Barbara Metzger (23 page)

She finally cornered him two days after the Rafton fete, stationing Buck at the morning room door so that the viscount could not escape into his private office after breakfast. She might have saved herself the effort. And the platter of sweet rolls.

"No, Miss Lockharte, I shall not listen to any more of this rumgumption. Once and for all, no one is trying to murder you. Reverend Merrihew would not even be in London, much less try to do you in, so that's just an aberration of your fertile imagination. Or perhaps some choice spirit poured Blue Ruin into the punch at Rafton's. As for the events on Rafton's balcony, the less said, the sooner forgotten. I have already apologized for my behavior, and I have given over expecting your apology for being out there in the first place. You must have learned by now that females who go off alone in dark corners must expect to be accosted. I was wrong, you were wrong. Drop it."

"It is not safe for me here, I say! What if Buck hadn't tugged so hard on his leash yesterday morning to get to that neighbor's cat? Both Susan and I would have been crushed by the roofing tile."

"Chimney caps and roof tiles fall off all the time in London, dash it. There was a wind abroad yesterday, not a woman-killer. You simply have to understand that not every mishap in the world is directed at you personally."

Rosellen was pacing. Buck's one eye was flicking from her to the viscount. “I'll remove to my uncle's. That way, if anything evil occurs, Clarice will be the one to suffer, not your family."

"What, do you think that Diamond will go walking your dog with you? Clarice Haverhill wouldn't be seen dead with a mangy creature like Buck.” Or Rosellen, for that matter, but he didn't have to say it.

Hearing his name, Buck sat up, which put his nose at the level of the table, so he helped himself to the leftover kippers.

Wynn pointed at the disappearing herring. “Do you honestly believe your aunt will let that disaster of the dog world cross her door? Has she recovered from her visit here yet?"

"Buck did not understand about Aunt Beatrice's fur tippet.” It was a feeble excuse, and Rosellen knew it. Worse, she knew Wynn was right: she could not take Buck to the Haverhills'. She didn't think there would be many rooming houses willing to take her and the problematic pooch either, even if she could get Wynn to advance her the fifty pounds.

He wasn't finished. “And what about Susan, if you leave? Did you think of how she would feel? She's never been so happy or so agreeable as since you came."

Rosellen had her own thoughts on that issue, too. She knew Wynn wouldn't want to hear them either.

"And my mother. She's introduced you to her friends, got you vouchers for Almack's under her sponsorship, and taken you into her heart. Why, that poor organ was so overwrought by the uproar at Rafton's that Mother has taken to her bed."

The viscountess had taken Miss Austen's new novel to bed, but Rosellen knew her son was determined to see things his own way as usual. Still, how could she leave them all? So she stayed, thinking it would serve the pompous peer right if she were slain on his doorstep. Then he'd have to keep Buck himself. But she never went out without a maid and a footman or Buck and his feral manners. She tried to keep Susan at a distance, and Stubbing and his loaded pistol in sight.

Rosellen spent her waking hours looking over her shoulder, and her sleeping hours, what few she had, behind locked doors and windows, with the fireplace poker in her hand. The dark shadows were returning to her eyes, the pinched look to her mouth. Her temper was suffering as well as her looks. All of her pleasure in the visit was gone.

In the days that followed, Rosellen did not bother to mention the rock tossed at her horse in the park or the box of bonbons that arrived without a note. She'd set them aside for later; any creature without Buck's iron-clad stomach would have expired.

She thought of going to her uncle about the situation, but he had not believed her two years ago about a simple matter like a kiss. He certainly would not believe her story of a killer in clerical garb. Besides, the baron liked Miss Merrihew. He'd sent his sister's only child to the woman. No, she'd find no help there.

Stubbing was too busy with his lordship's correspondence and his lordship's sister. The lieutenant assured her that the viscount was looking into the Merrihews’ backgrounds, though, and he would tell her if the investigators found anything suspicious. A handful of attempts on her life did not appear to be suspicious enough, Rosellen thought angrily.

