by Dawn Brower
Marlburg kept his gaze on his third lemon biscuit. “When the Prince Regent gives you a gift, it’s an honor to the entire family.”
“Those buttons were a sign of distinction,” Georgina added, delicately picking at her first petit four with her fork, as a bird pecks at a bug in the sand. While her husband was round-faced with large jowls, Georgina was tall and spindly, her nose sharp as a beak. “Well-deserved, of course, as the Harding-Forster family is one of the finest in England.”
Since you tell everyone you meet that, it simply must be true.
Jemma shoved a petit four into her mouth to keep from speaking. She adored Nicholas and his wife Felicity, but she’d happily never talk to Georgina again. Of course, Georgina could talk about herself for hours—and had, several times—so Jemma didn’t have to speak much to begin with.
“Although, I remain baffled that Prinny blessed Philip with the buttons, when he’s always been closer to Marlburg.” Georgina patted her husband’s hand, and he started, his chin jolting up from his plate.
“Quite true, quite true.” This sentiment thus uttered, he went back to eating.
“Or David,” Jemma put in, to nudge Georgina in the right direction. “I always thought that the Prince Regent had a soft spot for David.”
Georgina perked up at the mention of David. The two were a year apart in age, and had always acted more as brother and sister than cousins. “Who could blame him? Wolverston is the most amiable of men. There is not a soiree he isn’t welcome to, and he is the life of the party.”
Hearing David’s new title slip so easily from Georgina’s lips made Jemma sick. Philip didn’t matter to his family anymore—it was as if he never existed. She spun on the settee, facing Georgina, the woman’s smirk goading her past caution. Words tumbled out faster than she could stop them. “I suppose people have forgiven David’s gambling vowels? Last I heard, Almack’s was considering banning him because he didn’t pay his debts of honor.”
Oh, devil take me.
She hadn’t meant to say any of that. She’d wanted to lull Georgina into a sense of security before she asked about David’s debts. She’d planned on pulling out the information from her slowly, in the course of normal conversation, so Georgina wouldn’t get suspicious.
No chance of that now. Blast it all, she’d be lucky to survive this tea without Georgina hurling a cup at her head.
Georgina stiffened, fixing Jemma with a lethal look. “David would have paid all his vowels with expediency, if Philip had simply helped him. It was not an unreasonable request, especially when an estate is as prosperous as Wolverston. Instead, Philip told David—his only brother, I might add—that he ought to work off the debt. As if Forsters or Hardings worked! Our lines are long and legendary.”
By her side, Marlburg took her bony hand into his plump palm, squeezing it. “Now, now, my dear, there’s no need to get upset. I’m sure Wolverston exaggerated what the old earl meant.”
“The old earl?” Jemma repeated incredulously, her voice shaking with insuppressible rage. “Philip has only been dead a week. You speak as though he’s been gone years.”
“How did Lord Wolverston react to his brother’s refusal of aid?” Gabriel’s firm, calm voice pierced the tension, causing all heads in the room to swivel toward him.
She’d forgotten he was there. Hell of an investigator she made, when she couldn’t keep her feelings from clouding her judgment.
Georgina glowered. “He was furious, and justifiably so. Philip wouldn’t help him, and then Prinny gave him those buttons! It was like a slap in David’s face.”
Gabriel sipped at his tea, watching them all without a hint of emotion upon his stony face. “It seems as if because he was the younger brother, he received much less than was his due.”
Jemma opened her mouth to object, but one look at Gabriel made her stop. If she wanted his help, she’d have to trust that he knew what he was doing, and that included interrogating witnesses.
Marlburg shrugged, his attention focused on shoveling a seventh lemon biscuit onto his plate. “Wolverston did fine for himself. If the man stayed off the tables, he’d be rich as Midas.”
“That is not true,” Georgina objected, with a glare at her husband.
