“Yes, she is.”
“Everyone says she ain’t been around before, but she seems familiar.” Parkington scratched the back of his neck. “I can’t place her, though.”
Barnabus’s heart dropped to his shoes. Gemma’s family were criminals, back generations, and she herself had been part of their criminal efforts, though not by choice. She was hiding as much from the law as she was from the Kincaids.
And he’d brought her face-to-face with an enforcer of that law.
Móirín and Gemma approached in the very next instant. Móirín’s expression was her usual pointed perusal of everyone and everything. Gemma wore a look of mischief.
Parkington was studying her already. It’d only be a matterof time before he pieced it together. Barnabus’s best course of action at the moment was to behave as if nothing was amiss.
“Why do I get the impression I might be in trouble?” Barnabus kept his tone light, looking from one woman to the other and back again.
“Because you are,” Móirín said. “You’ve kept Gemma a secret from me. I’m not overly pleased about that.”
With a barely suppressed smile, Gemma said, “I ain’t best pleased either. Móirín and I could’ve been chums all this time, Baz.”
Móirín hooked an eyebrow upward. “Baz?”
“Can’t say I’ve heard you called that before,” Parkington said with a chuckle.
Móirín eyed the policeman. “Don’t you have some poor, unsuspecting soul to arrest, Parky?”
He tipped his hat. “I’m off duty, Miss Móirín.”
“How fortunate for us,” she said dryly.
Gemma didn’t seem to be paying the least heed to the bickering but was watching Barnabus. Voice lowered and eyes worried, she asked, “Would you rather I not call you Baz when others are listening?”
He offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It doesn’t upset me.”
Gemma threaded her arm through his. “I’m pleased as plums to hear you say that.” She smiled at him, her dimples appearing, but then almost immediately assumed an overly dramatic look of displeasure. “I forgot. We’s boiling mad at you.” She pulled her arm free and assumed a combative posture that no one would have believed was truly aggressive.
Oh, how she lightened every situation. He’d missed that during the years she’d been away.
“You’ve not only denied me a friend, Dr.Baz,” Móirín said, “but I’ve discovered Gemma is quite adept at giving Brogan aspot of difficulty, which is something for which I’ve needed a partner these ages.”
“There are plenty of us that do that on the regular,” Barnabus said.
“None of you do it well,” Móirín replied with her familiar dry humor.
It made sense to Barnabus that she and Gemma had become fast friends. Gemma hailed from Southwark, an area of Town where being hardened and fierce was the only way a person survived. Furthermore, she’d grown up a Kincaid. How she’d managed to escape from that heritage with any degree of tenderness remaining, he didn’t know.
And everyone knew Móirín was always armed and formidable to the point that even the most violent roughs would be hard-pressed to match her fearsomeness.
To Gemma, Móirín said, “Are you at Doc’s now to stay? It’d be good to know where to go when I invite m’self to supper.”
Gemma glanced at Barnabus. “I ain’t certain.”
Móirín looked to him, clearly thinking he knew the answer.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “Gemma comes and goes as she pleases.”
Gemma smiled, but there was something strange in it. Something almost like hurt. Did she think he was poking fun at her? He wasn’t. He’d offered that explanation all day to anyone who asked. It was easier than explaining that she’d left because their marriage simply wasn’t working, that he wasn’t what she wanted and didn’t know if he’d ever be, that she preferred living in poverty in Wandsworth to living with him.
“Well, you’re welcome to call on me whenever you’d like, no matter where it is you’re calling home,” Móirín said. “And that ’tisn’t an offer I make lightly.”
Gemma looked at him, and Barnabus nodded. “If Móirín’sinviting you, that’s a fine commentary on how highly she thinks of you.”