Page 78 of Murder in Moonlight
She glanced at the rain drizzling down the front hall window. “Why not?”
“Do you play often, Mrs. Goldrich?”
“When I have the opportunity.”
He bowed her into the billiard room. “I imagine there are not so many of those for a widow.”
“Do you find it sad that I play against myself?” she asked.
“At least you will always win.”
She laughed, and he smiled as he took two cues from the stand and offered her one. She took it, then rummaged among the others, choosing another that she swapped for the one Davidson had given her. He watched the process with tolerant amusement.
“You have a suspicious nature, Mrs. Goldrich.”
“I have a careful nature and have grown used to making independent decisions.”
“So who made the decision about you and Randolph?” he asked. The table was already set up, so he gestured toward it to signify she should begin.
“What decision was that?” She chalked the tip of her cue.
“Well, he no longer lives in your pocket. Does he imagine he can do better now he is the head of Winsom and Bolton? Or have you jilted the poor fellow for Grey’s riches?”
She eyed him thoughtfully. “I can’t make up my mind whether you are deliberately offensive for theatrical affect, or whether you really don’t have any manners.”
His smile only broadened. “And what—er…independent conclusion have you come to?”
“I’m still debating the issue. I don’t believe you are an idiot, so I rather incline toward theatrical effect. Though of course you may be so in love with your own cleverness that you believe you can make such remarks without anyone understanding the offense. You can carry the act of ‘blunt new man’ too far.”
“It’s not an act. Iama blunt new man.”
“And you feel that, as such,” she said, bending over the table and smoothly hitting the white ball with her cue, “you are free of the obligations of a gentleman?”
“I see no reason to flatter just because someone calls herself a lady.”
“Why, Mr. Davidson, you have taken me in such dislike, I am surprised you wish to play with me.”
“I don’t dislike you in the slightest.” He took his shot. Constance barely looked at it. “In fact, you intrigue me greatly. What do you believe makes a gentleman? The mere luck of his birth?”
“Of course not. It is a matter of behavior. Take our murderer, for example.”
Davidson, about to take his next shot, mishit the ball and scowled at Constance.
She smiled seraphically and stepped forward to the table.
“You think murder is only committed by those not regarded as gentlemen?” he mocked.
“Oh, no, I am not so naïve. By its very act, murder is hardly gentlemanly conduct. And yet there is a belief that a gentleman kills face to face—like a soldier, or a duelist. Mr. Winsom was killed by a stab in the back.”
“Therefore, not by a gentleman?” Davidson said in disbelief.
She glanced back at him from the table, and her stomach gave a sickening jolt, for his expression had turned ugly.
“Are you and Grey trying to push the blame for this murder onto me? Because I am a self-made man and not a gentleman born?”
He lunged at her so quickly she would have been pinned to the table had she not whisked herself aside, almost falling back against the wall. He followed her, swinging up his cue as though to strike her.
It was a long time since she had been in such a situation, since she had allowed such a situation. But old instinct refused to let her show fear. She gazed into his eyes, her brows slightly raised, even as the cue descended toward her face. At the lastmoment, he shifted the angle and held it horizontal across her throat.
