Through the thick wood of the door and even thicker walls, Felicity could hear Ian shouting. And he was right, she supposed, as she slipped her hand out of her pocket and turned the thin gold ring in the cold winter sunlight pouring through the window. She was glad not to be a fly on the wall for that conversation—if, indeed, it could even be called a conversation at this juncture. She hadn’t heard even the slightest peep that would have suggested Mr. Graves had been able to get even a single word out in his own defense.
Instead she did her level best to ignore the shouting and to pour all of her attention to the ring in the clasp of her fingers. Four gems, laid out in a line upon the surface, quite small and dull. The blue—that was lapis, she thought. Even if the striations within the stone nearly drowned out the color, still the blue was too deep to be turquoise, too opaque to be sapphire. But the rest of the gems were too small, too dull to make a proper determination. Theblack might have been onyx or jet or obsidian. The green might have been jade or emerald or even agate, she supposed. And the occluded yellow stone…she hadn’t the faintest. All together it was a strange assortment of gems which seemed to be arranged in no particularly aesthetically-pleasing order.
Still, it must have cost a pretty penny for a man who had not, at the time, the ability to afford better. And the tiny scratches etched into the soft gold—that was evidence, she thought, that it had not sat within a ring box these last years. A velvet case would have protected it from such damage.
Clearly, it had not languished in the depths of a drawer. It had not been forgotten or lost. He’d had it easily to hand on the day they had married, produced it straight from his pocket, absent any sort of protective case. It had meant something to him, this ring with its strange stones. A token, she supposed—and it had served its purpose best not tucked away for safekeeping, but…handled. Kept close. It had lost what shine it might once have had, acquiring little scratches, marks of wear which showed its age. But they showed also its significance to him.
And he’d given it to her, knowing at the time that she could not have dredged up even the slightest appreciation for it. That a symbol like this one which carried such meaning to him had been hateful to her. He was lucky, she supposed, that she’d all but forgotten about it. If she had recalled it in those early days, she might have found herself tempted to chuck it straight out the window. Into the sea, perhaps, for added insult. What would he have done if she had?
Nothing, she suspected, except to let her. He never had. He’d simply let her be angry. As angry as she had needed to be, in whichever way she had needed to be.
The door crashed open, and Felicity startled at the sound, frantically jamming the ring back within the depths of her pocket. Ian stood there framed within the open doorway, his chest heaving, dark hair ruffled as if he’d been raking his fingers through it. “Mr. Graves,” he said in a voice gone hoarse, “has got some apologies to make to you.”
“To—to me?”
“Of course, to you. It was not mysafety which he jeopardized with his utter lack of discretion.” He lifted his voice just at the end, casting the words over his shoulder into the office behind him with a sort of vindictive venom which suggested that he was not quite finished with his thorough admonition of the man.
Felicity sidled closer, oddly reluctant to enter the room. “So—so he was not involved?” she asked.
“He was,” Ian bit off. “But unknowingly.” Another cutting glare pitched over his shoulder. “Mr. Graves is simply altogether too free with his tongue.” Ian reached out and caught her elbow. “You’ve nothing to fear from him. I daresay he knows better, now.”
Felicity let Ian lead her within, to where a thin, gaunt man sat behind a desk, looking rather like he’d run over with a carriage. His face was a drawn, pasty white, and his thin mustache twitched over quivering lips which gave the impression he might well burst into tears at any moment. “Madam,” he said in a tremulous voice as he popped to his feet. “I do beg your pardon. I hadn’t the slightest idea that just a few ill-considered words would cause you to come to harm. If I had, I swear I would never have said a word, not a word.”
“Graves,” Ian bit off. “Don’t fucking babble. It’s unbecoming.”
Mr. Graves’ voice careened higher, his hands fluttering in a nervous motion. “I swear I had no reason to suspect any sort of foul play at hand. It seemed so harmless, so innocent. If I had but known—”
Ian made a caustic sound beneath his breath. “Sitdown, Graves, and be glad I have need of your services at the moment, or I’d sack you straight off. We need a full description of the man. Anything you can remember, even the smallest detail.”
“The—I beg your pardon, Mr. Carlisle?”
“As you damned well ought,” Ian cast out snidely. “You’re going to help us fix this goddamned mess you’ve made.”
“But I don’t understand,” Mr. Graves said, his voice quavering through a few octaves. “There was no man. I spoke of you only to a woman, I swear it on my very life.”
“Awoman?” Ian drew in a sharp breath, and his gaze sheared to Felicity, bafflement lingering in the depths of his dark eyes.
He’d assumed. As had Felicity. She had the strangest sense that she’d been handed a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing, the picture it made still unformed. “Please sit, Mr. Graves,” she said, striving to keep her voice even and steady, lest she agitate the man into even less clarity. “I’d like to know the whole of it, if you please. How did this—this woman come into contact with you?”
Wilting with relief to have received a more amiable address, Mr. Graves sank into his chair and dragged his trembling fingers through his sparse greyhair. “While I was in London,” he said. “On business for Mr. Carlisle.”
“In November?” Ian ground out.
“Yes.” Mr. Graves dug into his pocket for a handkerchief and blotted at a sheen of sweat that had broken out upon his brow. “She was well-dressed; a woman of quality. She was newly arrived to London as well, and had taken a room at the same hotel in which I was lodging for the duration of my stay.” A guilty flush spread across his sallow cheeks, burning brightly. “She was beautiful,” he said. “Of course, a fellow like me hardly stands a chance of being noticed by a woman like her, but I thought as a lady of certain age needs no chaperone, where was the harm in offering to show her the sights? A walk in the park, a bit of flirtation—”
“You were meant to be conductingbusiness.”
“And I did, Mr. Carlisle, but there were still some free hours to my days, and I could see no harm in escorting a lovely woman about London for a few of them.” Another pitiful twitch of that mustache.
“Did she press you for other information?” Ian asked, his voice flat and hard.
“I don’t know that I would call itpressing,” Mr. Graves said. “To have a woman as beautiful as she express such interest in me…it flattered my vanity, and I suppose I—I suppose I bragged a little.”
“You gave her information that wasn’t your right to share,” Ian accused.
“I did,” Mr. Graves admitted, closing his eyes. “I did. I know it is no excuse, but I saw no harm in it at the time. There is a certain respect to be had in a position as prestigious as mine. She was interested to learn that I had come up from Brighton. Said she’d meant to visit the city herself. Asked all sorts of questions.”
“Questions about Miss Cabot?”
