The Untamed MacKenzie (MacKenzies & McBrides #5.5)(38)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Would he find cheroots and love poems to long-ago schoolgirls? Fellows’ heart beat faster as he lifted the lid.

He found a notebook. He took it out, noting that it was clean and crisp. Almost new.

“Ah,” Pierce said. “Wonderful things, notebooks. Can tell you so much about a chap. His personal thoughts. Locked in a box under the floorboards.”

Fellows sat down on the chair at the dressing table and opened the notebook. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t a straightforward, written journal of everything the bishop had been up to, whom he’d angered, and who wanted to kill him. It was a series of cryptic notes, but Hargate had been kind enough to date them. He’d made the last entry the morning of the garden party.

“Bring the box,” Fellows said grimly. “We’re taking this.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lloyd Fellows’ flat was in a lane off the Strand in a respectable house that retained some of the elegance of the past. The landlady was gracious enough to let Louisa and Daniel upstairs to Fellows’ rooms once Daniel explained who they were—and charmed her with his smiles and youthful innocence. He portrayed innocence very well.

The flat had four rooms—a sitting room which doubled as a dining room, a small office with a cluttered desk, and a bedroom with a bath chamber beyond. Daniel solved Louisa’s problem of wondering if she would ever dare enter Fellows’ bedroom by opening the door and barging in himself. Of course, Louisa had to follow to make sure he stayed out of mischief.

“He won’t mind,” Daniel said. “I come here all the time for a bit of a chat. Ah, there it is.” He picked up a book from Fellows’ bedside table. “I lent him this a while ago. Thought it might be in here.”

Louisa gave him a sharp look. It would be just like Daniel to pretend he’d given Fellows the book in order to have an excuse for snooping in the man’s bedroom.

She ought to tell him they should leave the room and close the door. But Louisa stood in the middle of it, absorbing everything about Lloyd Fellows.

His bed was large, with low posts and no hangings. Neatly made, the pillows plump, a quilt folded across the bottom. Louisa wondered if his mother had sewn the quilt.

The room was small, most of it taken up with the bed. Fellows didn’t have many decorative touches, except a few photographs in frames on top of the high dresser. Louisa moved to look at them.

One photo was of his mother, taken when she was younger. Louisa had met Mrs. Fellows at informal Mackenzie gatherings—the photograph showed she’d been vivacious and pretty when younger, and her eyes held shrewd intelligence, much like her son’s.

Another photo was a full-length portrait of a very young Lloyd, in his policeman’s uniform, probably taken when he’d first joined the force. He stood stiffly, proud, his helmet tucked under his arm.

The third photograph was of Louisa.

Louisa looked quickly behind her, but Daniel was busy flipping through the book he’d found. Louisa turned back to the photo, her heart hammering.

The photograph was a casual one, taken by Eleanor during one of Louisa’s visits to Kilmorgan—Eleanor enjoyed taking photographs and developing them herself. Louisa stood in the garden at Kilmorgan Castle, sunlight on her face, climbing roses around her. The sepia photo showed the roses as white, but in reality they were very light pink. Louisa’s hair looked a shade of brown instead of bright red, her dress darker than the pretty green it had been, but overall, the photograph was a good one. Because Eleanor was skilled at photography, Louisa wasn’t standing ramrod-stiff, her face and eyes washed out from the light, but was smiling, her pose natural.

How the photograph had gotten onto the dresser in Lloyd Fellows’ London bedchamber, Louisa had no idea. Eleanor might have given him a copy. Or perhaps Daniel, who’d just ingenuously said that he’d been here many times before, had.

Louisa bit her lip as she turned around. The open door beyond the bed led into his bathroom, where she told herself she wouldn’t go. But the window gave full light into the little room, showing her a mug and shaving brush on his washstand, towels neatly hung, a large bathtub with a tap. Fellows was a very tidy man, or else the landlady provided a competent maid. Nothing was out of place.

Louisa wanted to enter the bathroom and touch the shaving brush, an object of masculinity. She wanted to connect to Lloyd through it, feel again his strength, heat, the weight of him on her.

She’d never erase the imprint of his mouth on hers, the taste of him on her tongue. And she wanted more than kisses. Last night, if the constable hadn’t arrived, Louisa would have let Fellows carry their passion on the desk to its conclusion. She’d have slid off her drawers and raked up her skirts, welcoming him into her arms and inside her body.

Louisa, who should go to her marriage bed a virgin, would have thrown virtue aside for the joy of being with Lloyd at least once. By the social rules she lived by, Louisa would then have had to withdraw herself from the marriage mart after that, because no man wanted to discover on the wedding night that his bride was soiled goods.

But Louisa would not have cared. Even now she felt nothing but deep regret that they’d been interrupted.

“We should wait for him in the sitting room,” Louisa said abruptly.

Daniel looked up. “Eh?” He closed the book and shrugged. “Just as you like.”

Daniel led the way back to the sitting room, and Louisa made herself shut the door of the enticing chamber behind them.

***

Fellows walked home in the dark, his thoughts piling one on top of the other. Hargate’s notebook had revealed much. Fellows had left the book in its box firmly under lock and key at the Yard, but Fellows’ notes on it burned in his pocket, waiting for him to have the time to sit and go over them.

He might be lost in thought, but Fellows knew the placement of every single person on the street with him as well as those lurking in dark passages, what they were doing, and, if he’d seen them before, who they were. Those he hadn’t seen before, he made a note of in the back of his mind to look for again.

Denizens of the night always left Fellows alone, however. Though he wore a suit no different from that of any other businessman returning home late from work, somehow even those who knew nothing about him stayed far from him. Fellows was trouble, they sensed, and they didn’t want to deal with that much trouble.

Fellows let himself into the house with his key, walked up the quiet stairs, and used his flat key to open the door to his sitting room.