Page 80 of Evidence of Evil
Without a word, he took the lantern from her and set about lighting it from the flint and tinder box in his coat pocket. “We’ll have to take the boot off before your foot swells—if it hasn’t done so already. I’ll cut it off if necessary.”
She tensed and had to concentrate on not yelping, which at least distracted her from the shock of his quick, deft fingers untying the laces of her boot, holding her calf just above the ankle while he eased off the boot.
Well, it might have been easy for him. It wasn’t for her. He touched the hem of her gown with clear intent. She hoped he didn’t feel her jump. Hastily and discreetly, she reached under her own skirts and pulled down her stocking. He brushed her fingers aside, rolling the stocking gently off her foot, which he inspected closely.
“Can you move it?” he asked.
She did so, side to side, and arched her foot. “It isn’t broken. I think I’ve sprained it.”
“I think you have. We should get one of the doctors to look at it. Either that or borrow Sarah Phelps’s wheelbarrow.”
“Bad taste, Solomon. But about Sarah, we need to go and see her.” She met his frowning gaze with a resurgence of excitement. “Sol, if she slept in the barn,who slept in her house?”
*
Solomon stared ather, almost forgetting her injury and the inappropriately tempting feel of her slender foot in his hand. “Of course… Frances had an arrangement with her. Most likely a forced one of blackmail. What on earth could she have known that Sarah would care about?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters.” Constance snatched her stocking from his fingers, shook it out, and, gritting her teeth, pulled it over her foot. She left it folded around her ankle and tried to rise.
At once, he helped her up to her one good foot and reached around her back.
“I can walk,” she said quickly. “If you just let me lean on your arm.”
“Just let me help you.” He spoke more curtly than he’d intended, probably because her desire for distance hurt him in some way he wasn’t ready to examine. Elizabeth’s revelations about Constance, leading to his own about himself, were still too new and confusing.
Without waiting for permission, he picked her up again, one arm at her back, the other beneath her knees as though she were a small child. If only he could think of her that way. She was light enough, but her curves and her scent were all woman, all Constance.
He marched along in silence, which she did not break either. Turning onto the road, he changed his grip slightly. She was no longer laughing into his coat, but nor was she rigid with outrage.
“It needs a bandage,” he said abruptly, “at the very least.”
“I can see to that myself at The Willows. I expect it will be fine in the morning.”
He found himself smiling because she was always so positive.
“I thought we would solve it all tonight,” she said with a sigh. “That was overoptimistic.”
“If you’re right about Sarah, then we are very close.”
“If we can persuade her to tell us who Frances met there.”
“If she knows. Unless… Frances was petty enough to exert her power just because she could. Would she have thrown Sarah out of her own house, for no real reason but punishment for some slight? Would she substitute her home comforts for Sarah’s hovel for no real gain?”
“You think Sarah did it after all?” Constance said, raising her head to peer into his face. She brought the lantern up for a closer look. “Because she’d had enough of the blackmail?”
His lips twitched. “She has a wheelbarrow.”
“But would she have dumped the body in Sir Humphrey’s lake? He seems to be one of the few people she tolerates.”
“He is. Elizabeth isn’t.”
She fell back into silence.
Disappointingly, Dr. Laing’s cottage appeared to be in darkness.
“We shouldn’t disturb them,” she said, “not for something so trivial.”
Reluctantly, Solomon walked on past the gate. Which was when he caught a glimmer of light at the side of the house. It seemed to be coming from the back, probably the kitchen. On impulse, he swung back, changing his grip of her to one arm sothat he could open the gate, then walked up the path that led around the house to the back garden.
