Ruthless

by Anne Stuart

Page 43

  Author: Anne Stuart

  “Woefully so,” Rohan echoed lightly.

  “So who would most like to kill you?”

  “Apart from you at this particular moment? The two men who covet my titles come to mind. My dear French cousin Etienne would be delighted to see me dead. He’d come into the title, the estates, and he’d no longer have to sully his hands with common people. He really is the most insufferable snob. He thinks the canaille are subhuman, made only to serve him. ”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Oh, heavens, don’t tell me you’re a reformer?” Rohan said with deep distress. “I much prefer my creature comforts to a fair and just world. My servants are rightly terrified of me, and I never have to do a thing to prove how heinous I can be. ”

  “Everyone is rightly terrified of you, Francis. ”

  “With the exception of you, dear boy. ” He thought for a moment. “And Elinor. I imagine that’s a great deal of her charm. Is Miss Lydia terrified of you?”

  “We will not discuss her,” Reading said in a flat voice. “So tell me, do you think Etienne was behind the assassination attempt?”

  “Probably not. He strikes me as someone more likely to use poison. I won’t say it’s impossible, but he wouldn’t be my first choice. ” Rohan rose and poured himself another glass of wine. He held the decanter up in a silent question, and Reading responded by raising his glass to be filled as well.

  “Who else?”

  “There’s my dear English cousin, the one who currently thinks he holds my title. ” Rohan’s lip curled. “The so-charming Joseph Hapgood. ”

  “If you were dead there’d be no claim on it. He’d have it free and clear,” Reading pointed out.

  “He already has it free and clear, as long as I’m exiled from England upon pain of death,” Rohan said lightly. “And I don’t fancy ending up on Tower Hill, separated from my head. ”

  “Something could be done about that. You could apply to the king…”

  “I doubt the so-called king has forgiven the rebellion. And my case might strike a little close to home. One man with a stolen title and the true heir wishing to claim it?” Francis shook his head. “I think his clemency is unlikely. ”

  “Francis,” Reading said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “Culloden was over twenty years ago. ”

  “A blink of the eye, dear boy. Shall we make a bargain? I will refrain from discussing Miss Lydia if you keep away from the subject of my lamentable ancient past. It is of no importance to me. Lost causes are distressing. Let us return to whoever is trying to murder me. It’s not going to be Joseph Hapgood. Did I tell you he visited me a few years ago? I don’t remember where you were at the time. Delightful fellow. Hates Yorkshire. He’s a farmer, you know. Already had vast estates in Cornwall, a plump wife and eight children. Probably more at this point—he seemed exhaustively procreative, both in agriculture and offspring. He says he never really wanted the title or the responsibility. ”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Most certainly I believed him. I believe he still had a whiff of cow dung clinging to his boots. He would give up the title most happily if he could. ”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “That I never considered him to have it in the first place,” Rohan said sweetly. “Not the most tactful thing to say in the circumstances, but he’s the annoying kind of man who refuses to take offense, no matter how hard I tried to give it. So no, he wouldn’t kill to ensure there was no other claim on the title. He’d much rather do without it. ”

  “So we eliminate one suspect. Who else?”

  Rohan shrugged. “I have no idea. I did have an entirely contrary theory, one that has absolutely no substance in any kind of common sense, but the idea has stayed with me. Suppose I was not the intended target?”

  “You think someone was trying to kill me?” Reading raised an eyebrow. “I have to say, Francis, that I do not boast the number of enemies to your credit. ”

  “Not you, my boy. My dear Miss Harriman. I’d just delivered her in that selfsame carriage less than an hour beforehand. What if the assassin thought she was the one in the carriage beside me and was aiming for her?”

  “And why should anyone want to kill Miss Harriman?”

  “I have no idea. But you know I was ever a fanciful creature, and the idea has stuck. I wonder about the fire as well. Lady Caroline could barely move or speak except in moments of extreme agitation, and her bed was well removed from the fire. How did she manage to escape and start the conflagration?”

  “Is that what they think happened?”

  “It is. It was quite clear the fire was started by artificial means. Which means your sweet Lydia was put at risk as well. ”

  He could see Reading stiffen for a moment, then deliberately relax. The man was pathetic, Rohan thought. In love, like a calfling, besotted by a pair of blue eyes and a pretty face. Lord save him from ever becoming so obsessed.

  “Which still begs the question,” Reading said. “Why would anyone want to kill Miss Harriman?”

  “What do you know of the new Baron Tolliver?” Rohan countered.

