A
RCHIBALD March’s fondness for his London club was undeniable. The loftiness of its rooms and the civilized comforts of its service had sustained him through the long years of living in cramped bachelor quarters before his brother’s passing.
It was his habit to be seen in the subscription room most evenings, where his fellow members left his chair undisturbed. There he read the papers and drank a glass of wine to fortify himself for the demands of a London evening. From his usual corner he greeted supporters of his various charities, MPs who could be counted on to vote as directed, and indeed the Home Secretary himself, a fellow member.
In his chair he could forget that he was a mere footnote in the pages of the peerage devoted to the Spencers. He was his mother’s son not by the Right Honorable Lord Woford, whom she’d married when Archibald was two, but by John March, an obscure country squire with a few good freehold acres. Archibald never forgot that though a baron had encouraged Archibald to call him
father
, though he had shown Archibald every sign of affection and favor in his lifetime, in death that baron had with a most unfatherly lack of feeling left Archibald no title and no property, and a mere thousand pounds a year. It was left to Archibald himself to correct the accident of his birth by any means available to him.
London, with its endless supply of beggars and thieves, had shown him the first way; the second he had discovered on his own.
This October evening, the slap of the
Morning Chronicle
hitting his chair and then dropping folded open into his lap caused him to jostle the glass at his lips and spill a faint drop of wine in the artful folds of his cravat.
“I assume you have a plan, March.” The voice coming from above his chair spoke in the glacial privileged accents of an ancient title.
Since he’d first heard it, Archibald had studied to understand why the icy voice both thrilled and terrified him. By birth, by wealth, by power, the possessor of that voice should never speak to Archibald March, stepson of a mere baron. That he, Archibald, had so fashioned his own position of power, which brought this man to his side—that was the thrill. Archibald had done His Exaltedness a favor, put His Exaltedness in Archibald’s debt.
However, it was a voice fundamentally indifferent to Archibald March, willing to destroy him if he proved inconvenient. That was the hazard in doing favors for the very powerful. Archibald was careful. He protected his escape routes thoroughly. He simply did not relish testing whether the voice could find him if he chose to disappear.
He put down his glass and picked up the paper. He had seen the announcement of his niece’s marriage to the one man in London who would overlook her tainted reputation, the one man in London who would use her money in a most inconvenient way for the powerful man at Archibald’s side. Now with the unfortunate event proclaimed to world, he tried not to let the oh-so-polite voice unsettle him.
Long habit prompted him to offer reassurance. “Of course I have a plan. The marriage is an obvious fraud. My niece has been practiced on by an unscrupulous man of low birth, thinking to rob her of her fortune. I have engaged Lushington to bring action in the London Consistory Court.”
Nothing changed. No response. The quiet hum of club life continued around a cone of silence that held March and the man at his side in place. Waiters busied themselves as the room filled with more members, but no one caught Archibald’s eye. An annoying prickle made him conscious of heat pooling under his arms. Really, his niece was proving more inconvenient than anticipated.
“Shall we say a fortnight, then,” the voice resumed, “to resolve this matter?”
“A month would be better.” If his niece became any more troublesome, an accident would have to be arranged.
“No, March, a sennight would be better.”
It was some time before Archibald felt steady enough to again lift his glass. He thought it best to make a complete change of linen before his evening engagements.
I
hope Bluebeard doesn’t murder you directly.” Charlie had his face pressed to the glass of Sir Alexander Jones’s elegant hired chaise as they rumbled up Park Lane in the October dusk, passing a long row of grand bow-fronted houses. Cleo remembered dining and dancing in several.
“You’d like some time to see the sights before you’re forced to flee town again?”
Charlie drew back from the window. “I’ve never been to the Menagerie.”
“I’ll put it at the top of our list, dearest, but I do think Jones will want to be sure of my fortune before he does away with me.”
Charlie frowned and fidgeted with his jacket. Cleo suspected that his banter about Bluebeard was a thin cover for genuine uneasiness, and the truth was she didn’t know what to make of her husband’s character or motives. He said he wanted a gasworks, but Cleo had had a long week to think about that. No man just wanted a gasworks. Still he had sent for them, and she thought the first generous installment of her allowance a good sign that he meant to honor their bargain.
The coach turned a sharp right corner forcing them both into a lean. Charlie frowned.
“What?”
“Cleo, I want you to know that I am prepared to defend you.” They came upright, and he reached into his boot and drew forth a lethal-looking blade that was all point with a heavy iron ring at its base.
“Charlie Spencer, what on earth is that?”
“It’s a pig-sticking knife. Davies gave it to me. Said I ought to have something to protect you with.”
“Give it to me.” Cleo held out her hand. “This is Mayfair, not the East India Company docks. The only weapons you need here are a raised brow, a sharp wit, and a quizzing glass. Lethal enough, but hardly bloody.”
Charlie shook his head, holding on to the thing. “Promise me, Cleo, that you’ll use it if you have to.” He looked solemn and brave in spite of his unruly hair and thin face. The coach began to slow.
“I promise,” she said.
He handed the blade over with apparent relief. “The thing is, girls don’t have good hiding places for blades.”
“I’ll put it under my pillow.”
He brightened at once. “Good thought. Just the spot for it.”
The coach pulled up, and they alighted on Hill Street in London’s smoky dusk, a half dozen blocks from where Uncle March kept their father’s house. Their bags were handed down, and a tall servant with ginger hair, narrow shoulders, and a long, solemn face emerged from the house to pay the coachman and postilions. The coach rattled off down the street with Cleo and Charlie still standing on the pavement under gray skies. A chill wind pressed their thin clothes to their bodies as they gaped at Sir Alexander Jones’s house.
