Cloche and Dagger (22 page)

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“That I need to find a way to thank you for all that you’ve done,” I said.

To my surprise, Harrison Wentworth actually blushed.

“Not like that!” I snapped.

He gave me a sheepish grin that was ridiculously charming and shrugged and said, “A man can dream.”

Now it was my turn to blush.

“Just drink your tea,” I ordered.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. But I noticed when he lifted the cup to his lips, he was grinning.

This time I slept in my old room and insisted that Harrison take the bedroom on the main floor. I simply couldn’t have him sleep on the sofa, which was too short for him and unforgiving in its firmness. And given this new and somewhat alarming tension between us, I felt the distance of separate floors might be required. No, not for him; definitely, for me.

I was only a few weeks out of the worst breakup, as in most public and most humiliating, of my life. I was not, I repeat not, going to get involved with the first good-looking, okay, hot, man who came along. Just because he had wicked green eyes and a lovely, deep, gravelly voice and a bod that—whoa, stop right there.

I was not going to start thinking of Harrison that way. Other than some fuzzy childhood memories and the recent week we’d spent together, I hardly knew the man. The fact that I was even thinking about him just proved that what my mother had said was true. How had I never really noticed before that I always had a boyfriend? It wasn’t on purpose. Or was it?

This was more self-analysis than I wanted to delve into at the moment. No, my time would be much better spent trying to figure out who had killed Lady Ellis, who had tried to kill me and why was my shop under siege?

I couldn’t hear Harrison snoring from up here. Crazy as it sounds, that bummed me out. There was something comforting about having audible proof that I was not alone in the flat. I tossed and turned a bit and finally punched my pillow until I’d flattened it enough.

I stared into the dark, wondering if I didn’t hear him sleeping because he wasn’t asleep. Maybe he was having the same hard time that I was. It was quite the adrenaline rush to come home and find your business has been violated, and twice in one week made it particularly disturbing.

An image of Harrison lying awake downstairs flashed through my mind. Nope. I was not going downstairs to check on him. That would only invite the sort of trouble of which I was determined to steer clear. No men. Not for a while, at least a year. Oh, that seemed unduly harsh. Six months. I cringed. That seemed a long time to go without a date, but not impossible. Okay, six months it was.

I turned over the idea in my head. Six months without a man calling or sending flowers or taking me to dinner. Hmm. Then I thought of the humiliation of walking into that reception at the hotel and seeing the enormous cake with the diamond necklace sitting on it and seeing the man I thought I loved smooching his wife.

The wife he was supposed to be separated from, the one he described as controlling, who didn’t understand him and support his dreams like I did. I could feel the bile rise up into the back of my throat and my chest got tight as if a giant hand had reached inside and squeezed my insides into mush.

A year. I was definitely taking a year off from men. I never, ever wanted to feel so stupid and worthless again. And the next man I got involved with was going to be worth loving, this I promised myself and felt infinitely better for it.

I turned my attention back to the situation at hand. Someone had broken into the shop. The question that gave me the willies, of course, was, had they come looking for me? Given that someone had tried to suffocate me, this did not seem an unreasonable thing to wonder. But since they never made it upstairs from the shop below, I wondered. Maybe they hadn’t been after me this time. Maybe they had been looking for something in the shop. But what?

The wake tomorrow should be informative. I wanted to see the ladies from the tea today at the wake. Did I think any of them had anything to do with Lady Ellis’s death? I suppose it was possible. Marianne had all but admitted that Victoria Ellis was no longer the friend they had once enjoyed.

But if they disliked her so much, surely they could bow out of the friendship? And yet, they had all shown up today to pick over her leavings. Was it sentimentality that made them do so, or were they more like vultures, picking at the carcass of their dead friend? Hard to say.

It was not the best thought to lead me into dreamland, and my unconscious made powerful work of it, giving me dreams about the rat bastard being chased by a vulture, which turned out to be me.

I awoke to the smell of bacon with my heart thrumming through my chest like a train in the tube. I was sweating and shivering at the same time. I splashed cold water on my face and headed downstairs. I needed coffee with the strength to disintegrate a spoon.

I didn’t care that I had a wicked case of bed head or that I was in my bubble-gum pajamas. Having sworn off men was liberating like that.

I found Harrison in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and looking as bleary-eyed as I felt.

“Morning, Harry,” I said.

“Harrison,” he grumbled.

“Sleep well?” I asked.

He looked me up and down and a small smile played on his lips. “About as well as you, I’d say.”

“In that case, I’m sorry,” I said.

He gave me a sympathetic look and poured me a cup of coffee, which he pushed toward me. “Bad dreams?”

“You could say that,” I said. “How about you?”

“No, not bad dreams,” he said.

He didn’t say anything more, and I almost questioned him, but he had an intense look on his face that made me hesitate, so instead I doctored my coffee and tried to ignore the fact that my face felt warm.

“What’s your agenda for today?” he asked.

“Clean the shop,” I said with a sigh. Remembering how much work I’d put in yesterday to spiff it up made me irritated, so I tried to put it out of my mind. “And then we have the viewing tonight?”

“I’ll collect you at half five,” he said. “All right?”

“I’ll be ready.”

“Eat,” he ordered. “Judging by the mess downstairs, you’re going to need your strength.”

He handed me a plate with a bagel loaded with bacon, a fried egg and cheese and I glanced at him through my eyelashes.

