A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(40)
So I did not stir when Gage climbed into bed sometime later, my hearing only being attuned to wake me at the sound of Emma’s crying. But when I woke to collect our daughter for her three o’clock feeding, I discovered he was there. He rolled over and grumbled, so when I was roused by her again around seven o’clock, I decided to leave her in Mrs. Mackay’s care rather than bring her into our bed with me as I did on some mornings. Her giggles and chatter and drooling baby grins were the perfect start to the day.
However, I returned to our bedchamber to find Gage propped up by his pillows with one arm flung over his head. His torso was bare, and the sheet had slipped down to his abdomen, revealing his muscular physique. His gaze shifted to me from where he had been staring, unseeing, at something across the room. I could already see the thoughts churning in his head, analyzing the previous evening’s fatal discovery, but he made an effort to alter them, smiling softly at me as I strode across the room.
“No Emma?”
“I thought you might be suffering some ill effects from last night’s indulgence,” I replied, lifting aside the covers to slide under them. The tightness of his brow and the slight pallor of his features told me he hadn’t escaped entirely, but he was in far better condition than I’d anticipated.
He slid his arm underneath me and turned toward me as I snuggled in close. His voice was still husky from sleep. “It’s just as well, for I do believe we were interrupted in the middle of something last night.”
“Hmm, yes. In the middle of the long gallery.” I teasingly arched my eyebrows. “Where anyone could have stumbled upon us.”
Rather than turn sheepish, as I expected, Gage slid his other hand up my leg under my nightdress, pulling the limb over his hip. “Not the most sensible place for a seduction, I admit, but the configuration that developed proved interesting.”
“Did it?” I replied rather breathlessly as he rolled me beneath him.
His lips found the sensitive skin behind my ear, the bristles on his jaw lightly abrading my skin and making me arch my back in pleasure. “Don’t tell me you didn’t find the idea of my making love to you against that wall exciting. I know you did,” he drawled, reminding me that my husband had never been meek when it came to bedroom matters. Even if he had been tamer in recent months because of my being heavy with child and then recently delivered.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Until . . .” I broke off, some of my ardor fading at the memory of what had come next. “Maybe we shouldn’t . . .”
Gage lifted his head to gaze down at me, his pupils wide with desire, but tenderness was there as well. “Kiera, if we stopped coming together for every murder or crime we encountered, we would practically be celibate.”
“True,” I conceded. An alarming number of murders did seem to occur within our vicinity, though more often they happened before we were summoned to the scene.
“It’s a hazard of the profession. But in all earnestness, if facing death and murder doesn’t make us embrace life and cherish what we have . . .” His voice dipped, throbbing with intensity. “If it doesn’t make us hold tight to those we love, then what will?”
My heart swelled at the truth of that statement and my love for this man. I responded by pressing my mouth to his and giving myself over to the passion I felt for him.
Sometime later, I still lay wrapped in his strong arms, cocooned with contentment. But that serenity and satisfaction began to slip away as the reality of what we faced intruded. Somehow Mairi MacCowan had been poisoned by an as-yet-unknown substance, either intentionally or by accident. Somehow she had died beneath the recently revealed forgery of a Van Dyck, one her employer had just days before been accused of swapping for the real portrait. These were factors which could not simply be written off as coincidence and ignored.
I lifted my head from where it had lapsed on Gage’s chest, expecting to find he’d fallen back to sleep after his thorough efforts, but I should have known better. He had never been the type of person content to rest on his laurels when there was an investigation afoot, and the alertness of his pale blue eyes told me that even now he was contemplating the matter.
“What did you and Anderley uncover last night?” I asked, lowering my head again to his warm skin.
He inhaled deeply, causing his chest to rise and the muscles along his torso to do interesting things. It seemed he was as reluctant to return to the matter at hand as I had been, even if his thoughts had already wandered there. “Several of the scullery maids recalled seeing Miss MacCowan arrive through the servants’ entrance. Apparently, her presence wasn’t entirely noteworthy, as she and the footman Liam had been courting for some time, and she would often walk to Barbreck on her days and half days off to see her father and to visit Liam.”
“Then she was familiar to the staff?” I ruminated, idly swirling my fingers through the chest hair several shades darker than the golden locks on his head.
“Yes, and with Liam being her confirmed beau, he is the most likely person to have shown her up to the long gallery. No one Anderley and I spoke to recalled seeing him after dinner was finished being served and cleared. But, of course, some of the members of the staff had already retired. We’ll have to speak with them today.”
I tried to piece together her movements in my mind, but they were mired by several thorny problems. “She must have spoken to some of them. Did she tell them why she was here?”