From the basement to the attic its windows blazed, long rectangles of light like gold bars. Scores of candles burned at a staggering cost. Charlie turned to Cleo with a sheepish look. She still had the knife in her hand. “It’s lighted up like a stage,” he whispered.
“No wonder he needs to buy a gasworks,” Cleo replied.
The silent servant with the thin, horselike face bowed and picked up their bags. “In here.”
Then her husband stepped out of his own door, his features shadowed by the light behind him. She really needed to get used to his austere good looks so that she didn’t gawk at him every time. His expression under the dark brows was unreadable.
The quick ceremony, his hasty departure, and a week of activity had erased that unsettling moment in the church when his lips had lingered on hers. Now his dark gaze found Cleo’s and instantly revived the memory of that burning kiss in the church. She tried to pinpoint the elusive sensation. Her stomach did a little flip, which could be no more than her body’s response to the end of a long carriage ride. To go from the swaying, jouncing motion of coach travel to firm contact with unmoving stone explained it. She tucked the knife-holding hand into the folds of her cloak.
An awkward moment passed until Jones came forward and shook Charlie’s hand. “I must borrow your sister for a meeting with our solicitor.”
“Now?” Cleo protested. “I can’t desert Charlie before he’s even in the door.”
“Norwood is waiting.”
“Don’t worry, Cleo.” Charlie followed the servant. “A witness is good,” he whispered as he passed.
Cleo’s husband led her through a hall so dazzling it made her blink, past a marble nymph at the base of a soaring iron staircase, and into a book-lined library where the light was only somewhat subdued.
A stout, square-faced gentleman, his substantial girth straining a bottle green waistcoat, lifted a writing desk from his ample lap and rose. He had a wide face and kind features with brows like cotton tufts, but his blue eyes sparked with keen intelligence.
“Lady Jones, I’m Norwood, at your service. It’s good to meet you at last, ma’am.”
Cleo shook his hand and took the seat he indicated near a welcome fire. Norwood remained standing and cast a prompting look at her husband.
“May I take your cloak, wife?” came the baritone Cleo could feel in the pit of her stomach.
“Of course,” she said, rising, and loosening the tie, “husband.” She felt the brief touch of his hands on her shoulders as the cloak slipped away. Just enough to set a little flutter going in her. She settled back in her chair, facing the lawyer, whose gaze had fixed on Charlie’s knife.
Cleo put it on the pretty cherrywood table next to her chair. “It’s a pig-sticking knife. My brother recommends that I be prepared to defend myself in London.”
She caught a quick gleam of amusement in Norwood’s eyes before a more businesslike expression took over. “Let’s hope, Lady Jones, that the laws of England remain strong enough to protect a woman in your circumstances.” He settled himself on the sofa and rested his hands on his broad knees. “Xander asked me to explain how the case stands at the moment. We want everything aboveboard, an open book, so to speak. Shouldn’t want you going about town blind to your situation.”
“Is there a situation?”
Xander
. The nickname distracted her, imperious, but out of the ordinary. It suited him. He stood with one elbow on his marble mantel looking on with cool detachment. It was the third personal detail she knew of him. He didn’t like peppermints, he kissed like a man who knew what he was about, and most surprising of all, there were people in his life who called him by an affectionate nickname.
“Well, yes and no,” Norwood was saying. “All the documents are in order. Been examined by the bank’s own barrister. No fault to find with the paperwork.”
Cleo braced herself. There was a something else, a difficulty that required a barrister’s involvement, and that could not be good.
“One of your trustees . . .”
“My Uncle March?” She could feel Xander watching her. She hadn’t been entirely open with him. He didn’t know March, and Cleo hadn’t confided her opinion of her uncle. He probably thought he could marry a discarded heiress without anyone’s raising the least objection. After all, even her uncle had found only one taker when he had sought to arrange a marriage for her.
“Has Uncle March made trouble about our papers?” She believed she had escaped March’s reach by marrying.
“As I advised Xander when he first came to me about your marriage, it would not be surprising for your trustees to question a man’s intentions.” Sharp blue eyes focused on Cleo. Norwood might be genial, but he would catch any hesitation or concealment. “So I must ask you some awkward questions.”
“Certainly. We would not want my uncle to doubt the sanctity of our union.” She looked to Xander, who wasn’t exactly playing the doting bridegroom.
Norwood settled a pair of glasses on his nose and pulled the small writing desk into his wide lap. “Now, when Mr. Tucker married you, did he omit from absent-mindedness or uneasiness any of the necessary elements of the rite?”
“Not to my knowledge. I’ve not been married before, but I assume he read all the necessary parts.”
Norwood’s pen scratched away. “Is it your wish to be married to Sir Alexander Jones? And do you consider yourself married to him?”
“It is, and I do.” She was aware of him as always. Unmoving, unspeaking, he managed to distract her by holding up the blasted mantel. The turn of his body and the cock of one hip exposed his flat belly and the muscled line of one leg.
“And who was present at your nuptials?”
Cleo pulled her gaze and her thoughts back to Norwood. “Just family.”
Norwood gave her a quick, sharp glance, his snowy brows contracted in a worried peak above his glasses.
“My brother, and my . . . husband’s brother. And Mr. Tucker.”
“And your brother is how old?”
“Thirteen.”
“A minor.” Norwood made a note. Cleo was sensitive now to his scratchings.
“Is that a problem?”
“And is Mr. Tucker a legitimate minister of the Church of England?”
“He’s been the curate in Woford for many years. I know of no reason to suppose him to be otherwise.”