Authors: Michele Jaffe
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Romantic Suspense, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense, #FICTION/Romance/General
“I know.” Crispin put an arm around his friend. “She is very lovely.”
“How could I have been such a fool?” Lawrence almost howled. “At first I wanted what she offered, her noble blood, her noble titles. At first I think I wanted her because she had once been yours. But then, later, it became so much more. I would have done anything for her. Anything. I was ready to leave London and run away with her. She told me that she would marry me today, tonight, if I would help her burn down this old warehouse, help her rid herself of her memories from the past so we could start afresh, she said. She said she wanted to be married in France and told me to procure passports for us, and I did as she asked. I never once suspected what she was doing. I had no idea about the counterfeiting, about all this.” He waved an arm around the warehouse. “I never even imagined that it existed. But I should have. I should have asked. I should have wondered why she would have anything to do with me.” He shut his eyes tight and clamped his jaw. “I was ready to throw away everything I had ever worked for, out of love of her. And she was just using me.”
The two men seated themselves on the edge of the quicklime pit. Crispin tried to console him. “You are not the first man to have been fooled by a woman.”
“It is nice of you to say so, but how many men allow themselves to be led this far down the path of destruction? Did you hear the hate in her voice when she addressed me at the end? Real hate? She hated me all along. She hated me as she promised to let me marry her. She hated me as she prepared to lay this entire counterfeiting scheme and her murders at my door, hated me even as she used me, and I never knew it.” Lawrence jammed his fists into his eyes. “I just loved her more for relying on me.”
After a long space of silence, he spoke again but kept his knuckles at his eyes. “You were very good with the poker, by the way. If I had not known any better, I would have feared for my life.”
“Not from me.” Crispin left his arm around his friend. “Maybe from Constantia.”
“So everything you said was true?” Lawrence asked, looking up.
Crispin nodded. “The whole thing, so long as you substitute Constantia’s name for yours.”
“How did you know it was her and not me? The evidence as you laid it out certainly seems to fit.”
“The fact that Richard Tottle was murdered in your club was the principal thing that convinced me it was not you. I could not see you stooping to murder, not even for love, and if something happened to make you kill a man, you would never do it in one of your own clubs. The blackmail, I have to admit, did confuse me a bit.”
“Me too,” Lawrence confessed. “After you came to my office and told me about the flaming arrows, I had a long talk with Grimley, my deputy. It seems that one night over dinner several years ago I had outlined what I called the perfect blackmail setup, saying, obviously, that I would never execute it because blackmail is a dirty, dishonest crime. Grimley did not have any such reservations and has apparently been putting my ideas into action for some time, even going so far as to blackmail my own Constantia.”
“That makes sense,” Crispin said, nodding. “I could not imagine who besides you would have developed such a scheme, but I knew you would never blackmail. What did you mean about the flaming arrows?”
“Ah. Those are something a little special that my boys have been working on, under contract for the Queen. It is extremely secret, and there is no chance that anyone but us has them, so when you said you had almost been set on fire by one, I knew that it was someone in my organization. By the way, I think you let me off too easy as a murder suspect. But what made you think of Constantia?”
“Several things. Whoever was behind this had to have great influence over Lord Grosgrain, and there were only four people who could wield such influence: Sophie, Basil Grosgrain, Constantia, and, through her, you. Eliminating you and Sophie left only two suspects, and Constantia was by far the best. She had been around at the time of the first counterfeiting operation, and the need for an alchemist was really the only thing that explained her marriage to Lord Grosgrain. But I did not know for certain that it was her until I met Basil. When questions were posed about his whereabouts at the times of the two murders, he looked tense and scared until Constantia came to his aid and said he had been with her. It was clearly a fake alibi, and after a bit of prodding, he admitted as much. But in doing so he was also admitting that Constantia had no alibi for those times. In other words, Constantia provided him with a false alibi, in order to provide herself with one. When I knew that, I knew everything. I knew that she was the murderer and the counterfeiter.”
There was a long pause, and then Lawrence asked, “And then you came to see me. How did you know I was in love with Constantia?”
“Sophie. She saw you in Constantia’s dressing room the other night in a fairly intimate posture. She thought it was me at first, but when she explained that she had only seen the man’s back, I realized that it was probably you. That and the fact that you were writing all that love poetry the other day when I was in your office.”
“I was not,” Lawrence said with horror. “Did you go through my desk?”
