The Water Nymph (14 page)

The brightness dimmed. “Nothing. That was all, just a request. I hope she is pretty.”

“Who?”

“The mistress.” Sophie was impatient. “The mistress you are supposed to seduce.”

“Unfortunately, I am trying to limit myself to one seduction a week, and I do not think yours is finished.” When he found himself on the way toward the desk to expand on that theme, Crispin stopped himself. “Nor is our work. There is still one person who was a subscriber that we have not consulted.”

Sophie, wondering if perhaps they could not do it after they made love, or after they had supper, or both, asked distractedly, “Who?”

“You.”

Sophie’s distraction evaporated. “But I did not subscribe.”

“Your name was in his ledger for the precise amount of the subscription.”

“Perhaps,” Sophie said, shaking her head in a futile effort to make sense of what was happening. “But that does not mean I subscribed. I never met Richard Tottle. Or gave him any money.”

“Really?” Crispin asked with undisguised incredulity.

“Yes.” Sophie paused for a moment, trying to decide, then blurted, “I admit I went to the Unicorn to meet Tottle, and I received word that he was in the smoking room, but when I got there…” Her words dried up abruptly.

“What happened?” Crispin coaxed. “Was he already dead?”

Sophie shook her head slowly, looking miserable. “I do not know if he was alive. It was dark in the smoking room. Very dark. Completely dark.” She shuddered. “I was… I did not go in. I just left.”

As she spoke Crispin remembered, remembered having to light the tapers when he entered, and realized that he should have understood immediately, as soon as he saw her reaction to the dark in Pickering’s Highway. She had been afraid to enter, and too embarrassed to admit it.

“I see,” Crispin said finally, kicking himself for not having caught on sooner. “But your bill of credit was found on Tottle’s dead body. If you did not give it to him, who did?”

“I do not know,” Sophie said with such clear relief that Crispin was immediately put on his guard.

“Let me ask the question another way,” he said carefully, circling around the desk toward her. “To whom did you give that bill of credit?”

The relief drained from her expression. “I don’t remember,” she replied, more a question than a statement.

Crispin was leaning over her now, his hands on either arm of her chair, his eyes looking into hers. “Do not lie to me, Sophie. I want to help you, but I can do that only if you are honest with me.”

Under other circumstances, circumstances that had his lips hovering something more than two inches from hers, Sophie would have told him that she did not need his help, did not even want it, but now she could not form the words, let alone think them. It was as if his very proximity hypnotized her. Before she realized what was happening, she heard a voice, her voice, answering his questions.

“The bill of credit that they found on Tottle’s body was mine,” the voice explained. “I mean, I wrote it. But I did not give it to Richard Tottle. I gave it to my godfather, Lord Grosgrain, the morning he died, just before he left his house. He told me he was going to see Richard Tottle that morning, but there is no way he could have given it to Tottle because he was killed only minutes later at the end of the street—more than a mile from Tottle’s print shop. Whoever killed him must have found the bill of credit on his body and kept it, then planted it on Tottle to implicate me. Just like they did with my pistol.”

Crispin did not move. “Your pistol?”

“Yes, the one that was used to kill Richard Tottle. According to Octavia, Lord Grosgrain borrowed it the day before he was killed. He hated firearms, hated violence of any kind, so he must have been terrified for his life when he took it.” She looked at him intently. “Don’t you see? Lord Grosgrain must have suspected someone was going to try to kill him and took my pistol to defend himself.”

“From whom?” Crispin queried.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said, but so oddly that Crispin eyed her sharply. She melted under his scrutiny. “I do not know, but I have a suspicion. I think it was someone called the Phoenix.”

Crispin abruptly removed his hands from the arms of her chair and began to pace the library, trying to ignore the prickly sensation at the base of his spine. “Why?”

Sophie told herself she was not disappointed that he had not kissed her. “Because Lord Grosgrain said he would pay me back ‘unless the Phoenix gets me first.’ Those were his exact words.” Crispin stopped pacing and looked steadfastly at the wall. “Does that mean anything to you, my lord?”

