I felt my knees tremble and forced myself to look down at the reliquary instead of up into Gerald’s sea-bright eyes. “Are you a collector, Mr. Willis?”
“I am a humble cataloguer,” he replied. “And, please, call me Gerald. I refuse to stand on ceremony with a woman who knows a reliquary when she sees one.” He bent low over my hand, and for a dizzying moment I thought he was going to kiss the blood away. “A grave wound, but not, I think, a fatal one,” he murmured solemnly, examining my little finger at close range. “With a bit of sticking plaster, we’ll have you back on your feet in no time.” He released my hand and I released a fluttering sigh, then cleared my throat and tried to think of something sensible to say.
“I hope you’ll let me apologize for Nicolette—” I began.
“No need,” Gerald broke in, his eyes twinkling. “Mademoiselle Gascon assured me you knew nothing of her true aim in coming here. She started to tell a most riveting tale, but I asked her to hold off until you’d joined us.” His ironic smile made it quite clear that he hadn’t believed a word Nell had said. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve so many visitors in one day. The first, of course, was your employer.”
“M-Mr. Willis?” I said, thinking fast. “He told me he was visiting a ... a distant relative.”
“Extraordinarily distant,” Gerald agreed smoothly. “Until today I’d no idea of his existence.” Gerald gestured toward the door. “Shall we relieve Mrs. Burweed of guard duty?”
As we left the storeroom, I couldn’t help marveling at Gerald’s benign reaction to two strangers barging around his house. He had every reason to be indignant—outraged, even—but instead he seemed bemused by Nell’s insufferable behavior, and oddly charmed by my own. Gerald Willis seemed to have the patience of a—
I caught myself midsentence and nearly laughed aloud. In the space of a few brief minutes, my womanizing wastrel had become an angel cataloguing sacred objects—and I was fully prepared to absolve him of the womanizing bit. With a face like that, he probably had little choice in the matter. Receptionists, chambermaids, and bar-tenders no doubt threw themselves at his feet every day. And who could blame them? Even if Cousin Gerald had been ugly as mud, his charm would have made him irresistible.
Was that why he’d traded London for this humble hideaway? I had no personal experience to go by, but I’d always imagined the possession of great physical beauty to be more trouble than it was worth—constantly consumed by the greedy eyes of strangers, breaking hearts you’d never known you’d touched. Perhaps the chore offending off every female—and every other male—in London had become too wearing; perhaps that was why the blushing Miss Coombs had never been invited to the Larches.
“Here we are.” Gerald opened the next door up the hall, and stood aside to let me enter first. The back parlor was, on the whole, an unprepossessing room. The furniture looked secondhand—a battered wooden desk, mismatched occasional tables and lamps, a couch and two armchairs upholstered in a drab beige fabric that had seen better days. The walls were covered with a frowsy cabbage-rose-and-ribbon-patterned paper I’d come to associate with the cheapest of the bargain B&Bs, and the featureless blond-brick fireplace had been fitted with a repulsive gadget similar to ones I’d seen in hearths back in Finch. It was called an “electric fire,” and when working it gave a pale imitation of the glow and none of the crackle of a real blaze.
The room was saved from unrelenting dreariness by the rear wall, which was made almost entirely of glass. A pair of French doors flanked by picture windows opened out onto a small paved terrace and a weedy strip of lawn that had nearly been reclaimed by the encroaching forest. Leaf-filtered sunlight flooded the room and made shifting shadow patterns on the thin gray carpet.
Nell sat hunched over in an armchair, fingers drumming, foot tapping, looking every bit the sulky teenager, while Mrs. Burweed made her way around the room, dusting the furniture and humming to herself.
“Thank you, Mrs. Burweed,” Gerald said. “We’ll take our tea in here, when you’re quite ready. I’ll scout out that bit of sticking plaster, Miss Shepherd. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
I waited until Gerald and the housekeeper had left, then darted over to Nell and whispered urgently, “Grandpapa?”
“I had to do something,” Nell hissed. “You were standing there like a deer in headlamps.”
“Right,” I said, stung by the rebuke, but in no position to argue. “Sorry about that.”
“Let me do the talking,” Nell told me hurriedly. “All you have to do is play dumb.”
“Typecasting,” I muttered. As I sank onto the couch, I wondered what had happened to the shy and reticent little girl who’d traveled with me from the cottage.