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“I’m not your dear.”
Gideon smiled as she held her ground against the madman.
“What have you done with her?” Kerrigan demanded, suddenly sullen, looking toward the threshold as if he might find Iris there.
“That is none of your concern, Mr. Kerrigan,” Electra told him coldly. “She will never be under your power again.”
Chapter Twenty
Aweek and a half later, Gideon collected Electra from Russell Square, and they traveled together to the Delacourt townhouse in Kensington.
He’d promised the family that he would keep them apprised of the progress of the case against Archibald Kerrigan and Mrs. Enid Crawley, and Electra had expressed a desire to visit with Iris.
During their train ride back to London, after they’d found Iris at Kerrigan’s Kentish country house, the young woman had been quiet and withdrawn, falling asleep halfway through the hour-long journey. There had been no opportunity for Electra to speak with her before they’d returned her to her family.
Today, Electra surprised him by stepping out the front door of Russell Square before he had the chance to knock, as if she’d been watching for him at the window. The thought made him smile.
And he was thrilled to see that Electra looked more bright-eyed. That look of fatigue was gone. Her cheeks had a lovely pink flush as she smiled at him.
The special smile. The one he told himself was only for him.
“You look lovely,” he told her before he could think better of it.
One inky brow inched up at that. “Thank you, Detective Inspector.”
Gideon chuckled as he helped her up into the hackney he’d secured for the trip over.
“I suppose that was unprofessional of me,” he admitted once he was settled across from her.
“Probably,” she said, her tone playful, “but I liked it.” She tugged at the edge of her gloves, but she kept glancing at him now and then. “You look very fine too, Inspector.”
When she spoke like that, looked at him as she was now, it made his heart stutter in his chest.
“I take it solving the case has allowed you to rest better,” she said.
He wondered if she was thinking as he was of the night she slept in his bed. Alone, regrettably. The next evening, he could still smell the violet water he knew she tended to dab on her wrists, her neck. He’d been loath to wash that bedding and lose her scent.
“I am. And you?” he asked.
He’d been too bogged down, catching up on old cases and taking on new ones, and they still hadn’t talked more after that evening when she’d confessed that she shared his feelings. They hadn’t yet said any of the other sentiments they’d agreed to leave unsaid that night.
Gideon wanted to continue that conversation. He just had to find the right moment. “I wonder how Miss Delacourt is doing,” he said when the tension between them grew too thick.
“I do know a bit about that,” she admitted.
“Do you?”
“Yes, I received a letter from Violet.” Her eyes lit and he sensed the news was good. “She has broken her engagement with Wakefield, and he no longer comes to visit now that Iris has returned. Violet has forbidden it.”
Gideon smiled. “Good for her.”
“Apparently, he is trying to gain her forgiveness and insists he still wants to marry her. But she says in the letter that she won’t ever relent.” Electra nodded as if in support of what Gideon had to agree was a very wise decision.
Wakefield may not have been an abductor or murderer, but he was a scoundrel by any measure.
“I wonder how it has affected their relationship as sisters,” Electra mused.
Gideon suspected if Violet Delacourt had been so definitive about ending her connection with Wakefield, the sisters must be well on their way to harmony between them.
