Page 50 of The Business of Blood
“How is Agnes Sawyer?” I asked, grasping on to distraction with both hands.
My question seemed to please him. “She’s still in shock. But she’s surrounded by loved ones and will pull through this with faith and heart. She’ll have the little one to comfort her, God willing.”
“Is it possible her child doesn’t belong to Mr. Sawyer? Or that Mr. Sawyer had a lover? You were their confessor, the absolver of their sins. Maybe infidelity is the reason for—”
His smile crumpled into a grimace of disgust. “Oh, Fiona, don’t go searching for fire where there is no smoke.” His eyes shifted to scan the chapel, presumably to make certain we were still alone.
“There may be smoke,” I said defensively. “Look!” I produced the turquoise beads from my pocket.
He squinted. “Where did you find those?”
“In Mr. Sawyer’s blood.”
“You think they belonged to Mrs. Sawyer?”
“I think they belong to the killer. But I’m not sure what to do with them. They could be dangerous to me.”
Brows only slightly darker than his lambent hair pulled low over his eyes. “Dangerous how?”
“It’s complicated.” I sighed, swirling a finger in the pool of smooth stones. “I just need to consider what to do next.”
He nudged my shoulder with his. “So, you came to me for advice?”
“Not exactly,” I muttered. “You’d only counsel me to do the right thing.”
“Probably. And am I to take it you already know what that is?”
“I know the easy thing and the hard thing.”And the dangerous thing,I added silently.
“Nothing that matters is easy.” He glanced at St. Peter. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that.”
“But must everything be so complicated?” I groused. “I’m so mired in these details, I can’t step back and see the picture they form. I feel as if there’s an arrow pointing somewhere, at someone, I just…don’t have a sense of the direction.”
“The devil, as they say, is in the details.” Aiden plucked a bead out of my cupped hand, inspecting it in the light of the colored glass. “Maybe you need a fresh pair of eyes. Tell me what you’re struggling with.”
Where to start? “I shouldn’t even be involved in all of this, should I? Frank Sawyer’s murder, I mean?”
“Then, why are you?” He shrugged.
“Because someone called me there. Because I found these beads, and I thought they belonged to Aramis Night Horse because of the American’s connection to turquoise. But, on my way to deliver them to…” Did I want to tell him just who I was delivering them to? Probably not. “Well, I was accosted by a man claiming to be Jack the Ripper.”
“Holy God, Fiona! Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” He dropped the bead onto the tiles of the floor where it rolled under a pew, instantly forgotten.
“Not really. I mean, he cut my neck a little, but it’s nothing.”
His pale skin blanched an unnatural, ghostly shade, blotches of red creeping up his neck from beneath the collar. “Cut your neck—alittle?” he echoed breathlessly before pawing at my lace collar. “Let me see.”
I’d never in a million years pictured Aidan Fitzpatrick undoing my blouse again, and yet, here we were. He only released enough buttons beneath my chin to reveal the bandage at my nape. He peeled it back and made a sound I’d never heard before.
I hissed as his fingers tested the flesh next to the wound. “Whoever stitched this did a decent job,” he remarked. “But it wasn’t done at hospital or in a doctor’s surgery.”
I was so distracted by his face so close to mine, by the scent of incense and forbidden fruit, the truth sort of just—slipped out. “Courtesy of the Hammer, if you believe it. I was found in an alley behind the Velvet Glove, unconscious. The Hammer nursed me in his private chamber. The Shiloh room, he calls it. Did you know his father was a doctor?” Oh, dear, I must have been nervous. Too much information spilled out of me, unbidden.
“I know very little about the Hammer.” Aiden’s voice remained measured, careful, though his expression was anything but. “I’m amazed thatyou’reacquainted with him. That his hands were on you.”
“I wouldn’t call us anything so friendly as acquaintances,” I hedged. I mean, he’d seen me half-naked, but that hardly counted since blood was involved. “Both he and Mr. Night Horse forswore any knowledge of Mr. Sawyer. And Aramis Night Horse similarly denied that the beads belonged to him.” I hoped to distract Aidan from the part where the Hammer’s hands were on me with the details of the mystery.
I could admit, his displeasure ignited a tiny spark of warmth within me.