  The contract lay on the table, elegant foolscap written in a fine hand. Miss Elinor Harriman agrees to remain in residence at Maison de Giverney until the end of Lent, while her sister resides at the château. And her signature on the bottom, written with a hostile flourish.

  It was far from the first contract she’d signed. While most of working-class Paris made do with a handshake, there were still any number of issues involving her mother and their motley family that had required contracts of one sort or another.

  And she was about to break one.

  She could tell herself it was his fault. He’d forced her, blackmailed her into this position, and she was simply doing what she had to do. They were his just deserts.

  So why did it feel so dishonorable?

  It didn’t matter. Someone in this vast household had taken pity on her. The ordinary cloak and new boots had appeared hidden in her bed, like one of the pillows, with a note and purseful of coins. Escape when you can, the note read, and Elinor would be a fool not to.

  She had friends in this household. She could even count Willis and Jeanne-Louise as people with sympathy toward her situation.

  But it was unlikely that any of them could write, particularly with a fine, masculine hand.

  And then it came to her. Mr. Reading. He was enamored of Lydia, though for some reason he’d kept his distance. Maybe rescuing her gauche older sister was his way of winning Lydia’s favor. Except as far as she could see, Lydia’s favor was a foregone conclusion, and it was Mr. Reading who was diffident.

  Escape was all well and good, she thought, feeling particularly cranky. But where did one go, if one managed to actually leave the house? Obviously she’d head for the château and extricate Lydia. Mrs. Clarke certainly wouldn’t stop her. But how did one leave in the first place when one was a prisoner? She had no idea how to get out without running afoul of Jeanne-Louise, or, heaven spare her, Rohan himself. He seemed to roam the halls like a bat, waiting to pounce.

  She had no idea whether bats actually pounced or not. And Rohan wasn’t at all like a bat, which were horribly ratlike and not to her preference at all.

  Rohan was like some kind of cat. When she was very young Nanny Maude had taken her to an exhibition of wild animals in Hyde Park, and there were all sorts of huge, exotic cats. Rohan wasn’t a lion, he was one of the others. Sleek and black and dangerous, with hard eyes and a strange beauty. Rohan was like some kind of cat.

  And she was a mouse. A mouse who snarled. And had teeth. An angry little mouse who fought back.

  For the first time in what seemed like forever she giggled.

  “What’s so amusing, my precious?”

  She jumped. She’d given up locking and barring her doors—he always seemed to find a way past them. This time he
’d simply strolled in from her dressing room, moving as silently as…a cat.

  She couldn’t help it, she giggled again. Once started, it was very hard to regain her composure. “I was thinking about you, my lord,” she said in a dulcet tone.

  He raised an eyebrow. He looked particularly elegant tonight, and she remembered it was the beginning of the Revels. “You were thinking about me and laughing? How very damaging to my self-esteem. ”

  “Actually I was laughing about me. I was envisioning you as some kind of cat, playing games with me, but that, unlike a timid little mouse, I fought back with hisses and fangs. ”

  “Hisses and fangs, dearest? Oh, surely not. You really do have the strangest notion of your charms. ”

  Elinor snorted, an act Nanny Maude had always deplored. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit, my lord? Your vast orgy begins tonight. Shouldn’t you be planning on ruining some innocent?”

  “But you see, poppet, I am. ” He took a seat on the divan, glancing around him with great interest, and she could only thank God she’d had the sense to hide the clothes and money. “How have you been entertaining yourself? I sent an array of books to entertain you. ”

  “And lovely they were, though certain illustrated volumes were not to my taste. I don’t know what antiquities those drawings were taken from, and I doubt that such interesting contortions could actually take place. And I took leave to doubt the size of various portions of the anatomy of some of the people represented. ” She managed to keep the flush of color, which had flooded her face when she first opened the volumes, away.

  “Well, many of them were gods,” Rohan said carelessly. “Those were drawings taken from Roman ruins and temples in India. If you like, we can look at them together and I can explain which are exaggerations and which are not. I do believe most of the positions are feasible. I could be persuaded to attempt some of the more unlikely. ”

  It did no good to glare at him. “I found the books very…instructive, but now you may take them back. They are irrelevant to the life I intend to lead. ” She could feel some of the color begin to creep up. Unfortunately she was remembering a particular plate, where the young lady, dressed in nothing but a silver girdle, was astride an Indian gentleman of quite astonishing proportions. She seemed quite happy about it, and Elinor inadvertently pictured Rohan in the place of the Indian gentleman.