by Lynn Kerstan
“Lord Varden instructed me to secure for you a hackney,” said the young man. “It is waiting at the entrance to the Palazzo.”
“Thank you. I shall make ready to depart.” Taking the parcel with her, she opened it on reaching her bedchamber. Why the officials had taken its contents in the first place she could not imagine. Well, except for the dagger, but only one of the three that had been in the cottage was there. Her sheaths were missing as well, and the large knife she was nearly sure belonged to Michael Keynes. That, of course, had been packed in her luggage, which was also missing.
She assumed that while she was at Bow Street, Helena Pryce, or someone sent by her, had come to collect Edgar Holcombe. By mistake, her own luggage must have been gathered up along with his. She was going to be short of clothing, not that she expected to require very much of it.
After donning her cloak and bonnet, she selected two books from her small collection, added the compact chess set her father used when they were traveling, and accompanied Lord Varden’s servant to the coach.
It was a long distance from Chelsea to the Tower. She’d thought to spend the time preparing herself, but it was no use rehearsing an encounter with Michael Keynes. He would strike past her makeshift defenses in a heartbeat. So she looked out the carriage window, watching people going about their everyday lives, shopping and doing business and heading home to their families. How she envied them. This seemed to her another world entirely, one she passed through without touching anyone or anything that dwelt there.
By the time the White Tower, tinged with the gold of the late-afternoon sun, came into view, her nerves were all on edge. They always were, at the prospect of seeing him. Just ahead was the stone bridge across the moat that surrounded the Tower, and a line of men in blue-and-red uniforms holding back the surging crowd.
She alighted and strode directly to the bridge as if she’d every right to cross it. A guard quickly moved forward to prevent her, but when she showed him her document, he escorted her to the Middle Tower gate and handed her over to an amiable, bearded warder who examined the items she was carrying.
“I’d have been required to search your person as well,” he told her as they proceeded through one gate after another, “save that His Grace is here of his own accord. A man what turns himself in and confesses ain’t likely to escape, is my theory. Not that he could take himself free of the Tower, mind you. Newgate, well, there’s a prison like a Swiss cheese, criminals slipping out like mice through the holes. But a man what comes here, stays here, until he’s pardoned or executed. This one will be executed, mark my words. I hope it’s here, but they’ll likely send him to Newgate for a hanging, where more people can watch. Got a great fondness for executions, have the people of London.”
She did not wish to think of that. She thought instead of the menagerie somewhere within the Tower, and how she had intended to bring her father to see the lions and tigers and leopards and bears.
“Here we be,” said the warder, his gold-laced scarlet coat and skirts flapping as he guided her across a courtyard to a Tudor-framed building. “The Lieutenant’s Lodgings,” he said, “where Anne Boleyn was kept before they lopped off her head. There’s a room next the Council Chamber where His Grace be stored for now.”
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. A dungeon, perhaps, or a grim cell with a tiny slit of a window and moss growing on the walls. Not this refined edifice, more suited to a wealthy resident than an imprisoned murderer.
Who was also a duke, she had to keep reminding herself. It was difficult to imagine.
And even more difficult a short time later, when the warder unlocked a door and stepped aside to let her enter. “Your Grace,” he announced, “it’s Miss Holcombe come to call.”
The humming in her head that had intensified while they were walking up the two flights of stairs arrowed her attention to the table and chair at the center of the room. Then, as always when she came face-to-face with him, it disappeared.
He was gazing up at her, the first expression of surprise quickly transformed to a sardonic smile. He looked as she had often seen him, tousled hair, stubbled chin, shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his arms.
“Well, well,” he said, propping his elbows on the table and templing his hands. “Entertainment. I hope you’ve come with brandy, but gin will do. I’m in no case to be particular.”
A fleeting instinct to curtsy passed swiftly by. “Thank you for receiving me,” she said, setting the books and boxed chess set on a nearby chair. “I did bring entertainment, but not the sort you’d rather have. I should have remembered that you prefer above all things to be drunk.”
“Not above all things.” The oil lamp on the table cast wavery shadows over his face. “But I don’t expect you are here to indulge my fantasies. Why are you here, Miss Holcombe?”
“To ask you that very question, sir. I am informed you have confessed to killing your brother, and I know very well you have done no such thing.”
One black brow went up. “But of course I did. Why, it says so right here in these news rags. Have a look.” He sifted his fingers through the papers spread across the table, drew one of them out. “‘Brother Slayer!’ Or this—‘A Knife Through the Heart!’ Chock full of gruesome details. It seems I carved my initials in his forehead, although I don’t remember doing that. Was I crazed with bloodlust, do you suppose?”
What she did with cool indifference, he did with sarcasm. Different tactics, but the goals were the same—avoid questions, hold others at a distance, and if necessary, drive them away. “They are taking their cue from you,” she said. “What possible reason could you have for doing this?”
