Banquet of Lies by Michelle Diener

she witnessed it and recognized him.”
    “And that,” Dervish said, quietly, “is a very big problem. For us, of course, but also for Giselle Barrington.”
    Jonathan tapped his mouth with a finger. “Because she’s the only person who can identify him.”
    Durnham nodded. “And if our scenario is correct, she’s also got something he wants very, very much.”
    “That’s why you want to watch Barrington’s house,” Jonathan said, suddenly understanding.
    Durnham nodded. “It’s the only place Giselle Barrington has to go. And it’s the first place anyone after her will look.”
    “Who would she contact, if she did make it here with the document?”
    There was a surprised silence for a moment. “Damned if I know.” Durnham shot a look at Dervish. “Unless her father told her, and I doubt he would have, knowing how sensitive this was. She wouldn’t know who to contact.”
    “That’s if she’s even made it as far as London,” Dervish said softly. “She’d need perfect timing to have made every connection to be here already, or even within the next few days. We only got word of Barrington’s death from Thornton last night, brought by an experienced courier.” He sighed. “Chances are, Thornton and the Swedish authorities will find her body floating in Lake Mälaren.”

7

    T he house had stilled around her, and Gigi slowly became aware of the quiet, as if it were a sound itself rather than the lack of one.
    She was comfortable here, she realized with surprise, setting down her father’s papers and arching her neck to relieve the stiffness. Part of that was knowing that her parents had been welcome here, and had liked both the previous viscounts and the current Lord Aldridge.
    Edgars, for all his posturing and rules, had taken in someone like Mavis, and had the grace to thank his staff when thanks were due. He was better than he’d first appeared, and she knew this place could have been so much worse.
    Her eyes fell on the letter she’d been reading, addressed to her father, and she fought the grief that rose up. The regard the man who had written the letter had for her father was clear, but there was no address, not even a name. The writer had simply signed himself D.
    It did not help her.
    If she could send the document in the hidden pocket she’d sewn into her petticoat directly to him, the massive weight of responsibility would lift a little off her chest, help her breathe a little easier. But the mysterious D. had made sure there was no clue as to where he lived or who he was.
    Those details had all been in her father’s head. And while he’d always given her the documents he couriered for the Crown to hide in the pockets she’d sewn into all her petticoats, she’d never known anything about them. Not what was written on them, not why they were carrying them.
    Her father had said it was much safer for her that way. Keeping the safekeeper safe, he’d always joked.
    It wasn’t so funny now.
    She stood and gathered the papers together, set them neatly back into their trunk, and locked it.
    She should have been exhausted. But thinking of her father, reading his papers, had brought those last few minutes in the gardens of Tessin Palace back in stark relief.
    She didn’t want to close her eyes, because she knew what would haunt her dreams.
    She walked out of her bedroom, through her sitting room and into the kitchen, stepping quietly into her new domain.
    A kitchen under her own command.
    She smiled at the heady thought. In Pierre and Georges’s kitchen she had been only a sous-chef, and in the beginning, only on sufferance. She’d earned the title now, but in the old days, they had merely been humoring a grief-strickenchild who wanted to hear her mother’s language spoken all around her.
    The kitchen was large and in darkness, except for a weak light that spilled down the stairs that led to the front hallway, left on for Lord Aldridge’s return.
    The scent of dried herbs, lemon and a