I’d finally worked it out. But I wasn’t clever. I was very, very stupid. The clues had been laid out for me, and all I’d had to do was take the focus off myself long enough to see them winking at me along the way. I never had. What did that say about me as a person?
I could see with such clarity now why I’d been so territorial about Adam with my friends, why I put up with his endless teasing. Why he felt like a part of me. And it had only taken me the best part of twenty years to work it all out.
Very, very stupid.
Stupid not to have seen it. Stupid to have allowed it to happen in the first place. By not opening my eyes to it, thinking that was the safer option, I’d actually left myself even more vulnerable.
Jos and Louisa were making a fuss of Adam, asking him how he’d managed to fool them all weekend. Even Nicholas gave him a handshake. Then they wanted to know what his motive had been. It turned out my supposed brother—brother? Hah!—had discovered his beloved younger sister was the product of his uncle’s affair with their mother. The late Lord Southerby had been getting sentimental in recent months, had regretted denying paternity and had talked about changing his will. Harry had been scared for Constance, had sought to protect a young woman who selflessly wanted to spend her life helping others from a scandal that would prevent her from doing just that. What missionary society would have sent the illegitimate daughter of a well-known cad overseas as an example of good Christian morals? Harry had acted out of love and rage and retribution.
I woke from my daze briefly. ‘When did you know it was you?’ I asked Adam.
‘I knew right from the start…almost.’ He gave a careless shrug, but his gaze was probing. ‘It was right there in my second envelope—the one we got straight after the murder.’
Marcus gave the pair of us a disdainful look. ‘I don’t know…’ he said, in a slightly petulant tone. ‘I think this young lady might have had a slight advantage over us when it came to solving the case.’
I knew he was thinking about the larder incident, and just letting my consciousness touch the edge of that memory was enough to make me tremble deep down in my core.
But Marcus was wrong. In the situation I found myself in now, I had no kind of advantage. No kind of advantage at all.
I slipped away while the others were still debriefing themselves, using the excuse that I had to go and pack up the clothes that were no longer needed.
Izzi had been generous enough to offer the clothes she’d bought to their owners, and most of the guests had elected to keep their outfits. I collected the evening wear that wasn’t in use and made sure it was hung up or packed properly for their journey home. Once that was done I still had the ‘spares’ to deal with. The extra clothes would return with me to Coreen’s Closet, where they’d go back on the rails.
I was hanging up the wonderful red velvet dress when I heard a soft knock at my bedroom door.
People in love are supposed to thrill at the thought of their sweethearts, aren’t they? So why did the adrenaline surge that hit me incite the fight-or-flight reflex? I looked across to the window. Unless I wanted to shimmy down a two-hundred-year-old drainpipe I only had one choice.
Rather than shouting an invitation to come in, I walked across the room and opened the door a crack, keeping most of myself behind its protective bulk. My eyes widened. It wasn’t Adam standing there, but Nicholas.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked, looking very serious indeed.
I stepped back, way back, and opened the door wide. He walked through and, after a second of hesitation, closed it behind him.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
Nicholas stopped looking grim and his face broke into possibly the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen on a man. The sort of smile that undoubtedly turned the knees of countless society darlings to custard. All the more devastating because it was one hundred percent genuine. My knees, however, remained decidedly un-custard-like.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, and when he spotted my raised eyebrows added, ‘for all you’ve done this weekend.’
I frowned. ‘I didn’t do much, and besides Izzi’s paying me. It’s work, really.’
‘No, not just that,’ he said earnestly. ‘For being so great to Izzi.’ He paused and glanced towards the closed door, and lowered his voice. ‘I know she gives the impression she’s indestructible…’
One side of my mouth lifted. It was obvious, despite her loopiness, that he clearly loved his sister.
‘Izzi has a lot of “friends”—I think parasites might be a more appropriate word—who hang around for what they can get out of her.’ He looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m ashamed to say that when I first met you I thought you were one of those people who’d take advantage of my sister’s gregariousness and generosity. I was wrong.’
Now it was my turn to look at my shoes. I had been guilty of that, or at least it had been that way in the beginning. I looked up again, to find him regarding me carefully.
‘You proved me wrong, went the extra mile.’
I’m not usually in the habit of stopping someone layering on the compliments, but this girl he was talking about? I’m ashamed to say she was nothing like me. I shook my head. I was the girl who thought of herself first and others second.
‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t think you understand.’
Nicholas was smiling again now. ‘I think I understand well enough.’
I turned back to the bed, where I’d flung the red dress, and picked it up. It was something to do to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks.
‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
I fetched a garment bag and began putting it inside.
‘Perhaps you’d consider wearing it out one evening…if you’d like to have dinner with me, that is?’
I literally had no words. Nicholas Chatterton-Jones was asking me out? Really?
‘Why me?’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve seen the world you live in, the people you mix with. I wouldn’t fit in.’
He considered that for a moment. ‘I know…but perhaps that’s the key. I always seem to go for the same type of girl…’
Didn’t I know it? I listed it out for him. ‘Beautiful, rich, thin—’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said plainly.
Before, I would have lapped that comment up, demanded more, but I took his compliment with the same simplicity it had been given. ‘Thank you.’
He walked over to the bed, so we were standing either side of it. ‘You shouldn’t put yourself down.’
I laughed out loud as I walked over to the hanging rail and deposited the red dress in its protective cover there. He really didn’t know me at all, did he?
‘Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that!’ I said, still giggling as I walked back to the bed. ‘But if it makes you feel any better I will add one more thing to the list. One thing I’m definitely not.’
He pressed his lips together in an amused grin and raised an eyebrow.
‘Duck-faced,’ I said, and then wondered if I’d taken things too far again.
Nicholas chewed this over. ‘You know,’ he said finally, a look of surprise lifting his features, ‘I hadn’t realised it, but I think you’re right!’
We