“No, I saw it on your desk blotter when I rose to go. Not bad, although you might consider that ‘Constantia’ rhymes better with ‘tarantula’ than with ‘my fancy’s doll.’”
Lawrence looked for a moment like he was caught between laughing and crying. “Is that why you let her go, then?” he stammered finally. “For me?”
Crispin grimaced. “I did not let her go. This place is surrounded by the Queen’s guards. Or was. Twenty of them. Whose only job was to arrest her.”
Lawrence looked at Crispin with shock. “Then you really
are
the Phoenix.”
“No.” Crispin shook his head. “I was. The Phoenix retired today.” He had tried to comfort his friend as much as he could, but he could no longer contain his impatience. “And his retirement won’t be worth a damn, my life won’t be worth a damn, if I don’t lay eyes on Sophie again soon and repair whatever damage Constantia may have done. Let’s get out of here.”
“What does ‘Sophie’ rhyme with?” Lawrence asked Crispin mockingly as they rose to leave the chamber. “Maybe with—”
Lawrence’s poetic interlude ended abruptly as they opened the door. He and Crispin just stood there for a moment, staring, dumbstruck. They had been so occupied by their conversation that they had not noticed the temperature rising or the popping noises or the strange smell of smoke coming from the other room. Smoke fueled by a dozen barrels of gunpowder carefully strewn to do maximum damage. The smoke of a floor turned into a flaming inferno.
“The fuse. She must have lit the fuse before the guards got her,” Lawrence murmured under his breath as they looked at the sea of flames between them and the only way out. “I don’t want to make things seem worse than they are,” he went on, “but the gunpowder is just the beginning. There are enough explosives wrapped around the rafters to destroy this building, and the larger part of the parish. At least there are if she used half of everything she asked me to get for her.”
Crispin gazed at his friend with horror.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lawrence ordered. “I already told you. She said she wanted to destroy her husband’s workshop so she would no longer be tortured by memories of him. She said it would allow us to start from scratch, with nothing behind us, nothing tying us down.”
“I see.” Crispin moved his eyes back to the flames and asked coolly, “Any idea how the explosives in the rafters are detonated?”
“Oh, very simply. Their fuses dangle down, so when the flames leap high enough, the first one will be ignited. After that, the roof should fall in and the others will go.”
“So we have as long as it will take for the flames to reach the fuses.”
“Exactly,” Lawrence confirmed. “And I wouldn’t worry too much. That one there is only about three-quarters of the way up to the ceiling.”
They slammed the door shut and strode to the middle of the room in unison. “The skylight is our best chance of escape,” Crispin said, and Lawrence agreed. It was at least five body’s lengths from the floor, exactly over the lime pit, which meant they could not attain it directly. They would have to climb up to the rafters, then shimmy along them until they reached it.
“Is there a rope?” Crispin asked hopefully, stripping off his shirt in the melting heat.
“Yes.” Lawrence cleared his throat. “In the other room.”
They worked without speaking, without needing to. Crispin dragged the table from the wall toward the middle of the room, and Lawrence carried the two chairs over, putting them on top. Like that, with the chairs stacked on the table as a crude ladder, Crispin could almost reach.
“I just need a few more feet,” he gasped, stretching as far as he could. And then, as if by magic, he had them. He wrapped himself around the rafter and looked down to see what had achieved this miracle. It was Lawrence who, perched on the first of the two chairs, had boosted Crispin up.
“Go,” Lawrence insisted, motioning Crispin toward the skylight. “You go. I will be fine here. I will wait, and you will come and get me.”
“Don’t be a fool. You know there is not enough time for that.” Crispin undid the stays on his breeches and pulled them off with one hand, wrapping them around the rafters with the empty legs dangling down. “Here, grab these,” he said, pushing the makeshift rope toward Lawrence.
But Lawrence refused to budge. “Please, Crispin. It is my fault you are part of this. Just go. I will be fine.”
Crispin hung by his hands from the rafters just above Lawrence’s head. “Damn you, Lawrence Pickering. If you won’t come up here, I am going to have to come back down. You are my best friend, despite my better judgment, and I am not going to leave you here to die for love of Constantia Grosgrain.”
“Just g—” Lawrence interrupted himself. “What do you mean, ‘despite’ your best judgment’?”
“Because you are absolutely the most obstinate best friend a man could have,” Crispin shouted down at him. “Now grab my breeches and climb up.”
After two false starts, a loud ripping noise, and a litany of grunts, Lawrence was dangling next to Crispin. “Obstinate,” he muttered as they began to shimmy toward the skylight. “I am not obstinate.”