“I am not sure,” Crispin said aloud, more to the wall than to her. Realizing he had spoken, he turned toward her and watched her closely as he went on. “The other day, Lawrence mentioned that there was a reward out for someone named Phoenix. He is supposed to be some sort of secret spy of Queen Elizabeth’s.” Noting that Sophie’s face showed only confusion and that, given the way her lips had just opened, she was preparing to ask him about nine hundred Phoenix-oriented questions, he decided to change the subject. “Let’s return to what you were saying earlier. It sounds like you surmise that your godfather did not die in an accident, but was murdered?”

“Yes,” Sophie confirmed “I am sure of it. But about—”

Crispin put up a hand to stop her from interrupting. “And that whoever killed Lord Grosgrain found the pistol and your bill of credit on his body and then planted them both on Richard Tottle to implicate you?”

“Exactly. But the Phoen—”

“Which means,” Crispin went on, resuming his pacing, “that whoever killed Lord Grosgrain also killed Richard Tottle. And has it in for you.” He was explicating this as much for her as for himself, testing it for strength, probing it for weak spots. It all seemed to make sense, but none of it explained her initial unwillingness to admit to him that she had written the bill of credit for Lord Grosgrain.

“Tell me,” he said finally in a deceptively light tone, stopping directly in front of the desk and leaning toward her. “Why did Lord Grosgrain ask you for twelve hundred pounds?”

Sophie spread her hands. “He said he needed to give that sum to Richard Tottle and he did not want his name to appear on a bill of credit and he did not have that amount in gold.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that he would ask you, of all people, for money?”

Sophie tilted her head back. “Why strange? He was my godfather. My very good friend. Why wouldn’t he ask me, of all people?”

Crispin felt a spark of something it took him a moment to identify as disappointment. Why couldn’t she just tell him the truth? Why couldn’t she just trust him? “Because he was paying you a thousand pounds a month,” he said finally.

Blood stopped circulating in Sophie’s body, or so she felt. “I beg your pardon?”

“Let me rephrase that.” The tingling in Crispin’s spine was unignorable now. “Why would Lord Grosgrain ask you for twelve hundred pounds when he was the one supplying you with money to begin with? Or do you deny that?”

“No. It was my allowance,” Sophie said, giving the excuse she and her godfather had made up years earlier. “Only—” She stopped, struggling to master the quaver in her voice. Her secret, Lord Grosgrain’s secret, the secret they had together protected for so long, was in jeopardy. When she resumed, her tone was cold and distant. “Only I do not see how this could possibly have any bearing on your investigation of his death. My money and its source are none of your business.”

Crispin’s spine was on fire. Damn her and her lies. Disappointment veered dangerously into anger, and he moved with an eerie calmness around the desk. He again leaned over her chair, but this time his tone was not seductive. “I do not think you understand, Miss Champion. You are not safe from the law until the real murderer of Richard Tottle is found, and, since everyone thinks it is you, no one but me is seeking him. I am the only person who can help you, the only one who can solve the murder, and you would do well to give me any assistance you can.”

Sophie sought desperately for some way to change the topic, and finally hit upon it. “This is a rather elaborate ruse to win a bet, my lord,” she countered hoping her tone was as chilling as his. “What makes you think I cannot solve the murder myself?”

“Many things. Principally the fact that I am locking you in this room when I leave this afternoon, and you will not be able to get out of it until you answer all my questions truthfully,” Crispin explained with icy precision.

Sophie rose abruptly from her seat, pulling away from him, outraged. “You would not dare.”

“That is where you are wrong, Miss Champion. I would, and I shall.”

Sophie’s outrage turned to burning scorn. “I thought you were a man of your word, a man of honor, Lord Sandal, but I see I was mistaken. You are a cringing coward. You think nothing of cheating on our bet in the lowest, most craven way imaginable.” As she spoke, she watched Crispin’s eyes turn dark, his face leaden, but she plunged ahead anyway, astonished by the words she heard herself speaking and by their frightening ring of truth. “You would do anything to win our wager. Indeed, I am willing to bet that everything that happened last night between us, everything you did and said, was only done to make me trust you, so you could learn what I know and win more easily.”

“Anything is fair in sport,” Crispin said condescendingly, his tone borrowed from a Nordic wind.

“Not locking me up.” Sophie found that she was almost trembling, trembling with rage and something else. She did not speak but rather hurled her words at him, wanting to hurt him badly. “Not treating me like a prisoner. Not acting like a spineless coward who will stoop to anything—even trapping an innocent woman and holding her captive—to get his way.”

