Carla Neggers - Thief's Mark

But that hadn’t happened.

Henrietta wasn’t sure what to call how she felt. She’d been out of touch with anything resembling a romantic life or romantic feelings for so long, how was she supposed to know? She wasn’t in love with him, she kept telling herself. Oliver was irresistibly fascinating, with his knowledge of mythology, folklore and legends, and his unusual lifestyle. Given his expertise in karate and tai chi, he was fit and capable.

Sexy, in fact. That was the truth of it.

Maybe what she felt was simple lust. Maybe she just wanted to sleep with him and once she did, that’d be that.

“The man’s a bloody thief,” she said aloud, getting the teapot off an open shelf. It was hers, although Posey had left a half-dozen teapots. She needed a few things of her own in her new life.

In a way, learning Oliver was a serial art thief had somehow permitted her to indulge in these fantasies about him. His eccentricities and solitary ways kept people at bay. They didn’t ask questions about the true nature of his hobbies and travels.

Henrietta envisioned him slipping past security guards, disabling alarms, carrying off valuable works of art without breaking into a nervous sweat. Each of his heists had required detailed planning and careful execution. The man was brazen, brilliant, wily.

She sniffed. “He’s still a thief.”

One of his covers was his occasional work as a film-and-television mythology consultant, under his assumed identity of frumpy Oliver Fairbairn. He’d fly off to Hollywood and chat with writers, producers, actors.

Not an easy man to figure out, her one-time childhood playmate.

Henrietta couldn’t let her fascination with him lead her astray, but perhaps it was too late and it already had. She’d just come upon a dead body at his door, hadn’t she?

Her unsettling attraction to him wasn’t the only factor in her departure from MI5, but coupled with recent frustrations on the job, it had helped her to understand that twelve years in domestic intelligence had been enough. She wanted more from her life, or at least something else, even if she wasn’t sure what that was. Right now she needed to get a grip on herself. Oliver York was a thief, if a charming and sexy thief, who’d shown no interest in her whatsoever beyond their childhood bond, and he’d just taken off from the scene of a suspected homicide.

Any thought of a relationship with him was delusional.

For all his quirks and misdeeds, however, Henrietta couldn’t see Oliver as a murderer.

She rummaged in a near-empty bag for two slices of bread. Tea and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich weren’t a pint but they were what she needed right now. She’d reorganized the kitchen a few weeks ago to suit her. Slowly but surely, she was making the house her own. It needed remodeling but that would come in due course. She’d been focused on establishing her garden-design business.

She was slathering on Branston pickles when her phone vibrated on the table. She swooped it up and sighed when she saw it was Martin Hambly. She’d wanted it to be...who? Oliver? MI5? It didn’t bear considering.

She answered. “Hello, Martin,” she said.

“How are you doing?”

It wasn’t why he’d called. She could hear it in his voice. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Good.”

She frowned, on her feet, silent phone at her ear. “Has something happened?” she asked finally.

“No, no—sorry. I’m distracted. Two FBI agents are on the way. The police want us to talk to them.”

Now this was interesting. “Are these Oliver’s FBI-agent friends?”

“Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan, yes, but ‘friends’ is perhaps too strong. I didn’t realize you knew about them.”

“Everyone in the village knows about them, Martin.”

“I see.” He sounded resigned to the fact, if not pleased. “They might be able to help us find Oliver. They arrived at Heathrow this morning.”

“Excellent. I can show them our vintage flowerpot.”

“Henrietta?”

“Sorry. No problem. I’ll have a bite and be along.”

“Thank you. I’ll let them know when they arrive.”

She rang off, finding herself torn between wanting to meddle in the death investigation and wanting to grab sheers and prune something—anything—in Aunt Posey’s garden.

Classic fight-or-flight.

She finished making her lunch and took it outside to the terrace. She settled at a metal table and chairs. They’d been Posey’s. Henrietta hadn’t had a garden in London. There were cushions, but she was always forgetting to take them in when it rained, or out when it didn’t rain. The seat wasn’t as cold as it had been that morning, when she’d had breakfast outdoors, before leaving for the York farm.

She tried to focus on a clump of cheerful Shasta daisies. Posey had been a master gardener and might have raised her eyebrows at Henrietta calling herself a garden designer. On her many visits since childhood, she’d soaked up her great-aunt’s gardening wisdom and expertise. On all matters, not just her house, Posey had preferred to consider only her own opinions. She’d inherited enough money from her parents to get by if she lived frugally—which came naturally to her—and had supplemented her income with the occasional magazine and newspaper article on gardening. As opinionated as she was, Posey had been relatively open-minded when it came to gardening. She had a simple philosophy: “Plant what you like where it will grow.” Everything else, she said, would follow and sort itself.

Henrietta ate her sandwich, hardly noticing its taste. Her plans for the day had been thoroughly messed up. She was in no hurry to meet with the FBI agents. Would they know she was ex-MI5? She was certain Martin suspected that she’d been sent by MI5, perhaps, to keep an eye on Oliver. The truth was considerably more complicated.

Well, not that much more complicated. She’d quit MI5 in March, moved to the Cotswolds and put out her shingle as a garden designer. Half her former colleagues believed she’d been sacked, but it wasn’t true, at least technically. One day she’d realized she’d had her fill and put in her papers. The “one day” had followed a bad run-in with a senior intelligence officer and a seriously inexplicable longing to call Oliver and talk to him about it. She’d realized she needed to move on.

“Focus,” she said aloud. “Don’t let your mind wander.”

Her new job was enhanced by a wandering mind. It gave her something to do while finding old flowerpots as she had that morning.

She poured more tea, taking care to note its heat, its scent, its splash in her cup. She found the ritual reassuring, a way to stay fully present and to step out of the whirlwind of the dead man at the York farm and Oliver’s disappearance.

She drank a few more sips of tea and gave up. Her mind wasn’t on tea or flowers. She was can-do by nature, and she wanted to pace, jump up, do something—clean, wash, throw things, anything that wasn’t sitting, keeping her cool. She’d been cool and decisive that morning but that was different. That was real. It wasn’t debating whether to have biscuits with her tea or to wander in the garden.

The humidity was building ahead of the rain. It worked its dark magic and frizzed up her hair. She could feel it.

She pounced when her phone vibrated next to her. “Hello—”

“Tell the FBI agents everything. They know who you are. I told them.”

“And you are?”

But the man on the other end of the connection was gone. It didn’t matter. She knew who it was. MI5, in the form of Jeremy Pearson. The same uncompromising senior officer who’d given her such a hard time in March.

Now it was time to wander in Aunt Posey’s gardens.

* * *