by Lynn Kerstan
There had been time, if he’d thought to use it. Instead of galloping directly to Great Marlborough Street to turn himself over to the authorities, he could have delayed long enough to settle his brother’s financial affairs and make sure the family was provided for. But it hadn’t occurred to him to do so.
Hell, it hadn’t even crossed his mind he’d become the ninth Duke of Tallant until some oily official at the police court began Your-Gracing him. The first time it happened, he looked around to see who had come into the room behind him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to it. Conveniently, he wouldn’t have to.
The news that Miranda Holcombe had been taken off to Bow Street Court had knocked every coherent thought from his brain. From that point on, his only aim had been to get her out of there.
A good thing he had been having her watched. After Beata told him Miranda had drawn a knife on his brother, he put one of Hari’s Punjabi friends to guard her, certain that Jermyn would seek retribution. Lakhbir could not always follow where she went, but he had been concealed near the cottage when a court officer arrived to collect her. And he told Hari, who told Michael on his return to the Palazzo late that morning.
Yesterday morning. It seemed months ago. But then, he had never dealt well with being closed in. The sooner this was over with, the better.
There was a knock—everyone was amazingly polite to a titled murderer—and he glanced over to see the door swing open. He swore aloud.
Varden. Looking as sleek and perfectly groomed as a show horse, wearing an expression that said he’d just placed last in a field of hacks.
Ominous, that. He ought to be looking pleased. He ought to be gloating.
“Your Grace.” Varden bowed.
Worse and worse. Michael sensed bad news on the way.
“I have just handed over to the Yeoman Warder the order sent by the chief magistrate. You are free to go.”
What the devil? Michael’s fingertips curled over the book on his lap, but he otherwise held still. Put a mildly interested expression on his face while swallowing a blast of oaths in Hindi, Punjabi, and Arabic. Damned if he’d give Varden the satisfaction of his confusion. “Murder is no longer a crime in England?” he inquired when he could speak.
“It is. But we only punish the guilty. There are penalties for making a false confession, of course, but the magistrate seems disinclined to pursue charges.”
Michael would have preferred to remain as he was, insolently stretched out on a chair with his stockinged feet propped on an ottoman, but a storm was gathering inside him. He closed Miranda’s book, set it reverently on the side table, and lowered his feet to the carpet. “Should I have made myself more clear? Is there something about ‘I killed my brother’ that he failed to understand?”
“The part that tells him you could not have been there at the time. You have doubtless enjoyed making fools of the authorities, not to mention the newspapers and the citizens of London who accepted your claim of guilt. But it is a reckless game you have played with us, because it has hindered the investigation and perhaps allowed the true killer to escape.”
“Tsk-tsk. I would be ashamed of myself, really I would, if I knew what in hell you are talking about. Since I drove a knife in Jermyn’s chest, how can I not have been there when he died?”
“Because you were seen in a tavern outside the village of Elmstead on the afternoon he was killed. You could not have got back to London and Berkeley Square in time to have done it.”
“You are mistaken.” Michael rose, stretched, and slouched over to the window. It was a gray, miserable day. “Who claims to have seen me?”
“The men I hired to follow you. I have not abandoned the investigation I began in India. You were an outlaw there, and I’d no doubt you would take up some unlawful venture here.”
When the implication of that pronouncement sank in, Michael broke out in laughter. In his dogged effort to prove Michael Keynes guilty of something—anything—Varden had stumbled into proving him innocent of a capital crime.
“Will you deny you were in the south of Kent, Your Grace? You need not bother. The man you met in the tavern was known to one of my . . . my—”
“Spies? Good God, you needn’t be ashamed. Over the years I have employed spies, beggars, thugs, whores, and even children to do my dirty work. When the cause is sufficiently compelling, most men would do the same. But what makes you think I failed to return to London in time to do the killing? Your spies weren’t tracking me at that point.”
A slight flush stained Varden’s smooth complexion. “You knew you were being followed?”
“Of course.” He just hadn’t guessed who sent them. “For the most part they were of no great concern, your pair of sleuths. When they became a nuisance, I shook them off.”
“After meeting with the Runner. Will you tell me the reason?”
“Giving myself an alibi?” Michael wondered if the Runner had been interrogated. “I wish I’d thought of that. But your timing is all wrong. I was in London, in Berkeley Square, and in my brother’s study, face-to-face with him when he died.”
“That is not possible.”
“I have a fast horse. I don’t always take the roads. And you can’t have measured the route or the time it would require to cover it.”
“In fact, Your Grace, you’ve no idea what information I possess. You can only accept that I, and the magistrate, have determined that it exonerates you.”
“Then why in hell would I put my neck on the block? Does your information explain that?”
“I am entirely ready to believe you did it for your own amusement,” Varden said evenly. “But Sir Richard believes you are conspiring with the true killer, whom he thinks to be Miss Miranda Holcombe.”
“Good God. I can think of any number of things I’d like to do with the delectable Miss Holcombe, but conspiring is not among them. What gives you the idea she is entangled with me?”
“Excepting the Sikh, she has been your only visitor.”