“My brother and I didn’t get along. Are you going to continue standing there glowering at me, or would you care to be seated?”
“Thank you, no.” She had an unnatural impulse to start throwing things at him. Perhaps a chess set would knock some sense into his head. But she did approach the table, curious to see what information he was gleaning from the newspapers. “I was referring to why you confessed to the murder.”
“Boredom. And they’d have got me sooner or later. I’ve been heard to threaten the duke, I’ve a long history of making trouble for him, and I stand to inherit his title and fortune. I’m the logical suspect. Can you blame me for declining to be chased down like a hare? Where’s the dignity in that?”
“Where’s the dignity in lying while the real murderer goes free?”
“We appear to be speaking at cross purposes, Miss Holcombe.” He jabbed a finger at his chest. “Killer. Guilty. Execution to follow.”
“You would not have killed him,” she said, “with my knife.”
His lashes flickered. “Is that what it was? I grabbed what was handy from his desk. Thought it was a letter opener.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Sleek. Black hilt. Red stone. Sharp blade. Slid right in. Is this a private inquisition, or should I be telling all this to the magistrate?”
She picked up a handful of papers and carried them to a stand of candles across the room. Three of the broadsheets described her knife, and two of them quoted servants who claimed to have seen it in the duke’s chest. He was piecing together the details of his story from what he read. But most was pure speculation and, as he’d admitted, lurid theatrics. Forced to pick and choose from what was being reported, he was bound to go wrong some of the time. Then again, he had not expected his confession to be challenged.
“Why,” she said, “would you go unarmed to your brother’s house if you intended to kill him?”
“I didn’t think he’d be there.” Rising, he laced his fingers together and stretched his arms over his head. “It’s after dark, Miss Holcombe. You should go home now.”
“If you didn’t expect him, why were you there?”
“I was counting the silverware.” He chuckl
ed. “By God, I think you may be as stubborn as I am. It happened I was in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon, got to wondering if our duckling had dropped by Tallant House, and decided to have a look.” He regarded her speculatively. “You haven’t found her, I don’t suppose?”
“Lady Corinna? No. And apparently she wasn’t where you were searching, either. Did you simply knock on the front door and ask to be admitted?”
“That didn’t occur to me. I went over the back wall, up a tree, across to a balcony, and through a window.”
Her breath caught. Had he been there after all? Got in the house the same way Cory had done? It explained, or perhaps it did, his knife in the curtain hem. But the timing was all wrong. Or Cory had lied, or he was lying. She certainly was. At this point, it seemed likely that all three of them were lying.
She aligned the papers she was still holding and returned them to the table. Michael Keynes had gone to the window and was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing outside.
“Are you satisfied?” he said after a time. “I assure you, the officials will be. And the good citizens of London are already queuing up for the execution. Why have you such difficulty accepting that I killed him? I have killed a great many men, and not a one of them so deserved to die as my brother. Let it be, Miss Holcombe. In all of this, what I cannot bear is to see you distressed.”
“What you see in me is anger, sir,” she told him, wishing—as she so often did—that she were able to produce a forceful noise. Her mind shouted, but her voice whispered. It was no wonder he refused to take her seriously. “You cannot have put the knife in him. I know that because I was the one who stabbed him, with my own dagger, and watched him die at my feet.”
He spun around. “The hell you did.”
“You think me incapable of murder?”
“I’d put nothing past you. Nothing but the strength to physically overmaster a brute like Jermyn Keynes.”
“Which is why I relied on misdirection and stealth. You may as well withdraw your false claim to guilt now, for when you are questioned, you’ll not be able to describe the scene of the killing with any degree of accuracy. And because I can do so, down to the smallest detail, it is my story that will be believed. My confession that will be accepted.”
“Stalemate,” he said softly.
“Oh, no, Your Grace. It’s checkmate.”
“We’ll see.” As he moved forward, the light caught his eyes, those strange Keynes eyes that never failed to send a shiver along her spine. “Consider your father.”
“I always have. But you must have seen that his illness grows worse.” She folded her hands, which had begun to tremble. “I would have stayed peacefully with him until the end, save that Tallant threatened us both with worse, far worse, than what we face now. Sometimes we have only bad choices. I would rather be hung at Newgate, and have my father watch it, than endure what the Beast would have done to us.”
“Understood. But neither fate confronts you now.”
“I have my hands on the rope,” she said. “I will put it around my neck. And you will assume your position as Duke of Tallant and head of your family, for that is your duty.”
He looked startled, as if the notion had never occurred to him.
“Consider this. You’ve a niece still missing, another all alone, and a sister-in-law who will be left without a home or funds to care for her children. You can’t imagine your brother provided for them. If you are condemned for this crime, they will be left with nothing.”
That, more than anything she had said, appeared to affect him. But only for a moment.