“Are you kidding? If you were not obstinate, you would be working for that deputy of yours.”
“You have a point,” Lawrence grunted as they struggled to pull themselves along. “But I am not nearly as—”
“Hello?” a voice called from the floor, interrupting them. “Is there anyone here? Crispin? Hello?”
“Sophie!” Crispin and Lawrence shouted in unison.
Sophie tipped her head back and looked up at the ceiling. “What are you doing up there? It must be even hotter than it is down here.”
“Sophie,” Crispin panted, “how did you get in?”
“Through the side door.”
“Side door?” Lawrence growled.
“Yes, just back there.” Sophie pointed behind her, confused as to why they were treating her like a demon prodigy. “I will go, if you prefer. I was planning to go anywa—”
“No!” Crispin shouted it. He and Lawrence were madly shimmying backward, back toward the table. They dropped down, in unison, cracking the tabletop, and leapt off it onto the ground.
“Go, go, go.” Crispin grabbed Sophie’s arm and began pulling her in the direction she had indicated.
“Wait, Crispin. I
am
going. For real this time. But I just came to tell you that I know who the murderer—”
“Come on,” he urged her.
“I am trying to go as fast as I can,” Sophie told him, staying put. “I know you are in love with her, so I am sorry to tell you this, but it was Const—”
Crispin picked her up in his arms and was running toward the door when there was an enormous bang and the ceiling came crashing down on top of them.
“Shh. Do you hear something?” the guardsman asked his companion. A crew of them—all those who had not been needed to escort Constantia Grosgrain, still fighting wildly despite her manacles, to the Tower gaol—had been combing through the area around the exploded warehouse looking for survivors of the blast. They had found one of them, thrown into a ditch, clothes singed, a bit groggy but otherwise fine, but they had not been able to find the other two. As night neared and nothing new turned up, it was inevitably concluded that the other two had perished. Until now. Both guards stopped moving abruptly and listened.
It was faint, but, with concentration, they could make it out.
“No,” a voice said. “I did.”
“Oh, no. Certainly not. I did. It was certainly me.”
“You must be joking. I—” Crispin stopped speaking as two guards appeared at the edge of the clearing in which he and Sophie had taken refuge.
“We found them,” one of the guardsmen called over his shoulder, and soon the sound of a dozen heavy footfalls was heard.
“Um, Crispin,” Sophie said from where she had hidden her face in his armpit. “I am not sure you are aware of it, but we are both naked.”
“I am aware of it,” Crispin said, feeling with his hand for his leggings, or at least one of his boots.
“I believe you left most of your clothes in the warehouse,” Sophie reminded his armpit, “and I had to shed mine when we found they were on fire.”
Crispin remembered now, remembered stripping off burning clothes and taking refuge in this clearing moments before losing consciousness. He was just looking around for a good-sized leaf, or even branch, when the guards’ commander appeared at the opening of the clearing.
“You are wanted, Lord Sandal,” he announced formally.
“That is marvelous,” Crispin told him, “but I am also wanting. Clothes.”
“I am afraid there is no time to procure you any. Your presence is demanded. Now.”
“Who is so important that they can’t wait a moment while I get some clothes?” Crispin demanded crossly, standing up. “Is it the bloody Queen?”
“Yes, Lord Sandal,” said the voice that had given Crispin the false order to retire as the Phoenix thirteen days earlier, “it is.”
Crispin and the guards all fell on their knees as Queen Elizabeth emerged into the clearing. Out of the corner of his eye, Crispin could see that Sophie had hidden herself behind a tree but was watching everything.
The Queen stopped in front of Crispin and gave him her hand. The thick gold band with the knot in it, which had signaled that the conversation at their first meeting had been in a form of code and that Crispin was to understand every command preceded by the word “not” as an actual order, had been replaced by a massive, straightforward ruby, which Crispin kissed.
“You may rise, Lord Sandal,” the Queen said, adding when Crispin wavered, “Do not worry. We have seen such things before.” Once Crispin was standing before her—looking very fine, Sophie thought—the Queen went on. “Your service, Lord Sandal, has been exemplary. You followed Our instructions exactly. You acted clandestinely to uncover and thwart the source of peril to Our kingdom, and you did it in less than the time allotted to you. But there is one instruction you failed to observe.”
