Page 43 of The Trick of the Treasure
“I approve of our new habit of greeting,” she said a little huskily.
He smiled. “So do I.”
She slipped free. “However. Don’t youdaretell me we are partners in business and in life when you keep such vital things from me. If you don’t trust me, say so and we end it now. All of it.”
She knew him now, the man with the direct and yet fully veiled eyes, and he was feeling his way.
“Silver and Grey?” he hazarded.
“Silver is fine alone.”
“Our engagement?”
“Over. You can go off around the world as you always intended. I will even wish you well on your quest and hope you find who and what you’re looking for.”
“I have found her,” he said evenly.
She shook her head. “No you haven’t, Solomon. If you had, you would not keep things as important as this from me. You would not dissemble and lie to me.”
“I did not.”
“But you did. You told me you were going to the locksmith and the solicitor yesterday afternoon, but in reality you went this morning, didn’t you? That’s why you were late.”
A gleam of something very like amusement lightened his serious, dark eyes for an instant, and then vanished. “It is. I…I don’t know why I didn’t tell you, but I do know it was nothing to do with trust, or anything to do with you, in fact. It is my…habits, if you like. I am used to being alone, to finding my brother always being my first priority, however weak the clue to his whereabouts. I managed to keep my mind on the Lloyd case for much of the afternoon, but only if I did not speak of David.”
“It did not once enter your head that I could help?”
He looked bewildered by that. “But you did. You do. Your very existence is my anchor, my salvation.”
“But not as your partner. We have been here before.”
“Yes, as my partner! Damn it, Constance, how could I take you to a place like the Crown and Anchor?”
“Sol, I cut my eyeteeth in festering holes like the Crown and Anchor. And worse. It is pleasant to be treated as precious and delicate sometimes, but I am not.”
His arm slipped around her waist. “You are to me. I am flawed, Constance. I would be the first to admit it. In my shock, David was my business, not ours, not anything to do with the case.”
“Only he is, isn’t he? He’s in the photograph, one of Lloyd’s crew.”
“They took him on at Madagascar and he seems to have remained in London a bare couple of nights. He has alreadysailed and I don’t even know if he was David. They called him Johnny, and his features are not so very clear in the photograph. On top of which, neither Lloyd nor Sydney looked twice at me. Wouldn’t they if I had truly looked like this Johnny?”
“I don’t know. It strikes me that neither of them pays a great deal of attention to anyone but themselves. Not to a lowly, mixed-race sailor, and not even to you or me.”
“Oh, they pay attention to you,” Solomon said cynically.
“They don’tseeme. They could walk up to me in my establishment and see only my figure, the supposedly beddable female, not the woman helping them find their blasted treasure.”
A frown tugged his brow. “Do you believe that?”
She waved one warily dismissive hand. “Up to a point. How do you know Johnny-possibly-David has sailed?”
“I found the ship’s captain and he directed me to the Crown and Anchor, where I found two of the sailors who had disembarked with him. They told me he’d sailed the previous day.”
“And you believed them?”
He blinked.
“Solomon, people who drink at the Crown and Anchor are not the sort of people who always want to be found. The men you spoke to might have been from a different ship entirely. They might not have even met Johnny. They just clam up or tell you a bunch of nonsense in the hope you grease their palms. Which I presume you did.”
