Read Loving Rose: The Redemption of Malcolm Sinclair (Casebook of Barnaby Adair) for Free Online Page A

beneath his lashes he watched her go to the sideboard on which serving platters were arrayed. Her gown was of some dark brown material, of decent quality but severely, indeed, repressively, cut, with a high collar and long, tight sleeves. Her hair, thick, lustrous locks of rich walnut brown, was restrained in a knot at her nape.
    She picked up a soup tureen and turned, and he fixed his gaze on his plate. He already knew her eyes were a soft mid-brown, fringed by lush lashes and well-set beneath dark, finely arched brows. Her complexion was fair, cream with a tinge of rose in her cheeks; her features were delicate, her face heart-shaped with a gently rounded chin.
    He’d already noted her straight, no-nonsense nose and her full lips of pale rose, but as she leaned across to offer him the tureen, he saw that, as before, those lips were compressed into a tense line.
    The sight . . . displeased him, which, on one level, he found curious. He rarely cared about how others were feeling, at least not spontaneously.
    “Thank you.” Availing himself of the ladle, he served himself.
    As he picked up his soup spoon, Mrs. Sheridan ferried the tureen back to the sideboard, then turned and, clasping her hands before her, took up station at the end of the sideboard, ready to serve him the subsequent courses.
    He took a mouthful of the soup while debating how best to say what he wished to convey. In the end, he said, “This soup is delicious. My compliments to the cook.”
    “Thank you.”
    “If I might make a suggestion, there’s no reason for you to wait on me, Mrs. Sheridan. If you place all those platters on the table where I can reach them, you might then go and take your meal with your children.” Sidelong, he cast her an inquiring glance. “I presume the pair are dining in the kitchen as we speak?”
    From the look on her face, he knew he’d guessed aright. Six o’clock was standard dinnertime in the country, especially in gentry houses. And he was fairly certain both she and her children were gentry-born.
    She hesitated, and for a moment he wondered if what he’d suggested might in some way be construed as an insult, but then he realized she was wrestling, in two minds.
    Inwardly smiling, he said, “I really don’t mind.” And I find having a lady standing while I’m seated off-putting . He swallowed the words before they escaped, but . . . that was, he realized, how he felt, and wasn’t that revealing? His facility for gauging people, especially their social standing, had always been acute; it might be a trifle rusty from disuse, but it was clearly still functioning.
    “If you truly don’t mind, sir . . . ?”
    “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I did.”
    “Very well.” Turning, she picked up two of the covered platters and carried them to the table. Two more trips back and forth and he had everything he needed, including condiments, within easy reach.
    Still, she hovered, as if unsure if he truly was capable of serving himself.
    Fleetingly irritated—he might be a partial cripple, but he wasn’t incapacitated—he dismissed her with a wave. “Thank you, Mrs. Sheridan. That will be all.”
    She stiffened at his tone. She started to turn away, then remembered and paused to bob a curtsy. Then she left.
    Leaving him to slowly finish his soup, his mind already toying with various scenarios that might explain who she was and why she was there—pretending to be a housekeeper in an isolated country house.
    He’d finished the soup and had moved on to a second course of lamb collops before the relative silence impinged. Once it had, with every passing minute he grew more restless, less settled, less content. He wasn’t alone in the house, but only by straining his ears could he detect any sound from the kitchen—a clink, a muted sentence. Regardless, his awareness shifted and fixed on it, on there . . . it took him a few minutes to identify his problem, to understand what was wrong.
    The solution was