She truly, bluely, believed that. “Maybe women are different. But you have not known me long enough for such strong emotion.”
“You do not believe in love at first sight?”
“I hardly believe in love at all.”
“Well, I do. I shan’t ask anything more of you after tonight, however, I swear. Except to find the killer.”
“I’ll do that, and more.” He set her down atop her own bed, amid the tumbled sheets, and backed away quickly, before he was tempted to join her. “Things will be better, I swear. I’ll make everything right.”
“I trust you will,” came from the hallway.
Amanda squeaked and pulled the covers over herself. Rex turned, too fast for his bad leg, and had to catch himself against the wall. He straightened.
“Thank you for taking such excellent care of my goddaughter, Jordan. You may leave her now. I am assuming she took ill in the night. That is correct, Amanda, is it not?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she croaked from under the blankets. “Very ill.”
Rex thanked heaven not everyone could see the truth. He walked toward the door and shut it behind him, then he took stock of the woman he had not seen since before he left for the army. She looked tired and pale, likely from the hurried journey, but she was still a handsome woman, with a proud, erect bearing. She was staring at him, in turn, which made Rex uncomfortable.
“I shall be moving out shortly,” he told her. “I will be staying on in London seeking evidence to prove Miss Carville’s innocence.”
Lady Royce raised an eyebrow.
“She is untouched.”
“Not quite untouched, I would gather.” The countess lifted the gossamer nightgown from his shoulder. “We shall speak of this later, when we are both better rested. I shall expect you for luncheon.”
Ah, mealtime with Medea. She was the one, Rex recalled, who killed her children and served them up for supper.
He bowed.
Rex left the house early that morning, taking his horse to Hyde Park before anyone was out and about. Daniel would not rise that day—and if he did, he was bound to wish otherwise, with the headache he would suffer and the antidote Murchison would pour down his throat. Maybe that would teach him moderation.
Rex went in by the servants’ entrance on his return from the stable mews. Finally, wonderful smells of baking bread, frying bacon, and kippers came from the kitchens. If the cook was not accustomed to gentlemen in her domain, she must have been warned, because she set a plate in front of him without ordering him to the formal dining room. “Happy to feed a hungry man, I am, after all these years of cooking for your lady mother.”
Which reminder ruined his appetite.
After eating what he could, so as not to offend the cook for Daniel’s sake, he took himself to Bow Street, to offer his services for an hour or two to Inspector Dimm. He found the work satisfying. Lud knew, he needed something in his life that was. Without his cousin, he found a deck of cards and played patience at the desk outside Dimm’s office while the inspector interviewed suspects. One tap for the truth, two for a lie.
Dimm came out after twenty minutes, lighting his pipe and apologizing that there was not much work for the viscount today. “We’re getting caught up, praises be, and thanks to you, sir.” Then Dimm looked over Rex’s list of initials and suspects. He nodded. “That Cuthbert chap’s had some run-ins with the law. A bootboy in his household a few years ago, iffen I remember right.”
“Killed?”
“An accident, they declared it.” He knocked his pipe against the desk top in disgust. “With his neck snapped? The swells get away with a lot, and pardon me for saying so, my lord.”
“Whoever killed Sir Frederick will not get away with it, no matter his station. I promise you that.” One tap.
As the hackney neared Manton’s Shooting Gallery, traffic came to a standstill. A dray had overturned, spewing cabbages all over the street. Rex got down and walked, figuring his bad leg could use the exercise anyway. He had not counted on dodging rolling vegetables, the street urchins who were snatching up all they could carry, angry drivers, and curious spectators. He walked toward a side street to avoid the mess, but as soon as he left the main thoroughfare he felt an odd sensation, like a prickling behind his neck. Many of the officers in Spain used to claim they felt some such self-defense instinct, and they always listened to their bodies. Rex had not truly believed them, finding his own brand of magic bad enough. Of course, if he had honed those other instincts he might not have a bad leg and a scar on his cheek. He listened now.
He stopped to look in the window of a print shop, pretending an interest in a display of cartoons lampooning Prinny, as usual, while he studied the glass reflection. The only person nearby was a young clerk carrying a stack of books. So much for instincts. He went on, swinging his cane, knowing full well his scarlet uniform made him easy to track.
