The Twisted Root

there was certainly no quarrel. Nor was it a question of being overwhelmed or feeling a stranger. She had been there many times before and already knew everyone present. She helped compile the guest list."
    She said nothing.
    "I want your thoughts," he prompted. "You are a woman. Do you understand her?"
    Should she tell him the truth? Would he be hurt? She had learned that he was far more vulnerable than his hard exterior showed. He had courage, anger, wit. He was not easily wounded, he felt too fiercely and too completely for others to sway him. He knew what he believed. It was part of what drew her to him, and infuriated her, sometimes even frightened her.
    But since they had been married she had learned the tenderness underneath. It was seldom in his words, but it was in his touch, the way his fingers moved over her body as if even in moments of greatest passion he never forgot her heart and her spirit inside the flesh. She was never less than herself to him. For that, she would always love him, hold back no portion of herself in fear or reserve.
    But she could not have known that before. Miriam Gardiner could not know that. She turned around to face him.
    "We don’t know what her first marriage was like, not truly," she said, meeting his eyes. "Not when the doors were closed and they were alone together. Perhaps there were things in that which made her suddenly afraid of committing herself irrevocably again."
    His gray eyes searched hers. She saw the question in them, the flicker of uncertainty.
    "You cannot know beforehand how well or ill it will be," she said very quietly. "One can be hurt." She did not say "Or be repulsed, exhausted, feel used or soiled," but she knew he understood it. "Perhaps they knew each other very little in that regard," she said aloud. Then, in case he should imagine she had the slightest doubt or fear herself, she put her arms around his neck and, brushing her fingers gently over his ears and into his hair, kissed his mouth.
    His response spoiled the dinner and sealed his determination to begin looking for a woman to take over domestic duties from now on.

3
    MONK LEFT HOME early the following morning. It was long before he felt like leaving, but if he were to have any success in helping Lucius Stourbridge, he must find out what had happened to James Treadwell and the carriage. Then he would have a far better chance of tracing some clue or indication where Miriam had gone, perhaps even why. He surprised himself when he realized how much he dreaded the answer.
    It was now four days since her disappearance, and getting more difficult to follow her path with each hour that passed. He took a hansom to Bayswater and began by seeking the local tradesmen who would have been around at the hour of the afternoon when Miriam fled.
    He was lucky to find almost immediately a gardener who had seen the carriage and knew both the livery and the horses, a distinctive bay and a brown, ill-matched for color but perfect for height and pace.
    "Aye," he said, nodding vigorously, a trowel in his hand. "Aye, it passed me going at a fair lick. Din’t see who were in it, mind. Wondered at the time. Knew as they ’ad a party on. See’d all the carriages comin’. Thought as someone were took ill, mebbe. That wot ’appened?"
    "We don’t know," Monk replied. He would not tell anyone the Stourbridge tragedy, but it would be public knowledge soon enough, unless he managed not only to find Miriam but to persuade her to return as well, and he held no real hope of that. "Did you see which way they went?"
    The gardener looked puzzled.
    "The coachman seems to have stolen the coach and horses," Monk explained.
    The gardener’s eyes widened. "Arrr." He sighed, shaking his head. "Never heard that. What a thing. What’s the world coming to?" He lifted his hand, trowel extended. "Went ’round that corner there. I never saw’d ’im after that. Road goes north. If ’e’d wanted to go to town, ’e’d ’a gone t’other way. Less traffic. Weren’t nobody after ’im. Got clean away, I s’pose."
    Monk agreed, thanked him, and followed the way he had indicated, walking smartly to see if he could find the next sighting.
    He had to cast around several times, and walked miles in the dusty heat, but eventually, footsore and exhausted, he got as far as Hampstead Heath, and then the trail petered out. By this time it was dusk and he was more than ready to find a hansom and go home. The idea held more charm than it had a