Breathless by Nicola Claire

Author:Nicola Claire
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780473396350
Publisher: Nicola Claire Books
Published: 2017-04-28T05:00:00+00:00

IT IS YOURS

INSPECTOR KELLY

A nna sat with her back straight and her chin up; one hand securely wrapped around her parasol, which lay across her lap. The other wrapped up in my fingers. It was warm and soft and so very small compared to mine.

And trembling.

Anna Cassidy rarely showed her fear. But in this, she was terrified. And I had no idea how to soothe her.

So I sat silently. Stoically. Giving her the only support I could in the form of her hand grasped in mine. It was a privilege that I should not have taken. A sweet innocent affection that was bound by a fierce longing. A simple action that was layered in the complexities of my desire and the inappropriateness of my attentions.

For months…years, I have told myself I am not for Miss Cassidy. She is destined for far more deserving than me. I am not at liberty to pursue such a free spirit. For I, myself, am by no means free.

I still remember the day I first laid eyes on her. She was in her father’s home surgery, attending a cadaver with tweezers in one long-fingered hand and a pencil in the other, as she jotted down notes in a book to the side. ’Twas not the sight of a woman bending over a deceased body that caught my attention. Nor the scarlet of blood that coated her wrist and hand.

It was the pencil. She licked the tip before she wrote her note down. My eyes drawn to the movement as if Icarus drawn to the sun.

I burned for her. It was instant. I would have gladly met my fiery fate for one taste of this woman.

And then her father had walked into the room.

“I see you’ve met my daughter,” Thomas Cassidy had said.

“Introductions have not been made,” Anna had offered, her attention riveted on the corpse.

Look at me, I’d thought desperately. I could not look away.

“Anna,” Thomas had said distractedly as he hunted for something on his desk. “This is Inspector Kelly from London.”

And still, the cadaver held more sway.

“Miss Cassidy,” I’d managed, bowing slightly; a redundant movement as she never lifted her eyes from the body before her. Her focus was my undoing.

“Be a good man and hand me the trephine,” she’d said in place of a greeting.

“The trephine?”

“The human brain, Inspector!” she’d announced with vigour and a wicked glint to her eye. “To discover a nut’s secret one must first peel back the shell and peer within, wouldn’t you say?”

“The skull?” I’d idiotically murmured. “You’re removing the skull?”

She’d smiled. That smile. I can see it now as if it were only yesterday.

Anna Cassidy had been playing with me. This slip of a woman, elbows deep in the blood and gore of the deceased, had been teasing me. She hasn’t stopped since that day.

I’d known then, that my greatest challenge in Auckland City would not be crimes of a dark nature, but my own conscience. My own morality.

For at every opportunity I found myself seeking her next smile, that next quick retort.

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