by Liz Carlyle
At that, something inside her seemed to collapse, her face softening with grief and her shoulders rolling inward as if she might swoon. “Oh, God,” she whispered, one hand going to her mouth.
Without conscious thought, Napier caught her hard against him. She sagged to his chest on a deep, wretched sob that seemed to have been dredged from a well of despair, her fingers curling into his coat as if clinging to him might keep her from drowning in it. Against all wisdom, he held her to him, one hand set between her shoulder blades.
Damn it all, he thought.
Napier had little experience with crying females, but he was not cruel, he hoped. And her tears were those of true hopelessness, without one whit of artifice. Worse, a traitorous part of him wanted to hold her; wanted to draw in her warm, exotic scent and pretend this was not utter madness.
But it was madness. She seemed to realize it, too, pushing herself suddenly, almost roughly, from his embrace. She whirled about, turning her back and dashing at her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“Oh, this won’t do!” she rasped, sounding angry with herself. “I have not come all this way merely to turn craven. I cannot. I won’t.”
Napier felt suddenly awkward—and with his lust diminished, logic was creeping back in. “Ma’am, perhaps you might enlighten me,” he said. “I don’t entirely grasp your interest in the Welham case.”
She turned, her eyes still shimmering with unshed tears. “Have you never even bothered to read your father’s files, Mr. Napier?” she asked softly. “I’m the youngest daughter of Sir Arthur Colburne, who was ruined—indeed, practically killed—by Mr. Welham.”
Napier went still inside.
The horrific mess of a murder case had been his late father’s, yes, but at least a dozen years ago. And Sir Arthur hadn’t been the victim. Indeed, he’d scarcely been involved.
Still, Napier did vaguely remember a daughter. Ellen? Elinor? She had been the murdered man’s fiancée, but she’d died shortly after the trial. Had there been a younger child? Apparently so. And she was a Miss, not a Mrs. . . .
Damnation.
“Miss Colburne,” he said quietly, “all this happened long before I came to work here. I believe Rance Welham killed your sister’s fiancé, yes. But as I understood it, Sir Arthur killed himself.”
“Because Welham left him no choice!” Emotion blazed up again, burning her cheeks. “He died of desperation! And what of my poor sister? Sent off to die a penniless orphan, a world away from all the comforts she had known! Her fiancé murdered, her heart broken. And all of it, Mr. Napier—all of it—lies at Welham’s door.”
Napier set his jaw hard. “I am sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he said. “But neither your money nor your tears can alter what’s to come. Welham has found himself some influential friends—friends close to the Queen. Moreover, his father has persuaded the key witness to recant. And now the Lord Chancellor means to overturn his conviction.”
“Overturn it, perhaps, and that’s a travesty,” she cried. “But that cannot be the end of your prosecution, for you must try again to—”
“Yes, Miss Colburne, that will be the end of it,” he grimly interjected, “whether either of us likes it or not.”
He strode to the door and drew it open. The lady, however, stood pat, her fury returning tenfold. “You, sir, are a dastard and a—a bully,” she said, her voice quaking. “But make no mistake, I am neither—and I will make Welham pay, Mr. Napier—if you will not. Indeed, if you dare not.”
“I dare to do a great many things, Miss Colburne,” he said darkly, “but I have little interest in political suicide. Now kindly go. And in the future, I’d suggest you temper your words. However sympathetic I might feel, the Crown will account what you just said as a threat, and expect me to charge you accordingly.”
Eyes blazing, she reached around him and snatched her portmanteau. “Oh, it was not a threat, sir,” she said, shooting him one last parting glance as she strode out. “It is simply God’s own truth—a thing, I daresay, wholly unfamiliar to you.”
Napier said no more.
He was not a man who hesitated, or suffered much in the way of uncertainty. And yet, with one hand set high upon his door frame, he stood and watched the woman stalk across his antechamber, and did nothing.
He did nothing because he knew in his heart that she was right.