Marlburg ignored her hard stare. Likely, he was used to it by now. “Man likes to gamble. Of course, so do I, and so does Prinny. Comes naturally to us of the fashionable set. Fortunes are made on those tables, and fortunes are lost. What does it matter, when it can all be made back?”
“How fortunate for you all, to be in a position to view money so cavalierly,” Gabriel said mildly. Despite the lack of derision in his voice, Jemma knew the full condemnation behind his words.
But neither Marlburg nor Georgina understood him. Marlburg went back to his biscuit, and Georgina preened, pleased to have her exalted financial status recognized.
“That is what we’re due, as aristocrats.” She smiled smugly. “If Philip had simply granted David a loan, David could have paid it all back with his next win. I hate to speak ill of the dead, mind you, but I found his treatment of David to be cruel. And then Prinny goes and gives him those gold buttons—one of them alone would have paid David’s debts, and then some.”
“What did you expect Philip to do? Pawn the buttons?” Jemma asked. “Then he’d be no better than Beau Brummel, evoking Prinny’s scorn.”
“David deserved the buttons more,” Georgina said, ignoring her question. “Philip didn’t even like wearing them. He said they were too gaudy, as if a present from royalty could ever be gaudy. Now no one has them, because the Rogue Runner here has not been able to locate them.”
“That’s true.” Marlburg shoved his plate away, his thick brows furrowing. “Philip didn’t want to wear the buttons the night we went out. He said they were too ostentatious. David reminded him we were meeting Prinny.”
“At the theater,” Georgina clarified, with an upturn of her hook nose. “Marlburg wouldn’t ever go to the White House.”
“Of course, of course.” Gabriel waved his hand, as if this fact was so well-established it would never have entered his mind. “So Lord Wolverston wanted his brother to wear the buttons?”
“When you receive a gift from the Prince Regent, you wear it,” Georgina said this as though she were talking to a three-year-old. “Only someone who has never received a gift from Prinny would ask that kind of question.”
Jemma bristled, but Gabriel smiled indulgently.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve never had that honor. But I imagine it is a huge privilege. I understand only four pairs were made, right?”
She’d told him that—so why was he asking Georgina?
“Yes.” Georgina smiled at Gabriel for the first time since their interview had begun. “You have done your research, Rogue Runner! Maybe we’ll see those buttons again after all. What steps are you taking?”
Jemma didn’t think that was any of Georgina’s business, but she wanted to know too, so she remained quiet.
“I plan to interview pawnbrokers, until one of them remembers something about the buttons,” Gabriel said. “With any luck, I’ll be able to restore the buttons to their rightful owner, Lady Wolverston.”
Marlburg let out a loud sigh, dislodging some of the crumbs from his beard. “What will you do with men’s buttons, Jemma?”
“They should go to David.” When her husband coughed, Georgina quickly amended her statement. “Or Marlburg, of course. The Prince’s real friends.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Gabriel’s reply didn’t promise anything, but it was enough to content both Marlburg and Georgina.
The conversation shifted, with Georgina and Marlburg revealing all of the recent events Jemma had missed while she was in mourning. That was the sole benefit of being a widow—she’d be excused from soirees for a year, since it would be unseemly for a grieving widow to have fun after the death of her beloved husband.
An hour passed, and then Lord and Lady Marlburg were ready
to say their goodbyes. Jemma let out a sigh of relief as she watched them climb into their large black carriage.
“I’ve never been so glad to see someone leave.” She closed the front door behind her, leaning back against it. “So was it enough to convince you of David’s guilt?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gabriel reminded her, resting his elbow on the door, the stance bringing him into close quarters with her once more.
God, he smelled exactly as he had three years prior. Pine and spearmint, as crisp and forthright as he was.
“What matters, then?”
“Evidence. Things I can present to the magistrate. This has to be indisputable, if you’re going after a peer.” He ran a hand through his hair, as he always did when he was trying to puzzle through a problem. “But I’m starting to believe David really did have something to do with Philip’s death.”
