Page 69 of An Honorable Deception
“Well. Perhaps the next day.” She sent him a grin and leaned back on her palms. “I don’t know why you’re so worried. They sent a wire this morning, didn’t they? They’re on their way home.”
Yates clenched his jaw, then pried it open again. “We sent one when last we were there, too, thinking everything was neat and tidy. Then we had the rug pulled out from under us.” He still couldn’t shake the frustration with himself. He’dknownthat he shouldn’t have left Samira in that place. He ought to have gone back as soon as he had Lucy on the ground. Waited at the window. He should have sent Barclay there straightaway at midnight instead of meeting there at dawn.
He should have saved her when he had the chance.
But she’d been gone. It didn’t help to realize that she’d likely been gone by the time he’d seen Lucy to safety, if she’d been in one of the two automobiles at the Barremore residence. He’d still failed her.
And now Lavinia was there. Deliberately making dangerous men think she was the loose thread they’d been waiting to snip. Because no argument he’d thrown at her yesterday, nor plea he’d made, nor threat to lock her in her room had done so much as delay her by a minute.
Marigold scooted a bit so that she could bump their arms together. “Will it make you feel better if I admit you were right about bringing Lavinia aboard?”
Yates let out a slow breath. “I’m not so sure I was.”
“What?” She laughed, bumped him again. “How can you say that? She’s practically taken over.”
“More like it’s taken overher.” He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the horizon. “I’m worried for her.”
“Because she’s so focused? I know it isn’t quite healthy, but we were like that, too, on our first case—or five. And given the nature of this one? That Alethia ishere, that they’ve become such good friends? How could she be anythingbutdetermined?”
“It’s not just that. It’s...” The fact that she was avoiding them all—even Marigold. It was that when he’d picked her up from her father’s house in London, she’d looked as though she’d spent the morning crying. It was that every time she laughed, she chased it with a wince, as if she expected to be chided for it.
It was that since that morning in the stables, she’d done her best to melt into the background and disappear. And that wasn’t how Lavinia Hemming was meant to be. “I think it’s my fault.”
Marigold snorted. “Brother mine, you know I am so proud of your sense of responsibility, but you can’t take the blame for every one of Lavinia’s moods. She’s had a horrible year. This is part of her grief.”
“No, it isn’t.” Or was it? Had it been grief that had knocked her off that wall? “Lionfeathers. I don’t know what’s what with her anymore.”
Marigold drew in a breath, let it back out. “Maybe ... you shouldn’t agonize over it. Maybe you should let her be. Let her feel how she feels and stop trying to fix it.”
He wasn’t trying tofixit—he was only trying not to damage it more. He’d barely graced the same room as her in the last two weeks, other than when he had to, to spare her the obvious discomfort she still felt whenever he was nearby. But it didn’t seem to be helping any.
Marigold lifted a hand and rubbed at her temple. “Do youthink it’s still my fault? The argument we had? I thought ... I can’t quite believe she’d still be letting it bother her at this point. Usually by now she’d have gone back to ignoring my advice and acting however she pleases.”
Heat crept up his neck. “I don’t think it’s you.”
She turned toward him. “You say that as though you think it’syou.”
Sometimes it was annoying to have a sister who knew him so well. And sometimes, for the exact same reasons, it felt like a gift straight from heaven. Who else could he really talk to? Merritt, who had never looked twice at any woman but Marigold and hadn’t given a thought to settling down until he was thirty? Xavier, who gave a thought toeverywoman and couldn’t stay focused on one for more than a month?
He tilted his head up to watch the billowy white clouds skuttle across the sky. “She kissed me. The morning we left for London.”
Marigold was so still he would have sworn she wasn’t even breathing. Not blinking. Just staring at him. When finally she spoke a full thirty seconds later, she had to clear her throat first. “I need more information than that. Did she give you a sisterly peck on the cheek that got your heart racing, or...?”
A flare of anger—that was always her first assumption, wasn’t it? That he was the one blowing things out of proportion, that he was the one at risk of being hurt. Then a wash of shame. He would take being hurt over causing it. “No. Not like that. Definitely not like that.”
She pressed her lips together, eyes still on his face. “And you...?”
“Kissed her back.” He didn’t have to say that he’d forgotten himself, that he hadn’tmeantto. She would know thatpart. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “Then I remembered myself and asked her what in the world she was thinking.”
Marigold swallowed audibly. “You took my line, didn’t you. Accused her of toying with you.”
Not a question. Which meant he could give not-an-answer. He shrugged.
Marigold dragged in another breath. “What did you say?”
Did the details matter? He wanted to brush her question off, shrug again. But talking through everything with her was too much a habit—even if it had taken him weeks to muster the nerve. “I heard the two of you talking last autumn when you were trying to get her to invite Xavier back to the area, to see if his company could help her heal. I heard her tell you that her thoughts on love hadn’t changed—that if ever she felt it stirring, she would run hard and fast the other way. That she couldn’t trust her heart, that she trusted it even less now than she had before.”
“Yates.” She turned to face him, expression serious. “Whatexactlydid you say?”