Damn, the odd niggling feeling persisted, so he detoured down a different street. A quick glance showed the same clerk still following, more closely. At the next alley, he pretended to stop to check his boot, and came up with a knife in his hand, which was quickly at the young man’s throat, as he dragged the clerk into the alley.
“You are following me. Who sent you? And
do not lie
.”
“Mr. Harmon.”
Blue.
“I do not know any Mr. Harmon.”
“Oh, um, Major Harrison. Yes, that must be who. But I mean you no harm, sir. The gentleman sent me to tell you to watch your back. He said you made more enemies than a fox in five henhouses in one night.”
Rex pulled the knife away from the man’s jugular. “Why not come up to me honestly if you had a message, instead of using stealth?”
“He wanted to see how vulnerable you were.”
“As you can tell, I am not. You can tell your superior that I do not need the warning, or a bookish bodyguard.” Then he felt the unmistakable pressure of a gun between his ribs. He looked down, and the pistol’s barrel was poking between the books in the clerk’s arms. He slowly loweredhis own knife to his side. “Point taken. Tell your master I have learned his lesson. I shall be more careful in future.”
“You might want to mind your manners, too, he said, begging your pardon, Captain. Better for your health, he said.” The clerk tipped his hat and disappeared.
The senior salesman at Manton’s recognized the gun in Rex’s sketch instantly.
“Oh, yes, we made that firearm. One of a pair, it was. And we have an order for another because one was stolen. In fact, I have the widowed one here, to match. Unless you found the missing piece? Mr. Cord would be delighted to have it back without the expense of having another made. They were his father’s, I believe.”
“Mr. Lysander Cord? Who resides at the Albany?” Rex recited from his list.
“You know the gentleman? Excellent. Then I am sure you can relieve his mind. Sentimental value, don’t you know.”
Rex did not know the man, but called at his rooms anyway. Sure enough, Cord explained that his prized weapon had been stolen a few weeks ago from his coach while he attended the theater. He spoke the truth.
Cord was also appalled that his missing gun had killed Sir Frederick Hawley, truly. He was not the murderer.
“But you knew him? Did you know what business he was in?”
Cord looked around his lodgings, obviously wishing he—or Rex—were elsewhere. “Sir Frederick was a gentleman. He could not have been in trade.”
“Surely even gentlemen make investments, help finance promising endeavors. Do you?”
“Me?” The man’s voice rose an octave. “I have money in the Funds.”
Which was true, but not complete, Rex felt. “Do you have any enemies?”
“Me?” he squawked again. “Shouldn’t you be asking if Sir Frederick had anyone who wished him ill?”
“Everyone wished him ill, it appears. But you? As I read the situation, the killer might have been a random thief, robbing first your carriage, then Sir Frederick’s house, but that seems altogether too coincidental. On the other, more devious hand, perhaps someone purposely left your gun at the scene of a crime. After all, the authorities had only your word that the pistol was stolen.”
Cord went white.
“I’ll see if Bow Street will give your pistol back when they are done.”
“Do you know, if it has been used in a murder, I don’t think I want it back. Manton’s can make me another.”
“Good idea. Good day.”
It wasn’t. It was lunchtime.
Chapter Twenty-two
D
aniel refused to get up for the noonday meal, the traitor.
“I might never eat again,” he said with a groan, rolling over in bed with the pillow on his head to keep his brains from falling out.
“I consider that pudding-hearted, abandoning me in my hour of need.”
“Don’t mention food.”
“You felt badly enough that I got shot up by the French after you left me in the Peninsula.”
“I might shoot you myself if you don’t leave me to die in peace.”
Miss Carville, Rex was informed by a very superior ladies’ maid when he scratched at Amanda’s door, was resting after her recent indisposition, on Lady Royce’s advice.
Advice? It was more like an order, Rex would wager. So it was to be the two of them alone,
mano y mano
, or man and
madre
, except for the army of servants the countess seemed to employ. He’d faced French cannons and British turncoats, his enemies’ fear and fellow officers’ disdain. Hell, he’d faced a room full of matchmaking mothers. Surely he could get through one luncheon with the woman who had given him birth.