Elizabeth Colburne had lost everything.
And Rance Welham was a cheat and a killer who deserved to die.
The truth, after all, was Napier’s stock in trade.
Angry with himself—and with circumstance—he slammed the door and returned to his desk, looking down in pure frustration.
The woman had left her blasted gloves on his desk. Impossibly delicate bits of kidskin that fastened down the wrist with tiny pearl buttons. They were still warm, the scent of lilies and new leather rising with what was left of her heat.
For an instant, Napier allowed himself to draw in the tantalizing fragrance. Then, on a muttered oath, he yanked open a desk drawer, slapped them inside, and slammed it almost viciously shut.
CHAPTER 1
In Which the Devil Snatches His Own
1849
Greenwich
There are a few rare men who can run roughshod over the perils of life armed with little more than superior instincts and an innate distrust of the human race. Napier was just such a man, and it had earned him an ugly nickname.
Roughshod Roy.
London’s underworld had long ago ginned that one up. But today’s call had nothing to do with the underworld, more was the pity.
His hackles up, Napier stepped down from the elegant carriage that had been sent to drag him from his files and his afternoon cup of Darjeeling, now left to go cold upon his desk. Ramming his black leather folio under one arm, he paused amidst the magnificence, his heavy, hooded gaze swiftly sweeping the labyrinth of aristocrats that wound through Sir Wilfred Leeton’s rear gardens. Then slowly, he exhaled.
All the elegance in the world could not mask it.
Death.
He could feel it like a tangible thing.
Two uniformed constables followed him down, their boots crunching softly in the pea-gravel. The carriage, emblazoned in gold with the arms of the Earl of Lazonby, clattered away to leave the trio standing alone like grim chunks of flotsam plunked into an ocean of opulence.
Noticing them, a portly, agitated butler hastened from a knot of servants by the kitchen gardens and bowed.
Napier leaned very near. “Not . . . Sir Wilfred?” he murmured.
But the servant’s eyes were bleak as he nodded. After a brief exchange of whispered words, he pointed at a small stone outbuilding.
The murmuring clusters of ladies and gentlemen fell away from Napier’s path, their eyes following him uneasily as he strode up the swath of manicured lawn that led from the mansion’s rear gardens toward the little structure, half sunk into the earth.
And even then—despite his ill temper and impatience—it struck him as odd that, of all the eyes upon him, it was the cold, viridian gaze of Elizabeth Ashton he felt most keenly.
It was especially odd since, until that moment, he’d known nothing of Elizabeth Ashton’s existence. Well, not precisely. But he felt the heat of that gaze—if a cold gaze can be said to give off heat—all the way up the path, though why she would have caught his attention so thoroughly he could not possibly have said. Perhaps—even amidst those first, critical moments—some part of him realized that an old wheel was slowly turning full circle.
Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the lithe, brown-haired lady in gray felt oddly familiar as she stood like a dove amongst the peacocks.
And troublingly, her gloved hand rested upon the arm of the very man who’d dragged him here: Rance Welham, the recently ennobled Earl of Lazonby, a scoundrel so tainted by trickery and deceit his soul could not have been washed clean had it been turned inside out and boiled in lye.
But however
genial or villainous a man might be, when death came upon him it was always the same: ugly and graceless. Often brutish. The death inside the stone building had been particularly so, he realized, staring down at it.
Sir Wilfred had an oozing, ashen hole in the middle of his forehead with a small stream of blood trickling from it, now thickening to a dark red trail across the white-tiled floor. Napier felt the hair on his neck prickle again. This wasn’t the first murder Sir Wilfred had been involved in, for he’d once been a witness at a salacious trial—Lazonby’s, in fact. The coincidence troubled him.
Ignoring the rustle of skirts and the buzz of whispers behind him, Napier stepped from the grass down the stone steps into the cool depths of what had once been a sort of dairy, or perhaps just a springhouse.