“I beg Your Highness’s pardon, but I—”
“Do not interrupt Us, Lord Sandal. In this single point only did you fail Us.” The Queen seemed to grow larger and more imperious. “You have not taken an English bride, Lord Sandal. Your aunts tell me that you have chosen one, but you have not finalized your union, despite their prodding. They even had Our agents issue a warrant to search your house for her, to make you search your heart, but to no avail. However, if they deem her worthy of you, Lord Sandal, then so must We. Marry her, Lord Sandal, marry her soon. With Our blessing. And with Our ring.” The Queen slid the ruby from her finger and extended it to him. When Crispin hesitated to take such a rich gem, the Queen leaned toward him and whispered, “You may as well. You already have the matching bracelet.”
“And then there she was, the old woman,” Sophie explained, leaning her head against Crispin’s chest as they soaked in the bath in his garden. It had been ready for them when they arrived at Sandal Hall, already filled with gloriously scented steaming water. “She grabbed me and pulled me into what looked like a pile of rubbish but was actually a hidden door to a small house with an exit on the opposite street. What was stranger than that, stranger even than her being so opportunely placed at the end of an alley, was that she knew who I was, and who you were, and where I needed to go to find you.”
Crispin was frowning slightly, running through the inventory of old women in his head. “What did she look like?”
“It is hard to say. She was hunched over slightly and wore a hood. But when she grabbed me in the alley, I was able to see her eyes, and I had never seen anything like them.”
“Let me guess,” Crispin said, and felt a faint tingling at the base of his spine, “they were gold.”
“Yes,” Sophie nodded. “How did you know?”
“Because she was here the night of the fire and stayed to help put it out. And I have seen her several times outside of Sandal Hall.”
“Who do you think she is?”
“I can’t say. We’ll have to ask her next time we see her.” Crispin’s voice was distant, and his eyes were looking past Sophie. Thinking about the fire had reminded him of something he needed to tell her. Something hard.
Thinking about the fire had reminded Sophie of something too. The night of the fire was the night she knew she loved Crispin. If only—
“Sophie,” Crispin announced in a strange voice, abruptly breaking into her thoughts. “Sophie, there is something I want to tell you.”
Sophie looked at him intently. Her heart was pounding. “Yes, Crispin?”
“Sophie, I—” He broke off.
Sophie smiled up at him, encouraging him, pleading with him to say the words she wanted more than anything to hear. “Yes, Crispin? What is it?”
Crispin took a deep breath and blurted it out. “Sophie, I killed your brother. Damon. I killed him. Two and a half years ago.”
Sophie’s reaction was worse than Crispin had anticipated. She pulled away from him, a look of painful shock on her face. “What are you talking about? Damon? My brother? What do you know about Damon?”
“I did not do this very well,” Crispin stated as much to himself as to her. “I am sorry. Basil Grosgrain told me about Damon. About your past. About who you were before the fire.”
“Basil? How did he know?” The look of shock had not receded.
“He hired someone to find out. He had nothing to do with the counterfeiting, but he thought you killed his father and he hired someone to investigate you. He was trying to convince me as well. But what I meant to say, Sophie, is that I am sorry. I understand if, after knowing that I killed your brother, you might feel differently about me.”
Sophie stayed very quiet for a time. “How did it happen?” she asked finally. “How did you kill him?”
“He was part of the first counterfeiting operation that I uncovered. He shot at me, and I had to shoot back. Unfortunately for him, I was the better shot.”
“Then he is dead? Really dead?” Crispin nodded. “Thank god,” Sophie whispered, so softly that Crispin was not sure he had heard her correctly.
“What?” he asked, a lump forming in his throat.
“I said, thank god.” Sophie looked at him again now. “Thank god he is dead. And thank god you survived. I cannot imagine a life without you, Crispin.”
“But Damon—” Crispin began.
“Damon was the man who kept me in the attic. The man who tormented me. By the end, he was no longer my brother. He was a monster. I have lived under the shadow of the nightmare he created for years. Until you came along.”
“Then you do not want to leave me?” Crispin asked cautiously.
Sophie shook her head. “Crispin, I never want to leave you.”
“But before, you pulled away from me like you hated me,” he pointed out.
“You surprised me. I thought—I was expecting you to say something else.”
“Oh.”
Sophie resettled herself in the crook of his arm and listened to the sound of water trickling off the statue of Venus at the far end of the bath and told herself she did not need Crispin to love her. She was repeating this for the tenth time when Crispin’s voice roused her from her thoughts.
