Page 60 of Ghost in the Garden
“Yes. A couple had taken her from the stand to Victoria Street, and picked her up at midnight by arrangement at the corner of Tothill Lane.”
“It’s got to be Iris Fraser,” Constance said with some satisfaction. “I looked in the Lamberts’ stables, by the way, and they don’t have a donkey, only carriage horses, so we might not even have been following Gregg’s body last night. If Mrs. Fraser is our ghost, though, why would she kill Gregg?”
“To get his rents?” Solomon suggested. “Or maybe her husband did it in a fit of jealousy.”
“And locked his body in Lambert’s cellar?”
“We don’t really know how cozy Lambert and Gregg were. He might have had a key.”
“Like the ghost.” Constance sighed, then held her breath, cocking her ear to hear better.
“I heard movement behind us,” Solomon breathed.
Constance, who had heard something altogether different, veered across the lane, dragging Solomon with her, to a rather run-down building. She put her ear to the door. Unmistakably, a donkey brayed within.
She grinned. “I’ll bet any of the servants could have broken in here and borrowed the donk—”
He stepped closer, placing his fingers urgently against her lips. She stared up at him in startlement. But he really had heard something else. And it was behind them. Someone’s stealthy footsteps.
Her blood chilled. Had someone noticed her leaving the kitchen and followed her? A burly man moved among the shadows of the lane. He was not exactly subtle. More of a brute than a spy. Surely one of Lambert’s bodyguards…
And she had to have a reason for being here with Solomon that was not searching for donkeys or comparing notes on Lambert’s villainy. She slid her arms around Solomon’s neck and tugged him closer.
He came easily, co-operating at once, not only bending his head to hers, but covering her mouth with his as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
It is. Oh God, it is…
While the footman’s casual footsteps grew nearer, Solomon seemed to be entirely focused on kissing her. The thoroughness of his acting was totally unexpected. He pressed her closer into the doorway, caressing the sides of her breasts, her waist, her hips, while he kissed her on and on, deeper and deeper.
This was what she had wanted that last night of their last case when she had lain in his arms, so dreadfully aware of her own desire and his. And it was…
She had no words. Instead of trying to find them, she opened her eyes, peering at the footman—surely it was Pat—as he sauntered down the lane, hands in pockets, whistling in a manner that somehow told her he was vastly entertained. He turned the corner of the lane.
“He’s gone,” she muttered against Solomon’s lips.
One of his hands stilled, the other came up and touched her cheek, the corner of her mouth, but he did not stop kissing her. Even though he no longer needed to touch her. Bemused by this stunning fact, she forgot to hold her own feelings in check, and they washed over her in a tidal wave of sweet awareness and heavy desire.
Oh, Solomon, Solomon, I can never come back from this…
Some remnant of sanity must have remained hanging by a thread, for somehow she was able to drag her mouth free. “You can stop pretending now.”
She drawled the words, meaning them to be light, but her voice shook damnably. She could not give him this advantage over her, betray this weakness that would appall them both just as soon as he stood a few more inches away from her.
“I stopped pretending a long time ago,” he said huskily. He cleared his throat and stood back. “Although I admit this is neither the time nor the place.” He tucked an escaped lock of hair behind her ear and straightened her shawl before drawing her hand through the crook of his arm. “Let us walk more sedately and make our plans for the morrow.”
She resented that he could even think at that moment, but she walked blindly forward, one foot in front of the other, and wondered how she would ever live with this.
With an effort, she said, “Angela believes the ghost won’t come without the fog. It never has before.”
“And what do you believe?” he asked.
“That she comes every Thursday and Saturday without fail, but when it’s misty, she changes her routine, coming and going earlier. She probably has the non-foggy days timed to perfection, so that she avoids the garden patrols and walks boldly through the garden to the cellar while everyone else is busy around the dining room and can’t see her. On foggy days, she takes longer because she can’t see so well, and probably comes earlier or later. The house staff probably do things out of time too, so everything is just very slightly out of schedule, and mistakes are made.”
She’d grasped on to this explanation, stumbled over it by accident with some desperation, though as she blurted it out, it made a kind of sense. Which was a huge relief. It meant she could escape this unbearable moment, hide what Solomon had done to her, what she had done to herself by caring, by wanting more than she could ever have. He had always got through her guard, ever since he had crashed into her, saving her life by his lightning-swift reaction. Now she had to rebuild her armor, and she couldn’t do it with him anywhere near.
“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully.
“Good,” she said, slipping her hand free of his arm. “Tomorrow, then. Come earlier. Goodnight.”