Illogically, perhaps because it was expected of him, he squatted down to take the man’s nonexistent pulse.
“Ah, Will!” he murmured, rising. “What secrets, I wonder, were you keeping?”
It was a habit of his—and a bad one—this talking to corpses.
Sir Wilfred did not respond; they never did.
Now supine upon the floor, with his bristled, thinning hair, his brown waistcoat drawn taut over a middle-aged paunch, and his surprisingly dainty feet shod in dark leather, Sir Wilfred resembled nothing so much as an overfed woodchuck who’d chosen the wrong moment to dart from his hedgerow.
But no wee forest creature, this. No, Sir Wilfred Leeton was trouble of the worst sort: the political sort—and given the circumstances of his death and the people involved—Christ Jesus! Before this case was finished, its tentacles would likely spread throughout the whole of the Home Office.
Already Napier was ensnared in those tentacles—just as had been intended, he suspected, by Lord Lazonby. Assistant police commissioners did not handle murder investigations. But he would have to handle this one; no mere minion would do. Because something had just gone very wrong here—something more significant than Sir Wilfred’s death. And for the life of him, Napier could not grasp what. Not yet. But he would.
Not too many days past, Napier had been to the opera with a hale and hearty Sir Wilfred—or had met up with him there, at any rate. The fellow had been an old acquaintance of Napier’s late father, the previous assistant commissioner. And while Napier had neither liked nor trusted Sir Wilfred, the waste of any human life—even one so pampered and dissolute as this—left him fairly itching for justice.
Suddenly, an inexplicable frisson of awareness ran down his spine. Napier cut a glance at the open window. Even from a distance, he could see the woman in gray still watching him, her clear, cool gaze unwavering. The frisson twisted and shot deep; the strangest, most intimate shiver, like lust long remembered or a yearning he couldn’t explain.
Napier caught his breath, shook off the ridiculous notion, and turned away. The lady was none of his concern. Yet.
Beyond the little door, he could hear the widow’s wracking sobs begin, her stunned incomprehension having at last given over to grief. With a curt gesture, he motioned down the local constable, who hesitated uncertainly just beyond the top step, wringing the hat he clutched in his hands. This being Greenwich rather than London, the fellow looked as different from a Metropolitan Police officer as chalk from cheese.
Oh, yes. This one was definitely chalk.
Napier forced a thin smile, and prayed for the well-being of his just-polished boots.
The chap tiptoed across the tiled floor. “Y-yes, Assistant Commissioner?”
“Your first death, is it, Mr. Terry?”
“F-first one shot, aye,” the young man managed. “Mostly just get drownings here—though last winter we f-found a sailor knifed.”
“Good man.” Napier gave the constable a firm, bucking-up thump between the shoulder blades. “You’re inured to violent death.”
“W-well, that chap, ’e was knifed on Deptford Green, then the corpse dumped here,” the lad went on, his eyes following the blood that trailed across the white tile and into the cement spring box, tingeing the water pink.
Napier dipped his head to catch the shorter fellow’s gaze. “Mr. Terry?”
He looked up, his wide, pale eyes blinking once. “Y-yes, sir?”
“You aren’t going to cast up your accounts on our crime scene, are you?”
Terry’s lips thinned as if to press his mouth shut. He gave a feeble shake of his head.
“Relieved to hear it.” Napier motioned to a bloody garden spade by the spring box. “Now, what’s that about?”
“They’re s-saying Sir Wilfred—” The young man swallowed hard, and cut a glance down at the corpse. “That he attacked a lady with it and—”
“What lady?” Napier demanded.
“The Indian lady from the fortune-teller’s tent,” said Terry, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Reckon he meant to kill her, but they’re keeping it mum. Awful, in’it, sir?”
Napier felt a chill run through him. It was true, then, what the butler had said. Lady Anisha Stafford, a woman he greatly esteemed, had been somehow involved.
“How badly was she hurt?” Napier demanded, his voice gone utterly cold.
