Page 21 of An Honorable Deception
His grin no doubt turned a bit impish—but she was asking for it. Without a moment’s hesitation, he scooped her up and hoisted her over his shoulder, like Franco had always done with Zelda during their damsel-in-distress act. Franco, the make-believe villain, would run about the ring with the shrieking Zelda and then Leonidas the Lion would jump from his veiled cage, coming to the rescue.
Leonidas wasn’t inside to rescue Lavinia, though, which meant thathershrieks—which were mostly laughter—simply reverberated down the corridors as he ran. She beat a fist or two against his back, but with no more force than Zelda’s feigned fight, and her continued laughter made her “Put me down, you oaf!” sound more like the expected line than any real insistence.
Though who was he to disobey a lady? He pretended to lose his grip, like Franco always had, so that she slipped a few inches toward the floor.
Did she remember the act? Given her new shriek of laughter, he wasn’t certain at first, but then she called out, “No, not onto the forest floor! The beasts roam here!”
He couldn’t have kept from grinning had he tried. He let loose the exaggerated maniacal laughter that went with Franco’s role and charged into the study.
Marigold stood inside, her hands on her hips—which made her stomach look enormous, though he was too wise to say so—and an amused scowl on her face. “Seriously, Yates. Lady Alethia is going to think you’re torturing poor Lavinia.”
“Poor Lavinia started it.” He gripped her waist and lowered her from his shoulder, though he left her dangling a few inches off the floor. “Didn’t you, poor Lavinia?”
For a moment, with her cheeks flushed from laughter and being upside down and the joy of a silly act in her eyes, she looked like the old Lavinia. The one who had never been ill, who had learned no secrets about her family, who had never faced any pain greater than not getting the role she wanted in their little child-run theater.
Looking back, he could see that she’d been spoiled—they all had been. She’d been selfish and elitist and rude. But she’d also been bright and joyful and selfless, because children were so good at being contradictory things.
He’d loved that Lavinia. But he liked this one far better—the one who smiled at herself and tried to look casual as she dangled there. “I don’t know what in the world you mean, my lord. I made a simple observation of fact and was rewarded with such boorish behavior as I’ve never experienced in my life.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I would invite my lady to remember that I know her ticklish spots.”
Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”
With his free hand, he made a tickling motion, aimed at her ribs.
“All right!” Laughing again, she squirmed to be put down. “Imayhave started it.”
He put her down, mostly because of the look Marigold was giving him. It wasn’t scolding, it was ... concerned. Bemused.
Blast. He was in for another probing “Are you certain you’re not still in love with Lavinia?” speech. She meant well—he knew she did. She only wanted to make sure his heart wasn’t smashed to bits when Lavinia rejected him. Again.
With a bit of luck, the roll of his eyes he sent her way would say what he didn’t dare. He wouldn’t behave so, joke so, flirt so if his heart was in any danger. He knew very well that Lavinia wasn’t for him. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do everything in his power to bring a bit of the light back to her eyes. Restore a bit of the old Lavinia to the new.
He wasn’t so sure his sister got the silent message. She kept sending him sideways glances as he moved toward their dossiers. Ignoring her was his only real option, so he hummed the song that had always been played during that particular skit of Franco and Zelda’s and pulled out the drawers forRandV. Did they even have anything on either Rheams or Vernon? He couldn’t recall.
“I haven’t been in here in ... well, I don’t know that I’ve ever beeninhere. I know I peeked in once or twice when we were children.” Lavinia examined the room. “Your father’s old study?”
“Mm. And now the home of one copy of our files. We have a duplicate at the London house, since so much of our business focuses there.” Marigold moved to the tall cupboard of case files. “These are the cases—filed under the name of the person who hires us, each one compiling data and information that we uncover during our research and surveillance.”
Yates glanced over in time to see Lavinia’s jaw drop as she beheld the collection of thick files. “You have been quite busy, it seems.”
Marigold grinned. “We certainly have. Leonidas can’t survive on table scraps, you know.”
Lavinia smiled, too, and spun to face him, her hands clasped behind her back as if afraid to touch any of the files. “And what are those?”
“Dossiers.” He thumbed his way through theRsectionuntil he found the single sheet of paper they had on one Wilbert Rheams. “Here we are.”
Lavinia was frowning. “What is the difference between a dossier and a case file?”
“We often learn more in our surveillance than is relevant for a particular case but could be useful again.” He held out the Rheams dossier as an example. “We create files for people rather than cases, though any cases they come up in are mentioned in that section. It saves us time later—given that, as I imagine you know, society isn’t as large as the uninitiated may think. The same players show up time and again, in many cases.”
Her green eyes alight again, she reached for the page.
FROMTHEDOSSIEROF
Mr. Wilbert Rheams
HEIGHT:5’ 7”
