Scandal in Babylon by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Barbara Hambly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Emma wrenched at the window-sash but the latch held fast. French doors opened from Kitty’s room onto the balcony – she had almost reached them when she realized that the moonlight that shone so brightly on the tumble of sheets on the bed outlined a woman’s hand and wrist. Hand and wrist and tousle of black curls among the pillow-lace.

She stood for a moment, then stepped close to the bed.

That was Kitty, all right. Sleeping like an innocent child, her other arm curved around Buttercreme, whose little round head rested in the hollow of her shoulder.

Quietly, Emma walked to the French doors, and looked out.

The dark-haired woman and the man in evening dress were still embracing, with a theatrical abandon that looked like progressing on to the honeymoon stage right there in the moonlight between the steep slope of the road-bank and the house.

It’s Kitty’s own house. Why fornicate in the front yard when there’s a perfectly good bed …

The dress the dark-haired woman was wearing was the one Kitty had had on Wednesday night at the police station.

The one she got from the wardrobe department.

Which has at least three duplicates …

Ire smote her. Not anger or rage … simple vexation, as she understood what she was looking at.

OH!!!

She would have stamped her foot, had she not feared to wake Kitty – the genuine Kitty – sound asleep in her own bed …

Emma yanked the belt of her robe tight, ghosted back into her own room long enough to get her slippers, then ran lightly down the stairs, through the kitchen – catching up the house-keys from the counter and locking the back door behind her – and down the back steps. The inky shadow of the hill blanketed the driveway itself – concealing the rather seedy little car parked there – and Emma kept to the drive’s verge as she climbed towards the road. She reflected that the couple in front of the house were putting on a sufficiently interesting scene that there was little likelihood that the man up on the road – Is that a telescope he has in his hand? Binoculars? – would hear approaching footfalls.

And as she climbed she recalled the glimpse she’d had through the doors of the empress’s garden last night, of Darlene Golden in her exiguous rags, talking earnestly with an extremely handsome young extra – in evening dress – from the Scandalous Lady set.

Ginny Field had been in the garden, too, she recalled. Kitty’s stand-in. Her height, her build, with her same dark hair.

OH!!!

It was a scene straight out of Much Ado About Nothing, although Emma doubted Darlene knew its provenance. She paused beside the car at the top of the drive, long enough to write down its license-plate number before walking around it to the shape of the man, crouched low beside the road bank, above that long slope of shadow. Binoculars in hand. She said, very softly, ‘Mr Madison?’ and he swiveled on his heels, jerked to his feet.

Before

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