Page 41 of An Honorable Deception
But maybe he’d had it wrong. Maybe he couldn’t give his heart to anyone else until he’d fully won it back from Lavinia. Maybe he had to seeheras a true friend before he was ready for that—the missing piece in the years when he’d worked so hard to get over her but hadn’t been able to know if he’d managed it fully.
Marigold stood long enough to grab her usual hand weights and sat again. “I know you want to make her laugh. I appreciate that. Butwecan’t give her true joy, Yates. She can only find that in the Lord, and through Him, in herself.”
“We both know He works through His people, though.” Seeing her open her mouth for whatever her next argument would be, he shook his head and picked up his pace. “Stop. I hear your warning. I understand it. But you didn’t see how she looked at me last night when I tried to help her up from the floor.” A deliberate understatement of hishelp, yes. He wasn’t stupid. “She acted like I’d burned her. Like she couldn’t even talk to me anymore.”
His sister winced. “That’s not ... I didn’t mean...” She sighed. “Why is everything in life so complicated?”
He snorted a laugh and gave the rope a twist on every other jump. “She said it was because of Alethia. That she didn’t want to get in the way of anything that may ... develop. Between us.” It was the first time he’d given voice to the thought, and who could he test it on other than Marigold? Even if she frustrated the life out of him sometimes, she still occupied the largest portion of his world.
Marigold paused with the weight halfway up, her eyes going wide. “You and Alethia?” She set the weight down and jumped to her feet. Well, she didn’t jump. She stood. With a hand bracing her back. But any other time in life, she would have jumped. “I think this baby has blinded me. You like her? Like that?”
A strange little fizz filled him at the thought. Was that normal? Expected? He didn’t know. And didn’t know if it should make him smile or frown. “I like her.” He could have tacked on anof course, as if his liking was no different from Merritt’s or Marigold’s or Lavinia’s. He lifted his brows instead and went for honesty. “Doyoulike her? For me, I mean?”
His sister paused before him, a grin on her face. “I don’t know. I mean, I already claimed the falling-in-love-with-a-client script. It’s a bit redundant for you to play out the same idea.”
He snorted a laugh. “Not the same sort of client, I’d say. She’s...” He searched for the right word, but only one sprang to mind. “Haunted. I’m glad the Lord led her to us, but I don’t think our usual investigative skills are going to solve her real problems. I’m not saying a romance will either. I know it won’t. But I want to know her. To understand her. I want the chance to. Does that make sense?”
Marigold nodded and when she eased a bit closer, he took the hint and let the rope go still so he didn’t hit her with it. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his waist. “We’ll sort out where her ayah is. Bring justice to whoever tried to kill her. Then we’ll be normal people for her, friends she can rely on. You can court her. Fall in love. It’ll be brilliant.”
He wasn’t so sure it would be that simple, that her grace toward the Caesars and his home would extend to him when she realizedhewas Mr. A—and telling her would be necessary before any real commitments could happen. She needed to trust him with whatever haunted her. He needed to trust her with the secrets that kept food on the table.
Those were no small mountains to climb. He was game—but he couldn’t speak for her.
He dropped a kiss onto the top of Marigold’s head and nudged her away. “I forgive you for mortifying me with Lavinia. On the condition that you never, ever have such a conversation with Alethia.”
Marigold laughed and backed out of rope-swinging range again. “Forgiveness shouldn’t be conditional.”
He sent her a look and started skipping again. “I think I was a gem of a brother when it came to you and Merritt. I neveroncethreatened to dismember him ... though there may have been mention of feeding him to Leonidas if he hurt you. I think I deserve the same measure of respect when it comes tomypotential romance.”
She gave a too-serious nod. “Agreed. Only lions as threats. No mention of your delicate, fragile heart.”
They worked through the rest of their routines in peace, with the normal sounds of equipment and exertion and rain. She left the gymnasium before he did, but he didn’t mind that either. And when he walked outside after his usual hour, therain felt like heaven’s kiss on his hot skin. He tilted his face up to it and let it wash the sweat away.
He glanced toward the house, knowing that the rain would have kept everyone off the balconies this morning. But he spotted a figure standing at one of the French doors. Given only size and shape, he couldn’t have said whether it was Lavinia or Alethia. But given the position in the house, he knew it was their newest friend.
Zelda had muttered something about nightmares she’d been having, though she’d say no more than that. He hoped they hadn’t plagued her last night. Prayed that she stood there now with the faith that God held her in His hand. That her very legitimate worries would be resolved.
He knew she wasn’t looking out waiting for him to emerge or tracking his walk to the stables. She’d be worrying over Samira. Wondering who had tried to kill her, who had succeeded in killing her friend. Praying they weren’t still hunting her, that they wouldn’t target her family when her body never turned up.
He wiped rain and sweat from his face and hurried on his way. He didn’t like cases with so much at stake—life or death ought to be the realm of the police, not a PI firm. He questioned, for the thousandth time, whether he’d made the right decision in asking his friend at Scotland Yard to keep quiet about it and not file an official report. To not draw any official links between the murder of Mrs. Rheams, which had officially been blamed on street thugs, and the attempted murder of Alethia.
His instincts still said that bringing the police into it would have been dangerous. It would have made the papers, the culprits would have gone underground, Samira would have likely vanished for good, and another gunman likely would have been sent to silence Alethia forever.
At least now, no one knew where she was, or whether she was even alive. No one knew to come after her. He’d bought her that much safety at least.
Hector and Franco already had the stalls mostly mucked by the time he joined them, but they didn’t object as he grabbed his usual pitchfork and moved toward the two remaining ones. They simply smiled, greeted him in Romani, and went back to their conversation as Penelope jumped to her usual place on his shoulder and settled in for the ride.
It was the same conversation they had every Wednesday, arguing over which brother would tend the cassowaries and which would take the vardo to Alnwick for supplies. They knew very well that Franco would tend the birds and Hector would run the errands, but the debate was part of the routine, and Yates knew better than to tell them it was pointless.
He’d finished clearing one stall, refilling it with fresh straw, and was moving to the last one when the brothers called out their farewells. That didn’t give him pause. What made him straighten was when they called out a good morning—in English.
Given that, he wasn’t surprised when Lavinia dashed into the stables. Except that he was entirely surprised to see Lavinia dash into the stables, waving a magazine in her hand despite the rain, victory bright and beguiling on her face.
She was still dressed for the gymnasium, and he hadn’t seen her hair in anything but its current braid for over a week—unprecedented since she’d first put it up at seventeen. She hadn’t thought to grab an umbrella, so she was wet and bedraggled and clearly didn’t care a bit. “Look what I’ve found!”
He hadn’t heard that note of excitement in her voice since they were fifteen and she’d been the first to discoverthe new leopard cub curled up beside its mother in their cage. He planted the pitchfork so he could lean on it and moved Penelope’s tail out of the way when she flicked it in front of his mouth. “What have you found? And why are you out here in the rain to show me instead of showing Marigold inside?”
“I heard the water running into her tub and didn’t imagine even a friend as good as I should interrupt.” Grinning, she all but danced over to him, wielding the magazine like a trophy. “Look. Justlook.”