“Very true, Miss Champion.” Crispin’s eyes were the color of iron, and his voice was completely devoid of anything human. “I thought I was helping you, but you show me that I was wrong. Do whatever you please. For my part, I do not give a damn what becomes of you.”

The final, killing words hung in the air of the library even after he stalked out of it, slamming the door behind him. They bounced around, repeating themselves in Sophie’s head, reminding her, berating her.
I do not give a damn what becomes of you
, the voice in her head chorused gleefully over and over again.
I do not give a damn what becomes of you
.

Day turned to night, and Sophie sat completely still, completely silent, completely numb. She neither blinked nor breathed, did not flinch or tremble, but simply sat, a stone-cold statue.

The tears that streamed down her cheeks unchecked, unstoppable, were the only sign of life.

He was soaking wet when he entered Sandal Hall from the stable yard. Before he had time to track mud through the main hall, Thurston appeared to take his wet cloak and boots.

“Good evening, Your Lordship,” he said as Crispin stripped off his sodden cape. “I trust you had a pleasant afternoon.”

“Dreadful,” Crispin growled at him. Which was not strictly true. For while the weather had been abominable, and his mood worse, he had, in fact, learned something very important.

Following the instructions he had received that afternoon by messenger while Sophie was engaged with Lady Artly, he had gone to a house in the suburbs of London and been greeted at the back door by a young, frightened woman, who thanked him profusely for coming.

“I am sorry to make you go so far out of your way,” she had apologized, “but I could not come myself to the interview you proposed and I did not dare entrust this information to someone else.”

Leading him down a narrow corridor, she explained that the house belonged to her uncle, Matthew Grey, once a well-to-do merchant, but now an invalid, who might ring for her at any time and to whom her absence was inexcusable. She had asked Crispin to come in the afternoon, she went on, because it was when their housemaid did the shopping and therefore no one would know he was there.

She said all this in whispers as they wound around the lowest level of the house, until they arrived in the kitchen. There was an air of lost grandeur about everything Crispin saw, particularly about the large, jeweled box in the middle of the planked table.

“I keep them in here,” the young woman explained, opening the box with a small key and taking out a collection of papers. She flipped through them, then chose one and handed it to Crispin. “This is what most of them are like.”

“ ‘
How well does Matthew Grey know his niece? Some say too well
’ ” Crispin read aloud, then looked up at the girl. “Where did you get this?”

“It was sent to my uncle, inside this cover,” she handed Crispin another piece of paper.

“ ‘
If you do not want Sir Edgar to see this, accept the subscription that will be offered to you within a fortnight
,’ ” Crispin read this time. “Who is Sir Edgar?”

“My betrothed,” the young woman answered, blushing. “Sir Edgar Wellit. His family is very proper, and if he or they ever saw anything like that note, the betrothal would be over in a flash. I do not know what I would do.”

Crispin looked sympathetic. “What happened next? Did you subscribe to Richard Tottle’s paper?”

“No, that was second. First my uncle took a subscription to
The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion
, for six months, at one hundred pounds a month, and we heard nothing. But then, more letters came, just like those, and that was when Richard Tottle’s paper began to arrive.”

Blackmail. A very sophisticated, even ingenious, form of blackmail, Crispin thought to himself. The content of the letters need not even be true, and he hoped in this case was not, but the threat of disclosure was enough to make people empty their purses. And by doing it through the subscription service, the identity of the blackmailer remained unknown, and therefore untouchable. The publishers had only to forward a lump sum each month to the benefactor who brought them so many new subscriptions. Crispin wondered if Richard Tottle or the publisher of
The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion
even knew that they were part of a blackmail scheme.

“Do you know who printed
The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion?”
Crispin asked.

The girl shook her head. “I destroyed the papers without even reading them, lest someone see and somehow know. But yesterday a man from a bakery came and told us that, instead of Richard Tottle, we should pay our hundred pound a month to his master.”

“Did he give you a name?”

“Sweetson, in Milk Street,” the young woman said unhappily. “I decided to tell you this, Lord Sandal, because Edgar, that is my betrothed, he reads all about your adventures and thinks very highly of you. My uncle cannot afford to pay the hundred pounds a month much longer, and I am afraid that when he stops, if he stops before the wedding, well…” She shuddered. “Yesterday, Uncle Matthew was asleep when your message arrived, so I read it first, and when I saw it, I knew, I knew then that it was the answer I had been praying for. I was, well, hoping that if I explained it to you, and then, if later they do send a letter to Edgar, you could talk to him and make him understand, so he won’t throw me over. He will believe anything you say. I know this is an enormous favor to ask of a stranger, but I have nowhere else to turn.”