Shrugging, he crossed to where she stood, compelling her to hold her ground with all her will as he loomed over her, dark and wild and resolute. “You need not have been frightened by my brother’s threats. I said I would protect you. Did you not believe me?”
She looked up and up, feeling smaller than she was, the ground beneath her unsteady as her heartbeat. “I know only how to rely upon myself.”
“We have that in common. And we are both wrong, I think, to refuse help when we need it. But being wrong has not stopped you, and in this circumstance, it certainly won’t stop me.”
“I will stop you. It is your family that requires your protection, sir. I am nothing to you, and can never be.”
A storm raged in his eyes. She started to turn away, but his hands, large and bare, clamped on her shoulders. She froze. Gazed up at him openmouthed.
He let her go. Took a step back, hands open-palmed and lifted in a gesture of apology.
She took a ragged breath, and another. “I thank you for your kindness to my father,” she said when she could speak in a level voice. “If you wish to do something for me, try to make what is to come easier for him. At present, the chief magistrate is already half persuaded of my guilt, and I am on my way to provide him the evidence to convict me.”
“Don’t do this.”
“You cannot prevent me. Good-bye, Your Grace.”
She was at the door when he spoke again, softly. “Thank you for the books.”
She oughtn’t to have done it, but she turned, just for a moment, and looked at him one last time. At his eyes, that spoke of all the things she could never have.
It was only when she’d closed the door behind her that she realized he had been smiling.
Nightfall and a cold drizzle had dispatched the curious and bloodthirsty citizens home to their suppers, leaving the area outside the Tower walls nearly deserted. The warder walked with Mira across the stone bridge, still chattering about infamous prisoners and their dire fates while she looked around for a hackney.
There was only one vehicle on the street, with two men huddled under broad-brimmed hats and caped coats on the driver’s bench. They straightened when the warder waved his arm, and brought the carriage forward, and one of them jumped down to open the door. “Number Four, Bow Street,” she told him.
After thanking the warder, she entered the coach, which was far nicer than any hackney she’d been in before, and settled back on the soft leather squabs. These would be her last few minutes of freedom. At least she would spend them in comfort, she was thinking when the door on the opposite side opened and a large figure filled the space.
“I beg your pardon,” said Hari Singh, taking his seat just as the coach pulled away. “I did not mean to startle you.”
And then he did so again, reaching past her to pull down the window shade. He closed the one on his side as well, while she stared at him in confusion. Light from the lantern overhead fell over his white turban, bearded chin, and cheeks the color of plums. His eyes were apologetic and sad.
“How did you know I was at the Tower?” she demanded, profoundly suspicious.
“Michael asked me to collect you. He feared you intended to do something . . . inadvisable.”
How had Michael Keynes known of her plans? Or that she would come to him in the Tower? “You are not taking me to Bow Street, then?”
“Nor to the Palazzo. We shall be traveling for perhaps two hours. I cannot disclose our destination.”
“You are abducting me?”
His face grew impossibly redder. “Conducting you, rather, to a place of safety. Your possessions—those you had packed—are there now, as is Mr. Holcombe.”
She shook with fury. All the while she had been in that prison with Michael Keynes, defying him, informing him of her intentions, assuring him he’d no choice but to accept her decision, he had known she would fail. Had already arranged for her to fail. No wonder he had been smiling when she left him.
Mr. Singh regarded her with evident concern. “Michael said you would not take easily to this change of plans. I regret being the cause of your distress, but where we are going, my friends will make you comfortable and welcome.”
“For how long? Until
they hang him? Are you instructed to release me when he is dead?”
“Not in those words. But should it come to that, yes.”
“Then disobey him! He is your friend. I am nothing, except that I can save him. You must let me go free to do it.”
“I cannot.” Gentle, but final.
“Because you believe he really did murder the duke?” she asked after a time.
“He has not said so. But for as long as I have known him, he has dedicated himself to the destruction of his brother. When he returned to England, it was with the purpose of killing him.”
“But don’t you understand? He may be executed for a crime he did not commit.”
“It is possible. But I have no power to prevent him, Miss Holcombe. Michael will not be led, nor will he be guided. He can only be accompanied.”
Chapter 20
In the Tower, the long gray morning wore on. After a sleepless night, most of it spent pacing the room or running in place, Michael left his breakfast untouched and lounged on a comfortable chair by the fireplace, brooding. A book, facedown, lay across his lap with his hands resting on the leather binding. He wasn’t in the mood to read, had not even looked at the title. But it was a book she had brought to him, and he wanted to be touching it.
She was safe now. A coded message from Hari confirmed she had been intercepted and taken to a place where she would not be found and from which she could not escape. She’d probably try, though.
His greatest regret was that he would never see her again.
He had no other immediate regrets, none to speak of, except his failure to consider what was to become of Norah and her daughters. They had not once entered his thoughts until Miranda put them there, and now they joined the other dark spirits that haunted his nightmares.