Bow Street was still a possibility, except that the viscount and Stubbing were right: she had no evidence. Buck hadn't left a crumb of a bonbon for her to have analyzed. Even if Fanny came to Town, swearing on her Bible that money had been delivered to the academy for Rosellen, the officials might not believe a poor maidservant. Justice, like dreams, was for the well-off and the well born, not for the likes of a Miss Lockharte or a serving girl who could not read.

Rosellen did write to Lady Comfrey, who had been Vivian Baldour. The former pupil at Miss Merrihew's was the only other person with fifty pounds whom Rosellen might have written to in her delirium. She'd heard since coming to London that Lady Comfrey had given birth to a healthy son, and that she and her elderly earl were in alt over the blessed event, in Bath. Rosellen congratulated them, wording her letter carefully in case Vivian was not her unknown patron. She wrote laboriously, using her left hand to support her right wrist, but she produced a clear, if obscure, letter.

If Lady Comfrey wrote back, acknowledging Rosellen's gratitude, then she would have the beginnings of a case against the malfeasant Merrihews. And Lord Vance, too, for surely that had been Miss Merrihew's paramour holding up the coach. Mr. Merrihew did not ride as well and was of a less sturdy build. If she couldn't charge them with attempted murder, Rosellen decided, then thievery was a start. The authorities, and Lord Stanford, would have to take her seriously then. She'd never mention that the reverend was also a debaucher of young women, for that would be betraying Vivian, who was always a decent sort of girl, except for her scandalous association with Mr. Merrihew, of course, which was no one's concern.

Rosellen scratched on the door of Wynn's office and handed the letter to Stubbing to post, noticing that the inner door was closed as usual. Then she went outside to join the ladies in Stanford House's rear walled gardens, where Lady Stanford was embroidering in the shade of the lilacs while Susan read aloud from the latest novel and Buck chewed on the leg of a wooden bench.

Not ten minutes later Rosellen was back inside and in Wynn's office. She did not bother to knock and she did not stop at Stubbing's desk. She shoved a sobbing Susan into the lieutenant's arms and marched straight through to the viscount's inner sanctum. Barely noticing that he was hunched over a worktable, wearing magnifying glasses and holding a paintbrush, she slammed a plain-hilted silver dagger down next to his elbow. “There,” she shouted. “Is this evidence enough?"

"Bloody hell.” Wynn's hand jerked, leaving a trail of paint across his sleeve. “Damn it, woman, I—Is that a knife?"

Rosellen was peering over his shoulder. She'd known he painted, of course, from the turpentine smell and the gossip. His avocation was one of the worst-kept secrets in polite society.

"You paint model soldiers?” They were the most intricate miniatures she'd ever seen, and his brush was as thin as an eyelash. “They are exquisite."

Wynn had removed his spectacles to examine the knife. Although privately he was gratified by her evident appreciation, he was outwardly annoyed at the intrusion. “Confound it, Rose, you didn't barge in here to discuss my painting.” Now he could hear his sister wailing from the other room. “What the deuce is going on?"

Also restored to her priorities by the other girl's cries, Rosellen shouted back, “That's what I'd like to know. This"—she pointed toward the knife—"was thrown over the fence at me, in your very own garden. If I hadn't bent over to take splinters out of Buck's mouth, I would have been skewered to a lilac bush. It missed your mother's chair by inches."

Wynn jumped up, knocking over his seat and two bottles of paint. Rosellen rescued two unfinished soldiers from the spreading puddle.

"Your mother is unharmed. Wilkins and the footmen carried her upstairs. Her woman is with her, and the housekeeper, and her doctor has been called for, just in case. Susan is merely frightened,” she added, when the viscount would have rushed into the outer office. “Stubbing is seeing to her."

Wynn was staring at the knife in his hand as if it had just bitten him. “My word, someone really was trying to murder you!"

"Is trying, Stanford. Is still trying! I told you and told you!"

"You also told me you were dying, confound it. You were out of your mind from the fever. How could I know what to believe?"

"I was dying, I just didn't finish. And someone—lots of someones, I fear—is trying to get rid of me, and he is not finished either."

