks. The air seemed thick with generations of ghosts stretching back to a time beyond history. God knew she did not belong here.
She stumbled over a root. Grey, who had not appeared to be paying any attention to her, caught her hand to steady her, and she was rattled enough to grasp it as they moved on.
He seemed to be following his nose, entering a copse only briefly before reemerging at the other side of the house, beneath the terrace where they’d had tea that afternoon. The formal garden, whence Randolph had tried to entice her, smelled strongly of rosemary and pine and flowers she couldn’t name—or perhaps it was the perfume of long-dead women.
And when did I become so ridiculously fanciful?
Pull yourself together, Constance Silver…
“I still don’t see anyone,” she breathed.
“Neither do I.” His low voice seemed to vibrate through his fingers into hers, reminding her she still hung on to him. Nor was she ready to let him go.
He halted, peering ahead and then to either side. His breath hitched, and then he set off toward the swing beyond the pond and the weeping willow.
“What?” she whispered. “What do you see?”
“Something glinted again. Something that shouldn’t be there…”
She saw it then, too, and he was quite right. The blade of a large, bone-handled kitchen knife should not have been in the garden, beneath the swing. It most certainly should not have been buried between the shoulder blades of a man.