“What of it? She sure as hell didn’t come here for a celebration. As a matter of fact, I could never quite make out what she wanted. In the company of Miss Holcombe, my thoughts invariably turn to coarser matters.”
Varden gave him a look of contempt. “She wishes you to withdraw your brother’s claim to her family home.”
“Ah. She did keep nattering on about debts and property, so I figured Jermyn owed her money. But Miss Holcombe is indebted to me? Very nice. Very nice, indeed. You seem to know all about this, Archangel. What will she offer me, do you think, in exchange for her home?”
“You are despicable.”
“Undeniably. But we have digressed from the reason you are here. What cause has the magistrate to suspect Miss Holcombe of murder most foul? She hardly seems the sort to attack a man twice her size and strength, and she could not bring him down with a puny little dagger.”
“She had a quarrel with him—”
“About the property. So you say. But killing him would not put it in her hands. And my brother had a great many enemies. If motive to eliminate him is all it requires, the queue of suspects will stretch from Berkeley Square to Brighton.”
“There is, as well, suspicious behavior. Miss Holcombe went to Berkeley Square late in the afternoon, about the time we think Tallant was killed.”
“What time would that be?”
“If you had killed him, you would know.”
Michael gave himself a mental kick. “I do, which is my point. She had not come to the house when I left it, and by then, he was dead. Did anyone see her when she arrived?”
“Not . . . precisely. A woman was seen departing through the main door, but only from the back, and the servant admitted he was some distance down the passageway. We can secure no firm identification, nor can he recall the precise time.”
&
nbsp; Thank God for that. Michael realized he was standing by the fireplace with no idea how he’d got all the way across the room, while Varden, in better control of himself, stood where he had originally planted his well-shod feet. “In short, you have no evidence she was ever there.”
“Her knife. The testimony of the hackney driver. She does not deny going to Berkeley Square, but she refuses to disclose her reason, or why she failed to return home until many hours later.”
Michael laughed, in part from relief. “Can you not imagine why a young woman would steal out of an evening and decline to explain where she’s been? Or with whom she has been? It was clearly an assignation, and not, alas, with either of us. Our hopes are dashed, Archangel. The delightful Miss Holcombe prefers another fellow.”
“You insult her, Your Grace.”
“And accusing her of murder is not an insult? Better a killer than a whore?” Michael reined in his stampeding temper. “I’d take her if she were both, and gladly. But she won’t have me, nor, I expect, you, so we may as well leave her in peace.”
Varden finally moved, crossing to the table where the latest broadsheets were spread out and sorting through them with his one useful hand. Lacking information to feast on, the newspapers had resorted to invention, including one story that involved, mysteriously, a chambermaid, a missing necklace, and a pair of ferrets. News of the duke’s release from the Tower was going to send them into a frenzy of speculation.
He wanted a head start, before the news hit the streets. And to rid himself of the Archangel, who roused all his most violent instincts. But Varden was not so easily intimidated. Most men would have taken their leave before now.
Time to ratchet up the provocation a few notches. “Was there anything else? If you’re too miserly to buy your own, you may take those papers with you.”
Varden glanced over at him, his demeanor perfectly contained. “One more thing, Your Grace. Miss Holcombe and her father have vanished. Do you have any idea where they might be?”
“None whatever. So, how do I go about making you vanish?”
“For your convenience,” Varden said as if Michael had not spoken, “and because a crowd is assembled at the entrance, you will be escorted to the Watergate and transported by a riverboat to Palazzo Neri.”
“Will I indeed?” Michael advanced on him, hands fisted, not terribly surprised when Varden held his ground. In one of the future lifetimes Hari believed in, the two of them might be friends. But in this one, no question, they were implacable enemies. “I will decide where I go, you pompous fool, and how I get there. It’s long past time you stopped poking your aristocratic nose in my affairs. You ought to have learned your lesson in Calcutta. Hell, you carry the evidence of it at the end of your right arm. Yet here you are again, flailing about in waters far above your head.”
“Also seeing to your release,” Varden pointed out.
“And how that must gall you.” Michael was face on with him now. “First you stumble onto proof of my innocence, or so you imagine, and then your precise conscience won’t let you keep quiet about it.”
“I do my duty,” Varden said with maddening calm.
“You like to think so. Me, I do whatever I like. Now pay attention, Archangel, to your last warning. You may walk out of here and turn the key behind you. I give you leave to try me, convict me, and lop off my head. But if you choose to do none of those things, then let me be. I’ll tolerate no more of your infernal meddling.”
Jade-green eyes flashed with anger, but there was no other perceptible response from the earl.
Michael found himself envying his self-control. Varden had not been born with a volatile temper, or a roiling anger in his belly, or a longing so deep it would one day rend him to pieces. He didn’t know how lucky he was, sailing through life on untroubled seas. Or nearly so, until the debacle in India, but that was less than a year ago. He’d enjoyed a damnably smooth ride until then.