"Oh, God, you could have been killed!"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, you insufferable ass, but you would not listen. I was merely a hysterical female, so you wouldn't go to the magistrate or the Runners. You didn't even care about my fifty pounds."

Rosellen put the miniature soldiers down carefully, lest she throw them at his head or drop them, her hands were shaking so from anger and fear.

Rosellen needed a handkerchief, but Wynn handed her a paint-soaked rag instead, with hands that were none too steady either. He managed a weak smile while he fumbled in his pockets for a clean linen. “You could have been killed,” he repeated.

Then Rosellen was in his embrace, pressed as close to his chest as Wynn's strong arms could hold her. She could hear the furious pounding of his heart against her cheek. He was rocking, rubbing his chin on the top of her head, murmuring, “My God, I could have lost you.” He held her tighter, as if he would never let her go.

Rosellen wept tears of relief. Here, she was safe and warm, knowing he would protect her. Here was where she wanted to be, had always wanted to be, it seemed, despite knowing the lunacy of the pipe dreams she barely admitted to having. She raised her head for his kiss, and he obliged, as eager for the shared breath, the shared intimacy, as she. He would have surrounded her, filled her, blanketed her with his very being, if possible. That was what he told her in his kiss. He believed her; he believed in her.

Rosellen believed she'd finally reached Paradise. She had no awareness of her own body except where it touched his, no conscious thought except of him.

Wynn pulled back eventually, a question in his eyes, ready to duck her plastered arm. “It was worth it,” he said. “And I won't apologize."

Rosellen knew what he was thinking, how wrong this was, how totally and abysmally unsuitable they were for each other in the eyes of the world. She was not sorry either. Even if there were no more moments like this one, it was enough. Her copy book was already blotted just by wanting him so badly, so Rosellen leaned into him again, finding his lips with hers this time. He did not push her away until another minute would have found them tumbled to the floor, with the door and various buttons open.

Wynn took a minute to catch his breath, tenderly combing her tousled curls with his fingers, paint stains and all. Then he said, “You mean there really was a stolen purse, too?"

The Merrihews were missing. The academy was closed; the students were sent home early for the long vacation. The parents were told the hasty dismissal was to sanitize the building against another influenza epidemic. They were also told they had to pay next year's tuition in advance, to help pay for the disinfection. Miss Merrihew, it was given out, was taking a walking tour in Scotland, where her brother was supposedly at a theological seminary.

If so, it was for the first time, since, according to the report Stubbing finally received, there were no records that the man had ever been ordained. There were no records that the man and his sister had ever existed until fourteen years ago, when they had used aliases and forged references to establish the school for daughters of wealthy families. Now the archbishop was sending his own investigators to see if Merrihew had performed any weddings as fraudulent as the education the young ladies had received.

Someone had warned them, most likely the same someone who had told Merrihew where to find Rosellen Lockharte. Clarice admitted to seeing the gentleman in London during the past fortnight, when he'd called to ascertain Rosellen's well-being. Naturally she had given him her cousin's direction. Hadn't he stopped at Stanford House? And no, Clarice had no idea where he was staying.

Wynn posted guards. Then he hired Runners to watch the guards. And called in Stubbing's army friends to watch the Runners. The ladies at Stanford House were better protected than any sultan's harem. Rosellen especially was not permitted outside the house, not even to the garden, without a battalion of watchdogs, besides Buck.

By unspoken consent, she and Wynn would not speak of what had happened in his workroom until the danger was past, if then. Rosellen knew nothing could come of it and did not want to hear him tell her so. She also knew without being told that Wynn did not want his model painting to be bruited about. She could have looked at the detailed miniatures for hours, but he had firmly locked the studio door behind them, effectively shutting her out of another part of his life. Yet he could not have done more to protect her.

Perhaps he was doing too much. “Merrihew will not attempt anything with all your men about,” she complained. “So they'll never catch him."

"I've been thinking the same thing. The situation is intolerable, never knowing where he is or if he'll ever show up again. I've been considering hiring an actress to dress up as you to draw him out of his lair."

"What, and endanger another poor girl?"

"So what do you suggest, we stake you out like a lamb for slaughter? You are not leaving this house without my company and that is final."