“Which means we need to interview those pawnbrokers you spoke of.”
“We?”
She frowned at him. “Yes, we. We talked about this, and you agreed we’d be partners. I’m going with you.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. But you’ll need different clothes, something working class. I can’t have you going around as Lady Wolverston—none of my sources will trust me.”
“I figured,” she said. “Felicity and Claire are pulling together some castoff clothes for me.”
Gabriel arched a brow. “You know I’d agree to help you?”
“I hoped,” she said. “And I thought it better to be prepared. I’m meeting with them tomorrow.”
“Excellent.” He nodded his approval. “We’ll meet tomorrow night then, after my shift.”
“Could you come by around seven thirty? The servants should all be taking their meal downstairs then. I will meet you in the back garden.” She didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would see him coming in from the street, not when the scandal sheets had already reported that she’d moved into Wolverston Hall. Gabriel’s visit today could be excused, but to visit again, this time at night? Whispers from Lady X had run with less.
“Good thinking.” The pride in Gabriel’s voice touched her far more than it should—her heart warmed at his approval. As he left with a promise to see her on the morrow, she thought again of that striker she’d once had, and the little flame that became a towering inferno.
Gabriel Sinclair was the key to finding answers about her husband’s death, but he was also the greatest temptation she’d ever faced.
Chapter 5
When our city’s famous Bow Street Runners appear, you know there’s trouble afoot…
-Whispers from Lady X
Wolverston Hall
Eight days since the death of the Earl of Wolverston
By the time Gabriel made it to Hill Street, he’d already worked a full shift at the station, plus an hour spent with the magistrate, conferring on his most recent arrest. The thief in question had been caught with his hand in an aristocrat’s overcoat, his fingers closed around a particularly nice pocket watch. Arthur Garland was well-known at the station house, and likely would be sentenced to Newgate for the third time. Gabriel had little hope this stay would change his criminal predilections, as Garland was a longtime member of the notorious thieving gang run out of Rat’s Castle in St. Giles, and locking him up in the college kept him around other criminals of like mind.
Imprisonment served two functions, neither of which had anything to do with rehabilitating the criminal. It took Garland off the streets, and it allowed law-abiding citizens to think that illegal actions had consequences. In his years as a Runner, Gabriel had learned that for most people, it was not the actual sentencing that mattered, but rather the idea that justice had been served. Their world could return back to its preferred state of order. The good triumphed, and the bad were punished.
It was a fable, of course, as dismissive of the nuances of individuality and circumstance as the leading theories on predestination and social class. In his experience, a person’s individual character determined their worth, not the lot into which they had been born. Perhaps it was his friendship with Philip that had planted this kernel of truth, that all people ought to be treated as though they were equals—despite the laws of the day drawing definite lines in the sand between the classes.
He turned the corner, approaching Wolverston Hall from the rear. The street was unoccupied for now—most of the ton was either entertaining guests inside their homes, or off to visit one of Westminster’s many delights. He stole across the street swiftly, silently, coming to a stop in front of the iron gate that marked the end of Wolverston’s property.
He remembered this gate, remembered sneaking out with Philip to the tavern a few streets over. As two stupid young boys, those illicit tankards of ale had felt like the greatest of rebellions. How many times had they gone through this gate, too foxed to chance Lord and Lady Wolverston catching them at the front entrance?
“Friends forever,” they’d vowed. “May no dimber gels come between us.”
He pulled out the key Jemma had given him. The brass was heavy in his hand, weighed down by all the promises he’d broken over the last three years. The people tossed aside as if they had not formed the very foundation of his character.
Regret gnawed at him like a rabid dog with sharp teeth, its bite fierce and powerful enough to tear the breath from his chest. He should have been stronger. Should have fought his attraction to Jemma harder. Even now, when he ought to be doing this for his friend’s memory, for the pursuit of justice and all those ideals he claimed to believe in, it was Jemma who captivated his thoughts. Three bloody years later, and here he was, still hopping to because she’d asked him for help. All she had to do was bat those pretty lashes, wrinkle up that cute button nose, and he’d agree to anything she asked.