“You’re quite handy to have around,” I said.

He stared at me for a beat and then his gaze strayed to my lips. His green eyes scorched, and I realized it was me. I did that. I was flirting with him. What was wrong with me?

“And I mean that in the most casual-friendship sort of way,” I said. I sat up straight and tried to look stern, as in not flirtatious. Good grief, I was going to have to relearn my very way of talking to men.

When I glanced back at him, he was smiling at me as if he knew what I was doing and it amused him.

He tucked into his bagel and I did the same, relieved that the nuclear reaction between us, if not totally gone, had definitely slipped back down to DEFCON five, maybe four.

True to my word, I spent the day cleaning up. Fee came by but couldn’t identify anything that might be missing. I could see she was as freaked out as I was that there’d been two incidents in a matter of days. I didn’t know what to tell her to reassure her, except that she would never be in the shop alone.

She waved me off, but I think she was trying to be brave. She stayed to help clean but I shooed her out after an hour, knowing that she had studying to do.

I called my mother and my aunt. I did not tell them about the break-in. I figured it would only worry them needlessly. There was no news from Viv and now it was officially a week that she’d been gone, and I hated to think the worst, but where could she be that she hadn’t heard about what had happened to Lady Ellis?

Nowhere. The planet just wasn’t that big anymore. I realized this was why Inspector Franks was so suspicious. He had to be thinking that Viv’s history with Rupert Ellis and the fact that she went missing when his wife was murdered was too convenient.

I decided to wear my all-purpose black chemise dress, very Audrey Hepburn, to the wake. I twisted my red hair up into a sleek knot on the back of my head and chose a pair of black pearl earrings with a matching strand for around my throat.

These were a gift from the boyfriend before the rat bastard. Seth. He had been a medical student, completely committed to his studies with very little time for a girlfriend. I was twenty-four when we broke up, mistakenly thinking I had met my soul mate in the rat bastard.

As I fastened the pearls, I hoped Seth had met someone more deserving and had finished medical school. Then I had to wonder why hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

A glance at the clock told me that Harrison would be here any moment. I zipped the back of my dress, getting it halfway up my back. I tried to get the zipper all the way up, but to no avail. I just couldn’t contort myself to pull it up. I tried to remember how I usually got my zipper up, and I realized I usually had a boyfriend to finish it for me. Suddenly, I felt like such a loser.

“Scarlett!” Harrison’s voice called up the staircase. “Are you ready?”

“Just about!” I yelled.

I tried reaching over my back, but my fingers just brushed the zipper but couldn’t grab the tab. I tried pushing it from the bottom. No luck. It was just out of reach. A thick strand of hair fell out of the knot on my head and swung across my cheek as I tried another round of gymnastics to get my zipper up.

“I’d be happy to help you with that, you know.”

I snapped my head around to find Harrison, leaning against the doorjamb and watching me as if I were a show and, judging by his smile, a comedy.

I blew out a breath. “Fine. Thank you.”

The words came out grudging and I turned my back to him. In the mirror I watched him walk toward me. His fingers barely brushed the skin of my back as he moved the zipper up and fastened the clasp at the top of the dress.

“Better?” he asked. His usually low voice was even more gruff and when our eyes met in the mirror, I could feel the tension between us rocket back up to DEFCON one. Uh-oh.

“Much, thanks,” I said. I quickly stepped away from him and slipped on my black pumps. One year, I told myself, one whole year with no men.

Newly resolved, I turned back to face him with a polite smile on my face.

“Ready when you are,” I said.

He tipped his head as he considered me, as if trying to get my measure. Then he gave me a rueful smile and gestured for me to lead. I did, fully aware that his eyes were on me all the way down the stairs, which naturally led me to repeat the phrase “Please, don’t let me trip” in my head until I was safely on the floor below.

• • •

Harrison drove us to the funeral home. He had a dark blue Audi that he’d parked in front of the shop. I still wasn’t used to sitting on the left side as a passenger. It felt awkward, and I remembered that it always took me a while to adjust. Usually just when I had gotten used to it, I went home. This time I wouldn’t be.

We were quiet as we navigated the traffic. I had read Lady Ellis’s obituary in
The Times
this morning and I knew that the wake and funeral were to be private. I wondered how Harrison had gotten us included in the visitation.

I wanted to ask him, but he seemed to be concentrating on something else. He was quiet and he stared out the front window with absolute concentration that did not invite questions.

The wake was being held at a very posh funeral home in Kensington. It was valet parking, so as Harrison pulled up, my door was opened by a young man in a dark gray uniform. He handed me out and Harrison met me on the other side, handing his keys to the young man.

I stood on the curb, looking at the squat, redbrick building in front of me. A forest-green awning was set out over the walkway to the door. It occurred to me that the last funeral I had been to was Mim’s, in a parlor much like this one, but closer to Notting Hill.

Suddenly, I missed her so much it squeezed the breath right out of me and I gasped.

“Are you all right, Scarlett?” Harrison asked. He took my elbow and turned me to face him so he could examine my face.

The knot in my throat was tight, so I took a deep breath and let it out slow.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I just haven’t been to a funeral since Mim passed five years ago. The grief kind of snuck up and kicked me in the pants.”

He looked at me for a moment and then smiled. “You do have a way with words.”

I sniffed and opened my eyes wide, trying to stem back the outer signs of my inner sadness.