As loath as he was to make his commanded appearance, he prayed the countess had not made Amanda feel as uncomfortable or unwelcome. Lud knew he had nowhere else to take her. He was the one at fault anyway, since he was older, wiser, not ruled by emotions, and not in fear of his life. He was prepared to acknowledge that much and swear to Amanda’s virtue, unless Lady Royce had insulted her. Then he would take Amanda to the first inn he could find and to the devil with the gossip, and to the dustbin with the meal.
They were everything polite in front of the servants in the formal dining room, seated at opposite ends of a long table. Rex forced himself to eat the excellent food in front of him, although he tasted nothing.
The countess turned down most of the dishes. When Rex raised an eyebrow at her nearly empty plate, she said, “I fear a recurrence of stomach disorder I suffered in Bath. I would have left for London as soon as I heard of Amanda’s situation otherwise, of course.”
Now Rex had the taste of humble pie in his mouth for thinking the countess had selfishly abandoned her goddaughter. “Ah,” was all he said, but he did bear more of his share of the conversation after that.
They discussed his father’s health, Daniel’s sister’s planned come-out next Season, and the weather. Oh, and the condition of the roads between Bath and London, as if he gave a damn. Finally the countess indicated that the meal was over. “Will you take tea, or port if you prefer, with me in the drawing room?”
He followed her, and the line of footmen and maids carrying the tray and the decanter and the countess’s shawl and her needlework. Drooling, Verity followed closely behind the footman who was bearing a plate of biscuits.
“I did not invite that monstrous, ill-behaved creature into my home,” were the first words Lady Royce said when the last servant bowed and shut the door behind him.
“I am sorry. I thought Daniel would be better off here than in the stews where I found him.”
She raised her eyebrow, but a glimmer of a smile touched one corner of her mouth. “Your cousin is welcome, of course. And you.” She broke off a bit of biscuit for the dog, who sat by her chair, gazing up adoringly. The countess, meanwhile, stared at Rex, then at yet another boyhood portrait hanging on the wall.
Rex said nothing, silently berating the dog for another act of treason.
His silence must have unnerved the countess, he thought, if anything could, for she set her cup down too hard, making a clatter. She cleared her throat, as if wondering where to begin. Start twenty-some years ago, he wanted to shout, but did not.
She looked at the portrait again. “I thought you appeared different the last time I saw you. Your nose . . .”
“A recent misadventure. It will have its own shape in a week, I assume. The scar on my cheek is permanent, but fading.”
“And your leg?”
He tucked it back under him, instead of stretched out in front. “Quite well, thank you. Better every day.”
She nodded, accepting that he would not share more than impersonal facts. “Thank you for bringing my godchild to me.”
“It was my—” He almost said pleasure, but caught himself. “My honor to be of service.” That did not sound right, either, reminding him of a stallion servicing the mares, but he could not retract the words.
The countess inferred no double meaning. “She is a lovely young woman. Wrongly charged, of course.”
He gazed at the ruby-colored wine in his goblet, the color of dark lies. “You believe her innocent?”
“Naturally. I have known her since her birth, and her mother was one of my best friends since our own childhood. Amanda could no more shoot a man in cold blood than she could fly to the moon, no matter how deserving of it that man was. More importantly, do you believe she is innocent of the crime?”
She was not asking for his supposition, Rex knew, but his certain knowledge. “Yes.”
“Ah, then you should have no trouble proving it.”
“How, by telling people that I see blue when she speaks?”
She ignored the anger and frustration in his voice and tapped her lips in thought. “It just might do.”
“What might do?” Not his declaration of insanity, surely.
“Why, your marrying her, of course. A handsome young viscount—at least I trust you will be more handsome once your nose is no longer so red and swollen— with a romantic scar and a limp well earned in bravery, to say nothing of a vast fortune, and a beautiful, well-bred young woman. The families have been connected for generations, and wholeheartedly approve. When the
ton
sees how happy I am over the match, they will trust in Amanda’s innocence. I am known to be extremely particular in my acquaintances.”