“About the bet,” he began.
Sophie frowned at him. “I do not believe there is anything left to discuss, my lord. The winner is clear.”
“I am glad we agree.” Crispin sank into the water up to his chin. “Lucky for you, I am a good winner.”
Sophie’s frown deepened. “It would be lucky for me, if you had won, but since I won you will be made to suffer. I am a terrible winner.”
“But I won. You said you knew it was Constantia at noon. I knew hours before that.”
“You cannot prove it. And besides, it is moot. I have won.”
“You cannot just decree that.”
“Yes”—Sophie grinned, her spirits rising—“I can. The Fates were on my side.”
“Fates? That is like saying The Aunts were on your side. That is not conclusive.”
“Conclusive?” she queried. “I can make it conclusive.” She was just about to step out of the bath when Thurston cleared his throat from behind the lavender hedge.
“Good evening, my lord, Miss Champion,” Thurston said as if there were nothing the least bit unusual about addressing his sootcovered master and mistress through a hedge. “I took the liberty of removing these from the safe and bringing them to you. I thought you might want them.” He extended around the lavender bush a silver tray on which lay two folded pieces of paper, then disappeared.
Sophie splashed to the side of the bath to grab the papers, then seated herself right next to Crispin.
She looked at him seriously. “As I recall, the terms of the bet were that we each wrote down our deepest secret desire, and whoever won got whatever was on their paper. Do you agree, my lord?”
Crispin nodded, equally seriously, and she handed him the paper, neatly folded in fours, on which she had written what felt like years earlier. “Read it,” she commanded him.
“ ‘
I desire you to go naked to your next audience with Queen Elizabeth
,’ ” Crispin read out. Then he looked at her. He was momentarily speechless with surprise.
“You see,” Sophie said, bobbing up and down next to him gleefully. “You see, I did win. Because I have already gotten what I wrote on the paper.”
Crispin just sat and shook his head. “I can’t believe you asked for that,” he said as much to himself as to her.
Sophie smiled widely. “Do not forget that you had just made me strip. It seemed only fair at the time. Didn’t you wonder why I said I could not marry you until after the bet was settled? I would never want my husband to do such a thing.”
“Of course not.” Crispin nodded with mock solemnity, looking with slightly misty eyes at his bride-to-be. “It would hardly do. Your husband must be a paragon.”
“Exactly,” Sophie confirmed. “Now, what did you ask for?”
Crispin shook his head absently and crumpled his paper. “Given that you won, I don’t see that it matters.”
“Come on, Crispin, show me what you wrote,” Sophie said playfully, reaching for the paper, but her playfulness vanished when he resumed speaking.
“I would rather not. I do not think, with our marriage coming up, it would be good for you to know. For either of us. Besides, I wrote it days ago. When we had only just met.”
Sophie felt suddenly hollow. After several long moments had passed in silence, she asked, “Crispin, have you ever been in love?”
Crispin nodded but did not look at her. “Once.”
“Did it happen slowly? Or all at once like a lightning shock?”
“All at once,” Crispin answered without hesitation. “I fell in love with her the first time I set eyes on her.”
“Did she love you back?” Sophie asked.
Crispin nodded again. “She said she did. Although I think it took her a little longer.”
Sophie wondered about the idiocy of a woman who would not fall instantly in love with Crispin, but kept these thoughts to herself. “Was she beautiful?”
Crispin shook his head. “No. She was beyond beautiful. She was extraordinary.”
“Oh.” Sophie did not like this woman, she decided. Not at all. “Was she intelligent?”
Crispin smiled to himself. “Sometimes. Other times she could be blind.”
“When?” Sophie asked, glad to hear her rival had a weakness.
“Well, when someone was trying to tell her he loved her, for example.”
Sophie looked sage. “That must have been hard for you.”
“Actually, I found it quite entertaining,” Crispin replied, but Sophie only half heard. A battle was raging in her head, one side telling her it was better not to learn the identity of Crispin’s true love, the other knowing that she would never rest until she found out.
“Who is she?” Sophie blurted finally. “I promise not to interfere, if that is what you are worried about, but I cannot live without knowing.”
“You honestly want me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“I really do not think this is a good idea,” Crispin said seriously.
“Please, Crispin.”
“You are sure?”
“Positive.”
“Very well.” Crispin retrieved the paper he had crumpled and handed it to her.
Sophie took a large breath for courage, then unfolded it with trembling fingers. And felt her heart burst as she read:
YOU