My Rogue, My Ruin

by Amalie Howard; Angie Morgan

  “I said that I will deal with it, and I will.” He turned glacial eyes to Brandt, shrugging off his hand and changing the subject. “What news of the imposter?” His clipped tone indicated the matter of his father’s upcoming nuptials and his chosen bride was now closed. Brandt stared at him, his lips a white line, but he knew better than to confront Archer when he was in such a foul mood.

  “No leads,” Brandt said quietly. “So far it’s none of the runners we used.”

  “Look harder. One of the runners must have confided in someone else. There are too many similarities for this to be a coincidence. I am more worried about this bastard than I am about anyone else revealing who I am.”

  “Understood.”

  Brandt turned to leave when a loud, terrified scream came from the house. It sounded like someone was hurt. A woman. Archer had already sprinted away in full stride toward the front door when Brandt caught up to him.

  “Who was that?” Brandt said.

  “I’ll find out. Stay here,” Archer said over his shoulder and raced up the steps.

  He could barely see past the crowd of bodies blocking his view and crowding the foyer. He was looking for only one person. His eyes threaded through, desperate, until the folds of a yellow gown sifted into his vision at the top of the stair. The breath came back to his body in full force, his eyes dragging over her from crown to feet to ensure she was unharmed. She was fine, but when Brynn met his gaze, the emotion he saw there nearly rocked him to his knees. Tears glistened in them. Something terrible had certainly happened.

  “Make way,” he commanded, and the crowd parted at once. His eyes surged upward to the top of the landing where Lady Rochester stood in hysterics near Lady Dinsmore and her husband, clutching a handkerchief to her eyes and sobbing uncontrollably. At his glare, the servants scurried back to their posts, and he made his way up the stairs three at a time.

  “What happened?” he demanded of her, but the woman couldn’t stop blubbering long enough to speak.

  “Your father,” Lady Dinsmore answered for her, pointing to the study’s half-opened door. Her hand trembled, and she too looked as if she was about to swoon. Lord Rochester seemed equally distraught. Had the duke and Lady Rochester finally been caught in a tryst? It would not shock him, however, the fuss seemed too excessive for that. A seed of foreboding took root in his gut.

  Had his father passed out from too much drink? Archer frowned, recalling the shadow of a figure he had seen in the study from out in the gardens. He strode forward, pushing the door open fully.

  His breath caught and stalled. He was wrong on both counts. The duke lay face up on the pale blue carpet, now stained black by a copious amount of blood. Archer felt his entire body go numb at the sight. A freezing paralysis coiled over his muscles and anchored him to the floor.

  “Fetch the doctor,” someone said, pushing away the bleak fog that had swamped him. Viscountess Hamilton’s voice, he vaguely recognized as he took swift strides toward his father’s motionless body.

  He was not breathing as far as Archer could see, and a livid raw bruise on his temple was oozing blood. From the amount on the carpet, it didn’t seem possible that he could bleed anymore. The wound was deep, as if his temple had collided with something sharp and heavy. Archer’s eyes slid to the fallen bronze candelabrum that wasn’t in its usual place on the mantel. He didn’t have to examine it to know that it would be covered with the duke’s blood.

  A shout from the entrance drew his attention. “My lord!” He peered around the study door and saw a burly footman holding Brandt at the nape. “I found this man skulking around the gardens, trying to look in the windows.”

  “Release him,” Archer said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as the noise in the foyer rose to deafening heights. The footman was one of Heed’s new hires and wouldn’t have recognized Brandt. He raised a hand and everyone quieted. “He is the stable master and is here at my request. Unhand him, at once.”

  He met his friend’s stare as Brandt straightened his clothes, a thousand questions in his eyes as they darted from Archer to the sobbing women standing at the door of the study. He shook his head imperceptibly, knowing that Brandt would defy all propriety if he thought Archer was in any pain or trouble.

  Archer knew his shock was written all over his face, if the look on Brandt’s was any signal. He swallowed past the sudden feeling of sawdust in his throat and returned to his father’s supine body. He knelt and placed two fingers at the duke’s throat, feeling for a pulse even though the odds said otherwise. Wanting to feel it, in spite of his most recent sentiments regarding his sire.

