Page 11 of Merry Lover

Chapter Five

Asob rippedfrom Grizelda’s throat. Without conscious thought, she flung herself across the distance between them, landing on top of him and his arms closed around her, her one true haven. But his skin was icy under her lips, shocking her back to reality.

“Dragan! How long have you been here? Why are you sitting here in the cold?” Hauling herself out of his lap, she stumbled to her feet, grasping his hand to pull him up.

“I left my key behind,” he said, catching the delirious Vicky with one hand while he took Grizelda’s hand with the other and rose. He had been sitting on one of his bags. “I think I fell asleep.”

“I thought you were a ghost,” she said shakily, pushing her key into the lock with trembling fingers.

“Why would I be a ghost?” He sounded faintly amused, though also, being Dragan, curious.

“I’ll tell you later.” She was reluctant to release his hand, but he extricated it long enough to pull off his gloves and light the lamp in the hall. While Griz lit the candle beside it, he retrieved his bags and his hat and closed the front door with his hip.

That done, he deposited his bags at the foot of the steps and looked about him, smiling. “How festive.”

“I nearly didn’t bother,” she admitted. “I thought you were stuck in Edinburgh by the storms.”

“Oh, they were mostly further north, but it did interfere with the railways. I had to threaten my way on, invoking the name of the Duke of Kelburn.”

She smiled. “No, you didn’t.”

“I almost did.” He took back her hand and led her into the drawing room, which was quite warm, considering.

She bustled about, pushing him into the chair closest to the fire and removing the guard to add more coal. She lit the lamps and closed the curtains and announced she would make tea and reheat the dinner Cook had left for them.

But he caught her hand once more. “Not yet.” He drew her into his lap, placed his hand behind her head, and searched her face. “First, a kiss.” He took it, long, fervent, and unutterably sweet. “Then, perhaps,” he murmured against her lips, “a glass of brandy while you tell me everything.”

She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his. “I’m so glad you are home,” she whispered.

“So am I.” The caress of his fingers on her nape made her shiver, and not just because they were still cold.

She slipped off his lap and went to pour two glasses of brandy. By the time she returned, he had drawn the sofa nearer the fire and sat there instead. With a sigh of bliss, she settled down beside him, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder.

They clinked glasses lazily, and each took a sip of the fine brandy that had been her father’s gift to them.

Dragan touched her lips with one fingertip. “Now,” he suggested.

So, she told him everything, from finding the smiling dead man at the door to imagining Dragan as his ghost. She had almost forgotten her worry that Dragan, like the inspector, would imagine she had to know the corpse, and now it seemed ridiculous, for Dragan simply listened, frowning slightly.

“It sounds to me like a very sudden death,” he murmured when she had finished. “Not something that happened over the course of the night. Even if he had been there when you first went to bed, I imagine he was already dead. You could not have saved him.”

How did he know that was the worst of the whole situation for her?

Because he is my Dragan.She buried her face in his neck and kissed him.

“Although,” he went on, thoughtfully, drawing her closer, “that does not explain why he was sitting quite so comfortably at the door. As if he were waiting for someone he knew would come. Did Vicky bark during the night?”

“No, but then when she’s at the back of the house, she doesn’t much bother with what goes on at the front. She is a hopeless guard dog. Inspector Harris said he would let me know the cause of death, but the autopsy probably won’t be done until after Christmas now. But I have been wondering about poison. Christmas roses are poisonous if ingested. He could have drunk some kind of infusion of it, perhaps, and with some other weakness of the stomach succumbed.”

“Do you mean suicide?”

“Possibly. But why here? Everything comes back to that.”

“It does.” He shifted restlessly. “But your Christmas rose seems an inefficient poison, either for murder or suicide, whatever its personal significance might be. A flower of any kind is really a token of love, is it not? What if he brought a Christmas rose—or a whole bunch of them—to give to his love?”

“And a fallen petal stayed with him? And the lady who received his flower brought one for him, too, several hours later when he was already dead? She must have known he was dead when she brought the flower. If she had met him last night, she could hardly expect him to be waiting in the cold for her until the following morning. Unless the first meeting was somewhere else, andthenhe came here?”

Dragan shook his head. “No, if he had walked here, the petal would surely have fallen off. It could only have remained on his clothing because he was sitting down and didn’t move.”

---