Free A New York Christmas by Anne Perry Page B

wrong with our wedding. I know what I said about the Albright name, but it really doesn’t matter to me. In fact, at times I wish we were quite ordinary, then therewouldn’t be all this pressure to do everything the right way all the time. It’s like … like being royalty. I don’t really want to be a princess. I just want to be with Brent.”
    Jemima smiled in spite of her own confusion of emotions. Did she believe Phinnie? Yes, at least in part. Everything she had said was true. But there was a lingering presence there of passion to succeed, at any cost. She had been so quick to blame Jemima. The kind of love she felt was like a fever. It overcame everything else and destroyed the restraints she might normally have exercised.
    “Jemima!” Phinnie said urgently. “You must believe me!”
    “Of course,” Jemima agreed quietly, and it was almost true. Phinnie wouldn’t let Jemima go to trial for a murder she had not committed—well, probably she wouldn’t. Before Phinnie could see the doubt in her eyes, she turned and walked away. Phinnie called after her, but she pretended not to have heard. She was surprised by how hurt she felt, and by how frightened she was.

T hat night Jemima did not sleep well. She woke up often and, even though the room was well heated, she felt cold and stiff. There was no sound, not even that of the wind outside the window. She opened the curtains and saw everything cloaked with snow, the huge city lit as if it too were awake, but frozen into lifelessness. She had been here less than two weeks, but she had learned to like New York—the vitality, the strange mixture of peoples.
    And yet she was terribly alone, and accused of a crime for which her life could be taken. And there was no one to help her but herself.
    If she was her father’s daughter, that should be enough. Thomas Pitt had been a regular policeman, solving murders just like this one, before he joined Special Branch.
    She went back to bed and lay with the covers up to her chin, trying to get warm again, and concentrated her thoughts. What would he advise her to do? Certainly not give up and wait for help, or lie here feeling sorry for herself and hope that the police went on looking for the answer. Why should they not accept that the foreign young woman who had found the body was not as guilty as she seemed?
    Patrick Flannery’s strong face with its gentleness and humor came into her mind, and she forced herself to dismiss it.
    Her only defense was to attack. In the morning she would get up early, have breakfast in the kitchen, and then go out and begin to look for the truth. Nothing had been stolen, Phinnie had said, and a glance at Maria’s possessions and style of life would have been enough to know there was nothing worth taking. The knife, the violence of the wound that had killed her, made it clear that bringing about her death was the sole purpose of her assailant. So it was someone who knew her.
    Then Jemima must learn to know her also. How long had Maria lived there? Who were her friends, and her enemies? Who might believe she had wronged them, or was a threat to them? And why? What could she know of anyone that was worth such a violent and terrible way of preventing her from telling it?

B y nine o’clock the next morning, Jemima was already at the apartment building where Maria Cardewhad lived, blinking against the flat, white light reflected off the snow. She had chosen different clothes from the ones she’d had on when she was here with Harley, and she’d pinned her hair up in as different a style as it would take.
    She had planned what to say. She was less than satisfied with it, but all the alternatives she could think of were even worse. It was always best to stick as close to the truth as possible. It was easier to remember, and one was less likely to make an irretrievable error. Apart from that, consistently lying took up a great deal of one’s emotional energy, and that in itself often gave one