  There was none. His father’s eyes stared upward, cold and glassy, his skin already clammy to Archer’s touch. He drew his fingers away, trembling just as Lady Dinsmore’s had been, and stared at the people pressing into the space at the door. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. The Duke of Bradburne was a dissolute wretch and a poor excuse for a father, but that didn’t mean that Archer wanted him dead. But someone had. Someone who had been in this very house.

  “My lord?” his butler asked as the seconds drew into a torturous minute. Archer’s stunned gaze crashed into his.

  “It is too late for a doctor,” he said in the general direction of his father’s guests. “Fetch a constable, Heed,” he ordered their butler. “And no one is to leave this house.”

  Archer’s stare returned to his father’s inert form, one that had been so full of life such a short time ago. The sight unexpectedly gutted him, and a strangled sound caught in his throat. Archer always imagined he’d celebrate the duke’s passing with a good riddance and a whiskey toast, but for some reason, it made him think of his mother. The duke had never quite been the same without her. Perhaps in the hereafter, the duchess would take his father in hand once more.

  At the thought of his late mother, Archer fought the stinging pain behind his eyes and rocked back onto his heels. She would have mourned. His father was an arrogant ass, but he had not deserved to have his life stolen from him. Archer did not expect to feel so much guilt nor such a savage need for retribution. He didn’t move when he felt a delicate hand pressing into his shoulder. He knew Brynn’s touch, and it brought him to the surface of the self-reproach threatening to drown him.

  His father, the Duke of Bradburne, was dead. Murdered in his own home. A cold, unforgiving rage replaced his remorse. To his last breath, he would find the person responsible.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After a ragged, sleepless night, Archer woke at the crack of dawn. He stood at the window watching the sun rise over trees and rooftops, taking the sky from bruised purple to dusky gold. His valet had offered him a sleeping draught, but Archer had refused. He did not want anything to dull his wits, not when he had to be present during the questioning for the murder of the Duke of Bradburne.

  He heaved a breath and quashed the instant surge of pain in his chest. His father was dead. Murdered. Killed in cold blood.

  After the constable had left nearing midnight, the dinner guests had been allowed to return to their homes, though they were told to return promptly the following morning. As promised, an inquiry agent had arrived at Hadley Gardens first thing, well before breakfast, to question the staff, and now Archer would listen in while he spoke with each of the duke’s guests.

  He ran through the faces of the guests in his head for the hundredth time. Lady Rochester had found the duke, with Lord Rochester not long behind. The motive was there, but neither had it in them to kill their oldest friend. At least he didn’t think so. Rochester was a cowardly sort who turned tail at the first sight of confrontation. Then again, festering jealousy and rage could drive a man to do things one would never expect. Had Rochester known of his wife’s infidelity and his best friend’s betrayal? Could he have been the one to hit the duke in the head—more than once, the constable had ascertained—with the candelabrum?

  And Lady Rochester…she could have been jealous of the duke’s suit to
Lady Briannon and struck out at him in anger, but she knew as well as anyone that Bradburne would not remain faithful to his new wife. It didn’t add up. Brynn had been in his mother’s sitting room, or at least she should have been. Until she had heard the shouts. He discounted each of the others with a slow exhale. None of them had any reason to kill his father. Viscountess Hamilton could hardly lift a sherry glass much less such a heavy instrument. The duke was two heads taller than her diminutive size—she would have had to stand upon a stool to strike him just so. Even Brynn’s parents were far too infatuated with the idea of their daughter winning a duke’s hand to be driven to murder the very hand they were courting.

  Or perhaps it had been one of the staff. It wasn’t unheard of for a servant to feel that he or she had been slighted in some way. Murder was certainly extreme, but none of them could be ruled out. Not even Brandt, he supposed, who had come there at Archer’s behest. Suspicion would lay heavy upon him, especially as the footman the night before had said he’d found the stable master trying to look through the windows. But Archer had been with Brandt in the gardens when the duke had been found. Though that didn’t account for when the duke was killed, he still trusted his friend with his life.