Crispin had agreed to talk to Edgar, should it come to that, and had left, brooding over the scheme he had just unearthed. Instead of making his investigation easier, however, it made it suddenly harder or at least less likely to yield a useful result. It increased the number of possible suspects in the murder of Richard Tottle, for any one of the people who were forced to subscribe under this system might have thought that killing him would end their vexation. This larger pool of potential murderers dimmed the likelihood that Tottle’s death had any direct tie to the people trying to destroy the Phoenix, in search of whom Crispin had undertaken the investigation into the printer’s demise.

And yet, Crispin did not feel overly bothered by this apparent hiccup in his inquiry. That rainy afternoon, as he remounted Fortuna and steered her toward home, his mind was occupied once more with Sophie Champion. This preoccupation, not any concern over finding Tottle’s murderer or the Phoenix’s enemy, was what led him to describe his day as dreadful, particularly his reflection on his own behavior toward Sophie earlier that afternoon.

He had to admit that he had behaved badly and unfairly, not to mention clumsily. True, she was hiding something from him, hiding something about her relationship with her godfather, but that was no excuse for him to speak to her so harshly. Besides, deep down he knew that he had lied to her himself. He had said that he did not give a damn about her.

Thousands of people had lied to him as the Phoenix, and he had never lost his temper with them, in fact, had done just the opposite. Lies, he had learned, were most easily unraveled when the liar thought they were being believed. Throwing Sophie’s words back in her face was perhaps the least effective way to learn the truth. But he had not been thinking rationally that afternoon, and that was what disturbed him most. His upset about Sophie’s relationship with her godfather, about the care with which she protected it, about his own inability to either confirm or debunk the rumors he had been hearing about them, had impeded his judgment. But Sophie was right; none of that had any bearing on his investigation. Nothing could be less important to the interests of the Phoenix than knowing the exact nature of Sophie Champion’s relationship to Milton Grosgrain. Nothing could be less important to the Phoenix, Crispin repeated, and the Phoenix’s concerns—not the Earl of Sandal’s—were what mattered.

Crispin had just set out toward Sweetson the baker’s to continue his inquiry—reminding himself forcefully that it was the Phoenix that mattered right now and not himself—when he hit upon the happy thought that it would be in the best interest of both himself and the Phoenix to apologize to Sophie. That way he could re-earn her trust and get her to answer the rest of their collective questions. And it would make him feel less like a cad. It was this sole interest and not any desire just to hear Sophie’s voice that had led him to redirect Fortuna’s steps and spur her into a record-setting gallop, and this plan of action that he was determined to undertake immediately when he ran into Thurston in his own entrance hall.

Thurston cleared his throat as Crispin leaned over to strip off his soggy boots. “I have a message for Your Lordship from Their Ladyships, your aunts.”

“Are The Aunts now sending you to give their lectures?” Crispin asked morosely.

“No, my lord, they merely asked me to inquire about the nature of the laughter they heard last night. They thought it sounded rather maniacal, and they wanted to be sure you were not keeping a madman, or madwoman, anywhere on the premises. Your father, the late lamented Hugo, would never have kept a mad person in the house, they asked me to inform you.”

The reminder of Sophie’s ecstatic laugher the night before, coupled with the idea that The Aunts mistook it for that of a bedlamite, brought a smile to Crispin’s lips despite himself. “I hope you told them that
I am
keeping a madwoman in my apartments.”

“I did, my lord, but they did not seem to believe me.”

“Too bad.” Crispin shrugged. “By the way, how is the madwoman?”

“I cannot say, my lord, I have not seen her these several hours. She did not touch her supper, or her dinner.”

“She did not eat? Strange.” She must have been quite upset, Crispin realized with a pang.

Thurston cleared his throat again. “She did ask me to have a message delivered to Hen House for her. I have prepared a copy of it, as well as a transcript of the discussion she held with Lady Artly.”

“Anything interesting?”

“I do not believe so, my lord. Nor was there a reply. But Mister Pickering passed to give Miss Champion his regards.”

