The Water Nymph (23 page)

“I really do not think—”

“Tell me,” Crispin demanded with mock fierceness. “I want to know all my flaws. As
you
see them.”

Sophie rolled her eyes and held up a finger. “Very well, my lord, but remember, you insisted. One. You are obstinate. Very obstinate.

“1 am not.”

“You are.”

“Am not,” Crispin maintained stubbornly.

“Two.” Sophie held up a second finger. “You are bossy. Three—”

“I am not bossy. Don’t say that.” Crispin found he was enjoying this. “And I am not obstinate.”

“Three.” Sophie raised a third finger, undaunted. “You interrupt. Four. You—”

“I do not interrupt as much as you do. You interrupt much more than I do. You are always interr—”

“Four. You look better in breeches than I do. Five. You are always thinking about food. Six—”

“Will you marry me, Sophie?”

Sophie sat frozen, with both hands in the air, six fingers extended. “What?” she whispered hoarsely.

“I asked if you would marry me.” It was much easier the second time.

“Marry you?” The hands fell to her lap. “Me? Be your wife?”

This was not going exactly as Crispin had hoped. “Yes,” he answered slowly.

Sophie shook her head. “No. I cannot marry you.”

“Oh. I see. Very well.” He was cool about it.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

It was Crispin’s turn to shake his head. “No. No need. I understand.” Crispin felt more naked than he ever had in his life. He reached out for his breeches, but Sophie’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“I cannot marry you
now
. But I can, I will, after the bet.”

Crispin’s hand hovered over his pile of clothes. “After the bet? The bet we made?”

“Yes. Once that is settled, once I have won, then I can marry you. But not before.”

“And what if you lose?” Crispin asked, his heart beating again.

“That will not happen, so you need not worry.” Sophie smiled at him. But then a concerned crease appeared in her forehead. “Are you sure this is what you want, Crispin? Marriage? To me?”

“You are what I want, Sophie Champion. You are all I want.”

The rumble of his voice and the look in his eyes as he spoke washed over Sophie like a magical potion, suffusing her with warmth, intoxicating her with love.

Only later did she understand what he was really doing. Only later did she see him for the bastard he really was.

“You the Earl of Sandal?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the late evening sun with his free hand as he looked up at Crispin.

“Who is inquiring?”

“There’s a gen’lman down here says as how he wants to speak to you,” the dingy man explained, pointing down the alley. “Says how I’m to watch your horse and you’re to go down there.”

“What is his name?”

“Didn’t tell me no name. Just told me to deliver my message.”

“What did he say to do if I refused to dismount and go down the alley?”

“He didn’t really say, but he gave me this to use.” The man took his hand from his eyes to extract a dagger from his sleeve, letting its blade flash in the sunlight.

“Would you be using that on me or my horse?” Crispin inquired politely.

“Horse,” the man answered without hesitation.

Crispin admired the man’s sense of purpose, and his return home could wait. So instead of spurring Fortuna over the dingy man’s head and careening down the alley, he dismounted gracefully, whistled something in Fortuna’s ear, and strode past the man.

“You need not watch her. She’ll go home on her own from here,” Crispin explained, and then disappeared down the alley.

It was an extremely narrow passage, so narrow in spots that Crispin had to turn sideways to keep his shoulders from getting stuck, and extremely dark. The air, thick with humidity, hung heavily in the constricted space, clinging to the shadows along the walls, giving the whole place a murky feeling. Crispin moved slowly, his hand on the hilt of his rapier, but none of his instinctual reactions to danger were triggered. Indeed, despite the strange atmosphere and even stranger way the invitation was issued, Crispin did not feel that he was in any physical peril at all.

Nor was he wrong. He was halfway down what he could see of the alley when a voice on his right announced, “Over here.”

Turning, Crispin saw what had to be the world’s smallest court. And standing in the middle of it, which was also the front, back, and sides, was Basil Grosgrain. “Stay where you are,” Basil told Crispin, moving his cloak slightly to reveal a massive broadsword at his waist.

Crispin was tempted to laugh. In the time it would have taken for Basil to unsheathe the clumsy instrument, organize both of his hands correctly on the hilt, and swing, Crispin could have had him dead six different ways. But he refrained from pointing this out. Instead, leaving his hands in plain view, he bowed politely. “You sent for me, Lord Grosgrain?”

“Yes. We need to talk.”

“There are more comfortable places to talk than this.” Crispin gestured around. “My library, for example.”

“We needed to talk where we could not be overheard,” Basil elaborated. “And I don’t give a damn about your comfort.”

“It was not my comfort I was thinking of,” Crispin assured him.

“Oh, certainly. Of course. My comfort is of the utmost concern to you.” Basil sneered unappetizingly at Crispin. “That is why you did your level best to upset me this morning at your house.”