Not so for the Devil’s son, who had been fighting a war with himself for as long as he could remember. He’d trained his body to do his bidding, but he had little control of his passions. Always, he burned and burned and burned. Perhaps that was why he was drawn to Miranda Holcombe’s icy composure, and why he wanted to shatter it and light a fire inside her to match his own.
Perhaps he hated Varden because he wanted to be like him.
And when had he become so bloody self-absorbed?
Disgusted, he took himself back to the window and clamped his hands around the bars.
“Nevertheless,” said the golden earl in a plummy tone that grated on Michael’s nerves, “the boat will be waiting for you. Direct the oarsmen wherever you choose.”
“You’d better have paid them, then. All my blunt has gone to bribing the warders.”
“I’ll see to it.” Varden went to the door, paused as if he’d something to add, and appeared to change his mind. On his way out, he left the door conspicuously open.
The reprieve would be useful, Michael was thinking while he gathered up Miranda’s books, the chess set, and the few things Hari had brought him. He stowed them in the small portmanteau, put on his boots, greatcoat, and hat, and took a last look around the room. He would soon be back.
A warder escorted him to the traitor’s bridge and the skiff manned by two oarsmen who eyed him with undisguised curiosity. Not many self-confessed murderers exited the Tower in this fashion, he supposed.
Drizzle, thick and gray, made the air nearly as wet as the Thames. They’d gone only a short distance when he had the watermen put him off at All Hallows Lane and set out on foot for the bank.
Although it was barely past eight o’clock when he arrived, the reliable Charles Whitehead was already at work in his office. And from the look on his face when Michael was ushered in, he’d read the most scurrilous of the broadsheets.
“Sit down, man,” said Michael, pulling off his hat and giving it a good shake. “I only slaughter my relations. And anyway, the magistrate wouldn’t give me back my knife.”
“Mist . . . er, Your Grace, how may I be of service?” A thin film of sweat coated the banker’s upper lip.
Michael dropped onto a chair. “I want control of my late, unlamented brother’s records, finances, and property. Everything he owned, managed, and controlled, above the table or beneath it. I want all of that in the hands of a reliable, honest, tenacious firm of solicitors by noon today.”
“But that’s—”
“Impossible. I know and you know. But don’t tell them. They’ll get hold of what they can and advise me how we get hold of the rest. This is the important part. By late today, I want to have made provisions for the widow and her two daughters. Lavish provisions, secured against any possible challenge from, let us say, the Crown. Everything else can wait, but the solicitors don’t need to know that.”
“Did you have a firm in mind, Your Grace?”
“The one you recommend.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Whitehead pulled off his spectacles and began to polish the lenses with a handkerchief. “The chaps who drew up your will and the trusts were adequate for the needs of a wealthy man, but not for a duke. No, no, not for a duke. And I shouldn’t trust the fellows the former duke employed, either. No, not them.”
“Agreed. Do you happen to know who they are?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. It’s a small world, finance and banking and the legal community. I have a firm in mind for you. Strictly honest, aggressive, skillful. Choosy about their clients, though. They represent, oh, the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquess of Blythe, Lord Philpot, Lord Varden. Hmm. I’m not sure they’ll have a Tallant, though. Oh, dear.”
Fussy little man. Good at his job, though, and for all his dithering, he had a needle-sharp mind.
“Well, talk them into it, “ Michael said. “Tell them I want hard work for a short time and will pay extravaga
ntly for it. And that I won’t expect them to retain me as a client overlong. Just find someone to handle this. What is required to arrange the handover of my brother’s records and assets?”
“I shall have papers drawn up that will authorize your solicitors to act in certain matters on your behalf. We can fill in their names when we know them. I’ll send a messenger to the firm I have in mind. Their offices are nearby. Yes. And arrange for the papers. Yes. Can I provide refreshments, Your Grace, while you wait?”
“Paper, pen, ink, and the use of a writing table,” Michael said. “And I require a messenger to deliver my letter straightaway.”
“Make yourself free of my desk, Your Grace. I’ll see to the rest.”
It was two hours before matters were well enough along that Michael could leave for a time. The letter to Miss Pryce had long since been dispatched, the persnickety firm of solicitors had been persuaded to accept him, and after a few abortive fumbles, he’d got used to signing “Tallant” to a slew of documents.
He sucked in deep breaths of cold wet air. It was a relief to be striding through the soggy streets of London again, his pockets plump with cash, a wide umbrella borrowed from Whitehead in his hand.
For his sins, he was required to return later in the day for yet more paper signing and ducal folderol. A good thing he wouldn’t have to be a duke for long, because he’d be a damnably bad one. Business bored him. He wanted it taken care of without him. And most of it would be, he was learning, because apparently dukes didn’t have to lift a finger if they didn’t wish to.
Chapter 21
“Can it be?” In a swish of taffeta, Beata Neri swept up to where Michael, with no choice, waited for her greeting. Pausing a little distance away, she first surveyed him head to toe and rolled her eyes in mock despair. Then, with the grace of a courtesan, she sank into a profound curtsy. “Your Grace. How is it you are here, and not in the Tower? I had thought you killed your brother.”
“I thought so, too. But I am informed that I did not, on account of being elsewhere at the time.”