Page 39 of And Then There Was the One
“Have you ever thought of striking out on your own?” she asked curiously. “Setting up your own agency? Surely a history of employment with Fitzgibbons would speak well of your abilities—he could even refer cases to you that were too laborious for him.”
“Ha. No.” He laughed, but it was dark and a bit sharp and so totally unlike any noise that she had heard him make thus far in their acquaintance that she was momentarily taken aback, any further response she might have uttered dying on her lips. He glanced at her, and it was difficult to tell in the shadowy darkness, but she thought she saw his features soften slightly. “Sorry. It’s just—Fitzgibbons would never refer a single case to me. He won’t refer cases toanyone—he likes being highly sought after, even if he accepts almost none of the work that’s sent to him.”
Georgie frowned. “I don’t think I like Fitzgibbons very much, based on all you’ve told me.”
“I don’t dislike him,” he said mildly. “I just… wish that the man I knew was the one he’d once been.” He paused for another moment, then glanced at her. “Because, I must say, of the detectives I’ve had to work with, Miss Radcliffe,youare by far my favorite.”
She did not know why, after two days of his calling her “darling Georgie,” largely to irritate her, she suspected, it should feel so much more intimate now to hear him addressher so properly. Perhaps because she suspected that this was the first conversation she’d ever had with him that had involved no artifice on his part whatsoever.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, suddenly and impulsively, without considering her words for even a split second, “I think you’d make a splendid detective. Should you ever gather the courage to become one.”
“Courage, is it?” he asked. “I’d like to remind you that I awoke in a darkened cellar with an unconscious lady whom I thought for a split second might be dead, and yet not a single whimper of fear escaped my lips.”
“That’s not the sort of courage I meant.”
“And yet, it’s the sort I’ve got.”
And it occurred to her, then, that he might have just betrayed something of himself—something he did not quite intend to share with her. Because she did not think she’d been imagining the strain in his voice when he’d uttered the word “dead.”
And she wondered, for all his “darling Georgie” and his flirtation and his smiles, if Sebastian Fletcher-Ford might care for her, just a little.
Just enough that the notion of her being dead might be the tiniest bit unbearable.
And, suddenly, recklessly, she wanted to know if this was true.
“Well,” she said coolly, ignoring the fact that her heart, for incomprehensible reasons, had started beating more quickly in her chest, “I’m alive and well, so there’s no need for fearful whimpering.”
He turned to look at her now.
“I know,” he said quietly. Then, quick as lightning, he reached out to take her hand in his. “It might take my body a bit longer to catch up, though.” And she realized, once she worked past the utter confusion in her mind at the feeling of her palm pressed against his, that his hand was trembling.
Because he’d been afraid for her.
She felt herself leaning toward him, as if drawn by some magnetic force. His eyes were fixed on hers, the perfect angles of his face softened by candlelight, and with his free hand he reached up to cup her cheek in his palm.
“Georgie,” he murmured, angling his face down toward her—
And then, suddenly, there was the sound of a key in the lock above them, and they jerked apart and scrambled to their feet, their hands still clasped, as a sudden shaft of light briefly blinded them, and a scolding voice said, “I just really don’t think a kidnapping was called for!”
Georgie squinted upward, to find…
Miss de Vere and Miss Singh beaming down at them.
“Hello,” Miss de Vere said with a pleased smile. “Did you require a rescue?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a simple misunderstanding!” said Miss Lettercross, wide-eyed and tearful.
“It was not,” Georgie said stonily. “It was, in fact, a crime that I’m half tempted to have you arrested for.” This was not entirely true, merely because pressing charges against the Lettercrosses would draw police attention to what Georgie and Sebastian and Arthur and the Murder Tourists had been doing in Bramble-in-the-Vale that day, and she’d rather not have to answer any questions along those lines.
“With what proof?” Miss Lettercross asked, suddenly canny, and Georgie eyed her with some suspicion. Those rosy cheeks and guileless blue eyes masked a certain slyness that Georgie didn’t like in the slightest.
“I think my own testimony would provoke at least a few questions,” she shot back, and Miss Lettercross sighed.
“Miss Radcliffe, I cannot express to you what a shockingseries of events this has been,” Mr. Lettercross put in at this juncture, with a stern look at his daughter. Perhaps sensing that having the daughter of a local government official accused of kidnapping was not the best look for Bramble-in-the-Vale, he had been practically falling over himself to apologize from the moment the cellar door had been opened, and Georgie had noticed, with some uncharitable satisfaction, that despite his white, toothy smile, he had a rather weak chin that was prone to a bit of a wobble under stress.
“I’m certainly intrigued to hear you attempt to explain why Mr. Fletcher-Ford and I were drugged and left in a cellar by a member of your family,” Georgie said, smiling at him with some venom. They were gathered in Mr. Lettercross’s office; Miss de Vere and Miss Singh occupied the two chairs that were clustered opposite the desk, whispering to each other excitedly, while Arthur was leaning against one wall, notebook and pen in hand, scribbling furiously away. Mr. Lettercross and his daughter were behind his desk, the latter perched on the arm of the chair her father occupied, while Sebastian was looking out the window at the throngs of Murder and Not-Murder Tourists who lined Bramble-in-the-Vale’s winding streets and the grassy slopes of its quaint canals.