“I do not know what you are talking about, Basil, but if I did anything—”

“Shut up.” One of Basil’s hands curled over the hilt of the broadsword. “You are wrong to think that I killed my father.”

“I do not think anything of the kind.”

“Don’t lie to me. You said as much today. You said that my alibi was false.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Shut up.” Basil had begun to look a little wild-eyed, so Crispin complied. “You thought you were so clever. So funny. But will you think it is so funny when I slit your throat?”

“No.” Crispin was unequivocal. “Absolutely not.”

“Good. Now shut up and listen. Just you wait until you hear what I have to say to you, Lord Sandal. You won’t be laughing then.”

Crispin, who was beginning to be slightly alarmed by the expression on Basil’s face, did not mention to him that slitting a man’s throat at two paces with a sword that was four paces long was a near impossibility. “Back to this question of the alibi—”

“You were right,” Basil admitted without hesitation, gripping the hilt of the weapon. “My alibi is false. I was not with my step-mother.”

“Either time? Either the morning your father was killed or the night Richard Tottle was killed?”

“Either time. But that does not make me guilty. I did not kill either of them. And it is not my alibi you should be worried about.”

“I will leave that worrying to you,” Crispin said nobly. “And I thank you for this lovely talk.”

“You are not going,” Basil said. Crispin decided to take it as a question.

“Yes, I am Lord Grosgrain. Good day.”

“Going back to that murderous hussy Sophie Champion, are you?” Basil’s voice was mean. “What about
her
alibi? Why are you protecting her? She is a murderess, I tell you, and I—”

Basil was forced to stop speaking by the rapid constriction of his throat when Crispin grabbed him by it and slammed him against one of the handy walls. “That is no way to talk about a lady,” Crispin advised Basil with their noses less than an inch apart.

“She is no lady. She is a murderess. And I can prove it to you.”

Crispin had not imagined that Basil was so cruel, or so desperate. “Tell me. Prove it,” he challenged, releasing his grip on Basil’s throat. “What makes you so sure?”

Basil massaged his neck. “She has done it before. Murdered.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Last week, after my father died, I hired a man to investigate your Sophie Champion. And I learned some very interesting things. To begin with, she was not my father’s goddaughter at all. He did not even meet her until she was almost sixteen. And already running from the site of her first murder.”

Crispin ignored the latter part of the statement. “How did they meet?”

“Does that matter? What is important is that my father, the fool, took her under his wing. And somehow she managed to ingratiate herself so much that he left her the entire business.”

Crispin was tempted to tell Basil what he had learned the night before from Sophie’s own lips, tempted to tell Basil that it was only by the kindness of the woman he was slandering that he even possessed an allowance, but he respected the secret. Instead he asked, “Did you ever hear your father say anything about Sophie’s involvement in the business?”

“Sophie? In business?” Basil sniggered. “The only business she is in is spending money and entangling men.”

“Entangling men?” Crispin raised an eyebrow. He could not deny that Sophie was alluring and enticing, but he doubted very much that she went out of her way to execute entanglements. “I see. Setting snares and such. Is that how she caught her first murder victim?”

“Keep laughing, Sandal. Just you wait. She did not have to set any traps for her first victims. She killed them in their beds. Her mother and father.”

“Her mother and father died in a house fire,” Crispin said before he realized how much he was admitting.

“Ah, so she has told you about this. Did she also tell you that she set that fire? That she lit it herself? On purpose? To murder them? No, I can tell by your face that she did not.”

If Crispin’s face showed anything, it was incredulity at the depths to which Basil was sinking. “I have to say, Basil, this is not very convincing. Do you have anything like proof?”

“You do not believe me? Then explain why she would need to change her name if she had nothing to hide.”

“She changed her name?” Crispin asked with only the barest interest. He was now quite sure that Basil was making things up.

“Yes. Sophie Champion does not exist. Her real name is Diana Goldhawk. Look.” He held up a small gold medal depicting the goddess Diana seated next to a hawk. “She used this to bribe one of the guards at the prison, and my man got it.”

“Diana Goldhawk,” Crispin repeated, in a voice that made it clear he thought Basil had fabricated the whole thing. “Not terribly original, using the name of an Olympian goddess. I suppose she has a raft of siblings with names like Venus and Minerva and Zeus and Apollo?”

Basil tried to sneer at Crispin. “Not Apollo. But she does have a brother named Damon.”

“Has?” Crispin asked. “Didn’t she burn him to a crisp as well?”

“Apparently he was not at home the night of the fire.”

“How convenient.” Crispin’s tone was dry but light. “I don’t suppose I could meet with him, you know, just to get the particulars from his own lips.”

“I do not know where he is. But you can accept this as true. You have my word on it.”

