Read Online 'Til Death Do Us Part by Amanda Quick - Free Book Online

cab. But in her anger she had been focused entirely on Nestor. She had paid very little attention to passers-by. Traffic had been heavy, as usual in the middle of the afternoon, but the fog had obscured much of the scene.
    It dawned on her that she had experienced no difficulty hailing a cab. That was unusual on such a damp, fogbound day. It was as if the carriage in which she was riding had been waiting for her.
    She reached up with one gloved hand and rapped smartly on the roof of the vehicle. The trapdoor opened immediately. The driver looked down at her, squinting a little.
    â€œAye, ma’am?” he asked. “Change your mind about yer destination?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “But there seems to be a problem. Your previous fare left a package behind on the seat. It is wrapped in black silk. A mourning gift, I suspect.”
    â€œRight y’are. It’s for you, ma’am. My condolences on your sad loss.” The driver touched the brim of his low-crowned hat and started to close the trap.
    â€œA moment, please. There is some mistake. I have not suffered any loss.”
    â€œI was told the package is for you, ma’am. The gentleman tipped me well to make certain that I picked you up when you came out of the bookshop. Described you very accurately, he did. Said you’d be wearing a fashionable dark red gown and a little hat with a red feather.”
    She seized on the one bit of potentially useful information. “A gentleman, you say? I must know him. Was it the man I was speaking with just before you handed me up into your cab?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    That would have been too easy, she thought. But it was possible that Nestor had employed someone else to put the box into the cab.
    â€œPlease tell me what the other man looked like,” she said. “It’s very important that I thank him for his gift.”
    â€œThere wasn’t anything in particular about him. Wore a very nice black overcoat, hat, and scarf. Expensive. Early thirties, I’d say.”
    â€œAny jewelry? A stickpin or a ring, perhaps?”
    â€œNone that caught my eye. Very good leather gloves, though. Sorry, ma’am, but that’s about all I can tell you.”
    The spare description fit several of the gentlemen who had signed up for her services and a few whom she had rejected.
    The driver closed the trapdoor. She looked down at the box in her lap. She did not want to open it, not while she was alone. She would wait until she was home and safe in familiar surroundings with Mr. and Mrs. Sykes and Andrew.
    She set the box on the opposite seat and sat looking at it, trying to think of what to do next. She needed a plan, some logical course of action. But her thoughts kept chasing each other in hopeless circles that seemed to grow tighter and tighter with each passing day.
    This was what it had come to—a life lived on the razor edge of fear. The sense of being watched all the time and the ghastly gifts were playing havoc with her nerves. She could not ignore the situation any longer or tell herself that her tormentor would grow bored with the dreadful game. Her intuition was screaming at her, warning her that whoever was sending her the gifts was growing more obsessed and more dangerous with each passing day.
    But how did one fight a demon that lurked in the shadows?
    She sat very still, mesmerized by her troubling thoughts, for the remainder of the journey back to Cranleigh Square. Somehow she was certain that whatever was inside the box would prove to be even more frightening than the tear-catcher and the jet-and-crystal ring.
    No, she did not want to be alone when she opened the box wrapped in black silk.

10
    T RENT WAS AT the library window watching the fog that seethed in the gardens of Cranleigh Hall and drinking the tea that had been thrust upon him by the housekeeper when the cab came up the drive.
    Footsteps echoed in the front hall. He heard the door open. The