“Sly, Lawrence, very sly.” Crispin shook his head. “How did she receive him?”

“He did not come in, my lord. I had the impression that he was not eager to see Their Ladyships. Perhaps you can tell Miss Champion that he called? She was not in the library when I looked in.”

“Of course.” Crispin started up the stairs, then turned back to his steward. “Are you wearing cologne, Thurston?” he asked, sniffing.

“Oil of clove, sir,” Thurston replied, and for the first time in their history together Crispin could have sworn he saw his steward blush. “The scent is said to be pleasing and inspiring, sir.”

“Of course. Well, good night, Thurston.”

Crispin spoke his last words over his shoulder as he began to ascend the stairs to his apartment. It had never once crossed his mind that Sophie would leave—she had no place to go and could not possibly get by Thurston unnoticed—but now, taking the steps two at a time, he wondered if he had been too sanguine.

He had been. Not only had Sophie found a way to get out of Sandal Hall unobserved, she had used it several hours earlier. Indeed, she had slipped out of it and had already reached the outer wall of the house before she stopped and retraced her steps back to Crispin’s apartment.

It was Grip the raven who had roused her from her corpselike state, when, hours before, he suddenly sprang to life and, hopping up and down, begun squawking, “meringues, meringues, meringues,” over and over. Initially, Sophie had assumed he was just hungry, but when he refused any part of her untouched supper, she realized that he was repeating a word he had heard during her discussion with Lady Artly. And not merely a word, but the word Sophie had been looking for.
Meringues
.

She had wasted no time composing a note to Octavia and dispatching it via Thurston to Hen House. It was a nuisance not being able to go herself, but the cordon of constables around her former home made that impossible. Even Don Alfonso could not be sure of passing by them. Her plan had therefore been to await Octavia’s answer in Crispin’s apartment and then leave before he returned.

But when the answer had not arrived after the first hour, or the second, she realized she would have to go without it. Making sure that her mustache was still in place, she had stuffed several candles and a tinderbox into the doublet she was wearing and lowered herself down into the secret passage from the library she had discovered earlier that day. The passage, while not well maintained, was ample, and within minutes she found herself standing within hailing distance of the Strand.

That was where she had made her decision. Crispin’s words from the afternoon, not the horrible words but those spoken just before, came back to her.
I am the only person who can help you, the only one who can solve the murder
, she heard him saying in her head, and she knew he was partially right. She was not, by any means, willing to cede the entire investigation to him, as he seemed to desire. But she could use his help, or better, his knowledge, to find her godfather’s killer on her own. For all his hateful dung-beetle-like qualities, there was no denying that Crispin had information she could use. She would wait for him, she decided, coolly force him to disclose what he knew, and then leave.

The decision to return was a logical decision, based purely on the need to ensure that justice was served. It had nothing at all to do with a desire to see the Earl of Sandal again. Why would she want to see a man who was so beastly to her? Certainly he had the power to make her feel the most extraordinary things, to make her feel wonderful about herself, desirable, good, but then the next minute he made her feel wretched. She was still confused about what had happened between them the previous night, confused by her feelings and her willingness and his openness and kindness, confused even more by the cruel coldness of his words that afternoon.
I do not give a damn what becomes of you
echoed again in her head, and she had realized then why the words stung so much. It was because she could not say them back.

The Earl of Sandal would be fine, probably better, without her. She would not burden him with the fact that she did give a damn, several damns. She would not explain to him that she had never felt so free, so alive, as she did with him, even more that morning when they were just quietly having breakfast together than the night before. She would not admit that she felt exalted when she was in his arms, like a princess when he responded to her, like something precious and worthy, worthy of affection, worthy of respect. He had made her feel strong during the few hours they had shared and made her feel, for the first time in her life, glad to be a woman. To be Sophie Champion. She would not tell him that it had been eleven years since she cried as she had that afternoon. She would not share any of that with him, would stay only long enough to find out what she needed to know, and then go. That was her decision, the decision that turned her steps back to Sandal Hall, the decision that she reaffirmed as she climbed out of the hidden passageway and back into the library, the decision that had left her playing with Don Alfonso’s dice on a bench shaded from the rain next to the pond where they had first made love, the decision that she now repeated to herself as Crispin, wet clothes clinging to every sinew of his body and making him look like a soaked mythic god, stood staring at her from the threshold of his chamber.