She slowly looked up at him. Her eyes were still pink about the edges but some of the spirit returned to them. “Ought you to be gallivanting, Mr. Hawkes? How will you ever heal properly?”
“Well, I certainly shouldn’t be gallivanting, so it’s a very good thing I’m merely strolling. I shall go ravingmad if kept inside. Dot will need to throw raw meat through the door of my room.”
She smiled at that.
She completed two eye dabs with his handkerchief then handed it back to him resolutely, as if she’d decided to never shed another tear in her life.
“Why don’t you keep it,” he said.
She drew it between her fingers, her head down, contemplating this.
And then she gently installed it into the pocket of her lady’s maid’s pelisse and looked up at him again.
“I should like a cup of tea, thank you, Mr. Hawkes.”
In the genteel quiet of Twining’s, they might have been any pair of spouses resting from a bout of shopping.
He learned that she put in one spoon of sugar and no cream, and he stored this fact as if it was found treasure. He took his tea with neither.
Soothing as a babbling brook, the sound of tea gurgling from pots around them. The ring of spoons in china. The low murmur of patrons. They bathed in the sounds, for a time.
“Something has upset you, Mrs. Gallagher,” he began gently. “Perhaps you would feel better if you shared it.”
She was quiet for some time. Perhaps composing a story.
She took a breath, and sighed it out. “I do not know quite how to begin. You see, my brother...”
“Forgive me for interrupting. What is your brother’s name?” he asked patiently.
“Edouard,” she said.
And then she immediately went still and her eyesflared in alarm. As if she wished she could unsay the words.
He merely nodded. “I’ve a younger sister named Diana. Your brother Edouard...” he prompted.
“He told me that if I should ever need help, I should pay a visit to his dear friend Mr. Monroe, who lives in London and owes him a favor and would happily help me—Edouard told him all about me. I wrote to Mr. Monroe once I arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames, but he did not respond immediately. So I... well, I took it upon myself to visit him on my own. I thought it wouldn’t be untoward, as I am a widow and he is my brother’s friend, after all. But it seems...” She cleared her throat. “It seems Mr. Monroe has moved away. He no longer lives in the house. This is not my brother’s fault, mind,” she said hurriedly. “He would have told me, if he could.”
“Of course.”
“And the man who was present in the home construed my presence... ah, rather differently, and I found it difficult to persuade him otherwise. He received and read my message, as well, and tried to coax me into the house and I am...” She cleared her throat. “I am so terribly embarrassed.” Her voice was hoarse. “And gravely disappointed.”
He took this in, thoughtfully. “Do you want me to call him out?”
She laughed, startled. She took a breath. “Yes. Rather.”
“That’s the spirit, Mrs. Gallagher.”
“Perhaps after your stitches have healed, in case he’s wily.”
He smiled. “I’ll add it to my schedule of events.”
She laughed again, and he calculated that therewasn’t much he wouldn’t do to hear that sound, over and over.
“Idoknow it was inadvisable to go there alone, Mr. Hawkes... It’s just that it... the matter is rather urgent. And I’d hoped he could... I’m afraid I needed a favor.” Her voice went nearly inaudible on the last word.
“Name it.”
Too late he heard how he sounded: low and ardent and fiercely, deadly earnest.