  He also couldn’t rule out that a thief had slipped in from outside. In an attempt to steal some coin, the thief could have been discovered by the duke. Hadley Gardens was a well-known address. Bradburne, along with any other peer, could be a target for petty crime, especially if there was a dinner underway and guests otherwise occupied. A few pieces of silver along with the duke’s rings had been taken, which pointed to the fact that someone had indeed intended to rob the residence. Perhaps his father had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Archer hauled several breaths into his lungs to clear his head. If only he had been in the study instead. He was three times as strong as his aging father, who had likely been well into his cups at the time. He should have been the one to face the attacker. Archer recalled the last bitter look he had exchanged with the duke, and guilt and regret took equal bites out of his conscience. He had faulted the man for many things, but he had never wished him dead. Archer’s eyes burned, and without a thought, he smashed his fist into the windowpane.

  “My lord!” Porter exclaimed, rushing forward with a towel. Archer glanced down, the pain doing little to assuage what he was doing to himself inside. Shards of glass peppered his knuckles. He stood still as Porter plucked the pieces embedded in his flesh and mopped up the welling blood.

  “I am fine,” he said. “Leave me.”

  “But, my lord—”

  “I shall manage to dress myself, Porter. Please alert Heed that a new glass panel for the window should be ordered. Thank you.”

  He dismissed his longtime valet with a short nod and strode to the marble bathroom to soak his throbbing hand in a basin of water. Archer steeled himself, breath by aching breath, a habit born from years of dealing with disappointment and misery. Neither death nor pain was unfamiliar to him. He should not be this derailed. Archer set his jaw. He’d never let himself become vulnerable, yet last night, he had. With Brynn.

  He’d opened up to her, and now, every blasted emotion was pushing in where it did not belong. She had dug little cracks into his armor with her beguiling half smiles and witty ripostes, and now here he was, falling to pieces when he should have felt nothing but the cold purpose of finding his father’s killer.

  Feelings. Bloody goddamned feelings.

  Swearing beneath his breath, he dressed himself and went downstairs. The inquiry agent was already waiting in the foyer. Heed announced several of the guests from the dinner party were also ensconced in the front salon. “And my sister?” Archer asked.

  “No word yet, my lord, but your message should have been delivered several hours ago.”

  Archer nodded. He had wanted to tell Eloise in person, but he knew gossip traveled fast, and he did not want her to hear it from someone else. One of the grooms had ridden through the night to deliver Archer’s handwritten note and return with her response. He wondered how Eloise had taken the news. She’d lost two mothers, and though the duke had hardly been a father to her, he was the only one she had ever known. Emotionally fragile as she was, Archer wanted her by his side in London and not in Essex where she would be alone with her grief.

  Dismissing Heed and nodding abruptly to the inquiry agent, a high-ranking officer from Bow Street, Archer turned and led him to the library, set deeper in the house. The man was short and thin with a heavy black mustache. His small, beady eyes seemed to take in everything about him. He carried a small bound book and a pencil. The man inspected him once they arrived in the library, and Archer immediately felt as if he were being weighed and measured. His eyes narrowed, and the man bowed his head discreetly.

  “Thank you for your time, Your Grace,” the agent said in a nasal voice that rankled his nerves. “I am Mr. Thomson.”

  It didn’t matter that Archer felt an immediate dislike for the man—if he were indeed as good as Bow Street claimed him to be at tracking and apprehending criminals, he would find the duke’s killer, and that would be that.

  Archer gestured to a large table that had been set up for the agent’s use. “Mr. Thomson. I trust this should suit your needs.”

  “Yes, this should do well, thank you.”

  Archer sat in silence as the man proceeded to call in and interrogate each of the guests in attendance. As Archer had expected, Lady Rochester could barely speak when she was called upon to enter the library for questioning. Her haggard face pointed to a sleepless night spent crying, and Lord Rochester looked worse than she did.