“Your word,” Crispin exclaimed admiringly. “That is a handsome guarantee. I thank you for it and for your generous explanation of your alibi. Or lack thereof. Now, if you do not mind, I should like to be going.”

“You are a fool if you don’t believe me. That woman is dangerous. She will entangle you in her snares and not let you go. She is a murderess—” was the last thing Crispin heard as he came upon the mouth of the alley.

He turned from the passage into the Strand, his eyes not ready for the brightness of the street after the dim shadows of the alley. No one watching him as he moved toward Sandal Hall would have been able to perceive any difference in his face or bearing. He looked exactly as he had when he entered the alley, unperturbed and imperturbable.

But the base of his spine had begun to tingle.

With two words, Basil had demolished the foundations upon which Crispin had built all of his plans, had based all of his ideas. “Diana Goldhawk” was not just a name; it was the name of the sister of a man Crispin had killed. A man who was one of the primary parties to the counterfeiting enterprise he had demolished during his first mission as the Phoenix.

Crispin had recognized the gold disk Basil showed him as the one he had found in Sophie’s shoe the first night they met. It certainly seemed to suggest that she was Diana Goldhawk. And if Sophie Champion was actually Diana Goldhawk, wasn’t it possible, completely possible, that she had been using him all along? That she was out for revenge, to revenge her brother’s death. Or, worse, that she was the actual head of the counterfeiting operation, the person angling for the Phoenix’s destruction.

Crispin’s mind balked. It could not be true, he told himself. He would have sensed it. After all, there was no way for her to know he was the Phoenix. And even if she suspected it, she would have had to make some effort to find out, would have attempted to question him or devise some test to make him reveal his identity. Which Crispin knew had not happened—his suspicions would have been aroused the first moment she tried to cadge information from him. Indeed, if anything, what was notable was the small amount of information she had tried to gather from him during their investigation. Even the night they played the dice game in his private garden, when she could have asked anything without risking suspicion. Of course, she had not had much of a chance, with the way she kept losing—

The half smile that had begun to form on the edges of Crispin’s mouth at the memory vanished. Suddenly, he saw that he
had
been tested, completely and brilliantly. That night by the pond Sophie had casually fed him information about her godfather and his alchemical lab, information that would only have been provocative to someone already interested in counterfeiting. Someone like the Phoenix. All she had to do afterward was wait to see how he would react to having his identity confirmed. By letting the information seem to come out naturally, in the course of her losses during their dice game, she avoided arousing his suspicions. Only there was nothing natural about their game, or rather, about the dice with which they were playing. Because they were Don Alfonso’s dice. The dice Sophie had been playing with at the Unicorn the first night they met. The dice she had weighted to lose when she rolled them a certain way.

But
only
when she rolled them a certain way, Crispin rushed to put in. How did he know that she had not rolled them normally that night in his garden? How did he know that Diana Goldhawk was not simply a figment of Basil’s imagination? How did he even know—

Without realizing it, Crispin had broken into a run. He had to ask her, had to learn the truth, right then. He entered Sandal Hall through the stable door, stomped up the stairs, and jerked the door to his library open so hard that it left a dent when it struck the wall.

He glowered fiercely around the room until his eyes fell on Thurston, hovering on the threshold. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“I assume Your Lordship is referring to Miss Champion. She left half an hour ago in response to your summons.”

“My what?”

“Your message requiring her presence at the offices of Richard Tottle. It arrived just after you left. Miss Champion seemed rather excited when I helped her with the mustache.”

“But that is impossible. Let me see it,” Crispin demanded, extending his hand.

Thurston looked pained. “I am afraid Miss Champion took it with her. I made a copy of the note—”

“That won’t help,” Crispin said, running a hand through his hair. “It is not the words but the paper, the writing that I need. Did it look like it came from me?”

“Yes, sir. I did not suspect anything amiss.”

“Odious slugs,” Crispin muttered. He was at an impasse. If she was really just Sophie Champion, if she was really the woman she seemed to be, the woman who said, “I love you,” the woman he had asked to marry him that morning, then she was walking into a trap and he should mount Fortuna and ride to Richard Tottle’s as quickly as possible. But if she was Diana Goldhawk, if she was Damon Goldhawk’s sister, ruthlessly cunning and out for blood, or out for the Phoenix, then he would be rushing right into a trap himself. He might have wasted four seconds before deciding to go and rescue Sophie, come what may, if Thurston had not cleared his throat.

“There was another message, sir. Earlier today. From Pickering Hall. The boy who delivered it said it was important. It is the message I was trying to deliver to you just after the search.”

Crispin scowled at Thurston, then at the packet that Thurston was holding out to him. He took it unenthusiastically and ripped it open. It was brief, but in the face of its evidence he was left no choice about what to believe, or what to do.