Page 2 of Her Magnificent Mistake
Bull nodded distractedly. “I’ll get ye some new ones.”
“Brother, I am thirty-two years old. I am perfectly capable of buying myself some socks which are not worn at the heels.”
“Aye, Marsh, but ye’ll choose boringbrown.” Finally, a glimpse of the brother she loved, when he sent her a crooked smile. “Ye ken what I think ofbrown. Nae sense of style.”
“I have a perfectly adequate sense of style,” she sniffed, settling into the chair and meeting his smirk with a brow lifted in challenge. “It just happens to be one which does not think ofbrownas a fashion crime. In fact, my latest purchase is a brown gown. With brown trimmings.”
As she’d hoped, such a horror pulled Bull from his doldrums. He mimed a dagger plunging into his heart, then gasped and slumped in his chair.
Marcia hid her grin.
So often, in the last two decades, it had been the two of them against the world.
It is not as though the daughter of a duke has much to complain about.
It was the truth: she didn’t. Da and Flick were loving parents who’d raised their children to stay true to their hearts…even if that meant Marcia had turned down every offer of marriage and scandalized the whole country by starting her own career.
The sign out front—Bull Lindsay Detective Group—had been the only thing Da had stood firm on. When Marcia and Bull had announced they planned to open their own agency, the Bull Lindsay and Lady Marcia Detective Group, with the help of Bull’s contacts and Marcia’s brains, their father had put his foot down.
And when the foot was down, it stayed down.
I ken something about being a target, he’d growled at them, with Flick’s support.If ye’re both determined to go through with this, and we trust ye’ve considered the risks, then ye still cannae useyername, Marcia. It’s too dangerous.
Unfortunately, Bull had agreed, hence the simplified organization name. He’d wantedhishead to be the only one with a target on it, if their cases turned sour or an enemy wanted revenge.
Or—Marcia remembered the times her brother had returned to the office bruised and bleeding—a client did.
But this place was hers as much as it was Bull’s, despite the fact his name was on the sign and he lived in the next room. Not that she was concerned; she much preferred her chambers in Peasgoode House in Belgravia, anyhow.
“So.” Marcia made a show of lifting her new boot and planting her heel on the desk, then leaning back in the chair and lifting the other to cross her ankles. “Bad news.”
“Nay,” he scowled scowlishly. “I’m just thinking.”
“Thinking about bad news.” She didn’t give him time to object. “You know that no one can see you from outside, right? Those windows are twelve feet off the ground, and there is a glare on the glass.”
“I think better in the dark.”
“Bullshite,” she shot right back with a grin. “What is in the letter?”
He hesitated, and the realization sent a bolt of dread to her stomach. Marcia’s shoulders tensed and she regretted her too-relaxed, too-nonchalant pose.
But then, with a sigh, Bull leaned forward and flicked the envelope to her. “The Crown needs our help.”
Eighteen years ago, Bull had saved the life of one of the royal princesses. It had been part of the culmination of a case that their father and his friends had been working on for years, and Bull’s timely knife-throw had helped things along. Despite being only a lad, he’d very much come to Princess Louise’s attention as someone intelligent, nimble, and capable.
At the time, they hadn’t realized she was the center of a spiderweb of information gathering.
Marcia had never been certain how much of the impetus for the Lindsay Group had come from Bull, and how much had come from their royal patroness, who occasionally needed civilian help in her investigations. But the result was the same; when the Crown saidTake this case…they took the case.
“I hope this one will pay as well as the last one,” she murmured, trying to pull out the thin paper inside. How had Bull managed to refold it so neatly? “What is it this time?”
“The Tostinham murder.”
Wellthatjerked her attention away from the envelope. “Murder?” she repeated, brows raised. “So the autopsy is complete?”
A fortnight before, the new Baron Tostinham had died in his sleep—the third Baron Tostinham to have died in the last fourteen months, all of them equally abruptly.
Bull nodded grimly, his never-still fingers tapping a pattern against the arm of his chair. “The Crown wants them all treatedas murder, even if there’s been nae evidence. She—I mean, our contact thinks the coincidences are too…coincidental.”