  “Tell me in detail what you saw,” Mr. Thomson said.

  She swallowed hard, dabbing a handkerchief to red-rimmed eyes. “I…I was on my way to the retiring room when I heard a thud and someone grunting. I walked toward the sound and found the duke lying on the carpet. He wasn’t moving.” Her voice broke. “There was so much blood. He didn’t look like he was breathing.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No, the hallways were deserted,” she sobbed. “I called for help.”

  Mr. Thomson asked several more questions, ones that didn’t seem relevant to the crime, Archer thought, like the length of Lady Rochester’s association with the duke. He wrote furiously in his little book, taking copious notes as Lady Rochester spoke. After the Rochesters, Mr. Thomson moved through the rest of the party one by one until at last he came to the Dinsmores. The subject of the expected proposal cropped up almost immediately. Archer eyed Mr. Thomson, surprised the man had already known the gossip.

  “Lord and Lady Dinsmore, I have it that the duke was about to offer for your daughter,” he said with a glance at Brynn who sat beside her parents. Archer could see that she, too, was unnaturally pale, dark shadows lining her eyes as if she had not slept, either. She clutched a handkerchief in her hand, her fingers tightening as her eyes met Mr. Thomson’s.

  “Yes, we anticipated an offer,” Lady Dinsmore said, her voice tight.

  “But no offer was made.”

  “No.”

  He looked to Lady Briannon. “How long have you known the duke?”

  “Our estates in Essex are joined.” Her voice trembled as she answered. “So, I suppose, all my life.”

  “But you did not wish to be married to the duke.” It was not a question. Archer’s gaze flew to the man’s. Where had he heard of Brynn’s feelings on the matter at such short notice? Prattling servants, of course. Anyone could be persuaded to reveal secrets at the right cost.

  Brynn cleared her throat, her chin tilting upward. “As you indicated, I had no official offer to consider. My wishes were therefore irrelevant.”

  “Should there have been an offer made, would you have accepted?” Mr. Thomson asked, his pencil hovering above his notebook.

  Archer shifted in his seat. He saw the color rising on the apples of Brynn’s cheeks and on the tips of her ears. The flare of her mother’s nos
trils were difficult to miss as well. No doubt the countess was incensed by the inquiry agent’s brazen question.

  Brynn, however, kept her head high. “I cannot say. I suspect I would have considered the offer and then given the duke my answer.”

  Mr. Thomson nodded sagely and wrote something in his notepad. “And where were you last evening when the duke was discovered in his study by Lady Rochester?”

  Brynn’s eyes did not flicker to Archer’s. If she had been waiting for him in his mother’s sitting room, she would not have an alibi.

  “In the ladies’ salon,” she answered evenly.

  “That is correct. We were seated across from Lady Hamilton when we heard that wretched scream,” Lady Dinsmore put in.

  Archer breathed out with relief. He shouldn’t have expected her to stay put in the sitting room, risking a prolonged absence and possible scandal.

  Thank heavens she hadn’t.

  “And before that?” Mr. Thomson flipped back several pages in his notebook, and running a finger along some slanted writing, said, “One of the footmen accounted for Miss Dinsmore’s hem being torn during dinner. He said he escorted the young woman to a sewing room where one of the maids would mend the tear.”

  The alarm flashing in Brynn’s eyes mirrored Archer’s own, though his was tempered by gratitude to the footman. He could have told Mr. Thomson that Archer had sent him on his merry way, claiming he would show Lady Briannon to the sewing room. Archer would remember to thank the footman in some way.

  “That is correct,” Brynn replied. He admired her brevity. Rambling would only show how nervous she truly was, and from the color still touching her cheeks and ears, he imagined she was just as nervous as he, if not more so.

  “And the maid who attended you,” Mr. Thomson continued. “Do you recall her name?”

  “Her name?” Lady Dinsmore parroted. “My goodness, I highly doubt they exchanged more than a few words of pleasantries.”

  “I am afraid I do not,” Brynn said, attaching herself to her mother’s genuinely baffled reply.