Free The Uninvited Guest by Sarah Woodbury Page A

betrayal as well as she’d
thought. “All right, Gareth. We’ll do it your way.” Maybe she
couldn’t trust Hywel, but she trusted Gareth, and for now that
might be enough.
    “ We should get him to look
at the mark now,” Gareth said. “The impression might fade from her
skin as time goes on and her blood settles. Perhaps he’ll even
recognize it.”
    “ First, could we—could we
try something?” Gwen said. “I’ve a mind to mime what might have
happened here.”
    Gareth looked at her warily but pulled her
closer to him. “You want me to pretend to strangle you?”
    At the look on Gareth’s face, Gwen laughed.
She faced away from him and twitched her hair over her shoulder so
it wouldn’t impede his hands. “I’m not wearing a necklace,
though.”
    “ Not yet.”
    “ What do you mean, not
ye—?” Before Gwen could finish her sentence, something dropped over
her head to rest on her chest. She looked down. Gareth had placed a
chain strung with a garnet ring around her neck. She twisted to
look up at him and he grinned down at her. “I was going to give it
to you in a few days, anyway. You should have had it years
ago.”
    “ Gareth.” Gwen picked up the ring and studied it. The stone
was the size of a pea, set in gold.
    “ I don’t know that this is
the most appropriate time for me to give it to you.”
    “ I want to wear it,” Gwen
said. “And solving murders is what we do, right?”
    Gareth cleared his throat and then bent to
kiss the base of Gwen’s neck. “Right.” The word came out a whisper.
His breath sent a shiver down Gwen’s spine and she clenched the
ring in her fist.
    Then Gareth straightened and the moment of
intimacy passed. He lifted the chain and pulled back on it until
the ring just touched Gwen’s throat. “That’s good.” She felt at the
ring and then along the chain. “Can you tell how it might have
been? Your ring would leave a mark on my neck, the same way the
pendant did on Enid’s.”
    “ For her pendant to mark
her, he would have had to pull her back against him,” Gareth said.
Because of their difference in height and strength, Gareth had
little trouble clutching Gwen to him with his left arm wrapped
across her chest and his right pulling on the chain. “Enid could
have hung on to her killer’s left hand, trying to pry it off her
right shoulder as she struggled not to choke, and possibly
scratching his forearm with her nails.”
    “ Enid couldn’t have
lasted long like
this,” Gwen said.
    The door behind them swung open. “Gareth!”
Hywel bounded into the room.
    Neither Gwen nor Gareth moved, but they did
gaze at Hywel with curiosity. He stared at them for a count of
three, and then slapped his thigh and laughed. “I thought—” He
shook his head. “Never mind.”
    Gareth loosened his hold on Gwen, but didn’t
release her. “We were trying to figure out how Enid died,” Gareth
said. “She has some strange markings on her palm and it’s not clear
how she came by them.”
    “ Show me the markings,”
Hywel said.
    Gareth stepped from behind Gwen, crouched
with Hywel over the body, and lifted the sheet to show him Enid’s
left hand. As Gareth had done, Hywel traced the markings with one
finger. “From a ring, do you think?”
    “ That was our thought,”
Gareth said. “One with a design in relief, though what the image
portrays is difficult to determine.”
    Hywel tipped his head in the same way Gareth
had, looking at the ring from multiple angles. “An animal, I’d
say.”
    “ I suggested a lion,”
Gareth said.
    “ Maybe … a dragon?” Hywel
said.
    Gwen paled. She put her hand to her mouth,
trying to keep down the bile that rose in her throat and threatened
to undo her.
    Gareth glanced toward her. “What is it,
Gwen?”
    “ When I went to Dublin with
Cadwaladr, he had a ring with a raised dragon emblem,” she said. “I
remember it specifically because I would focus on it as a way not
to look into his face.”
    Hywel rubbed at his