Jemma’s words about following his career in the scandal sheets echoed in his ears. Were you really proud of me, old friend? Or is that just something you say about a man you used to know, because it sounds polite?
Thrusting the key in the lock, he filed that thought away with the rest of unanswered questions he had. The key turned with ease, but the gate’s hinges squeaked as he opened it. So much for a furtive approach.
He slipped through the gap in the ivy hedge, stepping into the back garden. Shadowed by the tall vines, he waited for Jemma to emerge, his gaze sweeping across the courtyard. The servants must have finished unpacking Jemma’s things, for they seemed to have returned to their normal routine. Candlelight flickered on each floor of the house, but the empty yard told him the staff must be in the basement eating dinner, as she’d said they would be.
Everything appeared normal, yet the thought of Jemma living alone in the infamous townhouse made him uneasy. Too many things had happened at Wolverston Hall over the years for him to outright dismiss the notion of strange forces at work. As a boy, he’d delighted in the creepiness of the house. Traversing the long, dark hallways with a candle in hand sent shivers down his spine, but he’d felt powerful, as if he was facing all his demons.
He’d no idea what real danger was, then.
Now, a number of bloody scenarios played in his mind. Even if the supernatural claims were baseless, it bothered him that the new Earl of Wolverston had easy access to the house. If what Jemma claimed was true—and he was beginning to believe she was right—then David had already murdered his own brother. What would stop him from harming Jemma?
Nothing but Gabriel.
He had failed to protect Philip, but he’d be damned before he let Jemma get hurt.
As twilight’s gray and blue hues wrapped the townhouse in a moody embrace, candlelight danced in a third-story window, silhouetting her petite frame as she crossed from her dressing table to the window. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. How could he be so enamored with her still, after three years? It was not as if he had remained celibate during that time. When he’d had time away from work, he’d happily buried his problems in wil
ling women who wanted nothing more than a night’s good time.
He ran his hand over the day’s growth of scruff on his chin, frowning. No matter how much he didn’t want it to be true, he’d felt more from simply embracing Jemma yesterday than bedding any other woman. She was a part of him, as much as his work with Bow Street. He couldn’t escape her.
She picked up the candle from the table next to the window, and left the room. In a few minutes, she appeared at the door to the servant’s entrance. He waited, ever-vigilant, alert to any possible threat. She paused, hand on the door, her gaze darting from one end of the courtyard to the next. Certain that no one was coming, she sprinted to him. When she arrived at his side, she dropped a bag of coins into his hand.
“For tonight,” she said. “I figured it was easier to give it to you now than have you pay for transport from your own funds.”
He pursed his lips. Usually, he’d submit an expense report with the cost of travel, but this wasn’t an official case for Bow Street. In private cases, it was up to the client who hired him to pay.
That was the custom—yet, he still hated taking Jemma’s money. It was another reminder of their difference in fortune that he didn’t need.
“Take the blunt, Gabriel,” Jemma ordered him, her voice low and urgent. “We don’t have time for this.”
He suppressed a sigh. She was right, of course. Most of the pawn shops he usually visited for information would already be closed, this late in the day. They’d be going to the public houses instead, as those remained open later, and they needed to get there before the night rush started. Tucking the coins in the inside pocket of his coat, he gestured for her to follow him, and made his way to the gate. He unlocked it, and she went through first, with him coming after her. He closed the gate slowly, careful to not put extra weight on the squeaky hinges. It shut silently.
He set a brisk pace, wanting to put distance between them and Wolverston Hall. Jemma trotted next to him, keeping up despite her shorter strides. They walked for approximately ten minutes in silence. A few people made eye contact or nodded cordially as they passed, but for the most part, people ignored them. No one recognized them.