“She . . . she walked away, I heard. But Lord Lazonby rushed her off at once. To protect her from the scandal.”
“Good for him,” said Napier darkly. And for once, he meant it.
“But it is a frightful lot of blood, sir,” Terry went on, “when you add it all up, I mean.” This was followed by another heaving grunt. He clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Damn it, man, get out.” Napier thumbed toward the door.
With a withering look, the fellow fled back up the steps and into the slanting sun.
Napier grimly surveyed the old stone structure and its supine corpse again, his eyes missing little. The garden spade. The blood. An overturned stool. A broken crock, tipped off a marble slab beneath the window.
Damn it all. Violent death was never a good thing, but it was a vast deal worse when the aristocracy was involved. Proving his point, Lazonby remained outside with the lush lady in gray, arrogant as ever and obviously bent on obstructing justice at every turn.
He felt the rage well up in him again, his hand fisting impotently. Lazonby was nothing but a murderous thug in fine wool worsted who’d run circles around Scotland Yard for years, once even eluding the gallows. He was not fit to shine Lady Anisha’s shoes, let alone court her. And now he’d got her hurt.
But what could have caused such a sequence of harrowing events?
Sir Wilfred and Lazonby had once run in the same dangerous circles. Perhaps it had something to do with Lazonby’s past? And after killing Sir Wilfred—or having had him killed—Lazonby had sent for Napier simply to taunt him?
On the bright side, if Napier could prove that theory, the Crown might give him another crack at putting Lazonby back on the gallows.
Napier flipped open his black leather folio, and set to work in earnest.
From across the broad swath of grass, the Earl of Lazonby watched as Greenwich’s green-faced constable hastened back up the dairy stairs, gagging, to bolt for the trees—nauseated by Royden Napier’s incessant conceit, no doubt.
To his left, he could hear Sir Wilfred’s widow beginning to sob quietly. The sound tore at him. Lazonby was not a heartless monster. He wanted to go to her and say . . .
What? That her husband had been a lying, murderous bastard who deserved something a good deal worse than a bullet between the eyes? And more promptly served up, too. About fifteen years sooner would have suited Lazonby, and saved him two stays in prison with a miserable career in the French Foreign Legion sandwiched between.
He had not known until today how deceitful—how utterly evil—Sir Wilfred had been. Funny how a gun to his head had put the bastard in such a confessional mood.
No, in his present state, it was far better to leave Lady Leeton’s consolation to the experts: that bevy of well-bred dowagers who now flitted about her, cooing and dabbing at their hostess’s tea
rs. As to her annual charity garden party, next year’s subscription sales would surely treble this. Society loved nothing so well as a scandal.
As to the tears more immediate to Lord Lazonby, they had long since dried, though the woman who now called herself Mrs. Elizabeth Ashton still bore a bit of her weight upon his arm. Nonetheless, much of her color had returned since he’d dragged her from Sir Wilfred’s dramatic denouement, and the lady’s visage had resumed the proud angles that were so familiar to him.
He was stunned to realize how long it had taken him to recognize her. But now, as his gaze drifted over her face—an unconventional face, to be sure, but interesting all the same—he could so easily make out precisely who she was.
Who she had been all along.
He felt an utter fool. For better than a year, Elizabeth had hounded him—in one guise or another—making his life a greater hell than it already had been. She had blamed him for a murder he had not committed. For causing, indirectly, her father’s suicide. And today, at long last, he understood why. Because Sir Wilfred had set him up.
“You have regained yourself, I see, Mrs. Ashton,” he said, not unkindly, “if that is indeed your name nowadays?”
A faint blush crept up her face—all the way up to her strong, finely angled cheekbones. “There’s nothing nefarious about it. Since I volunteer at Lady Leeton’s charity school, I simply decided Mrs. sounded more prudent than Miss.”
“Ah! So the name isn’t Ashton?” he asked coolly.
She lightly lifted both brows. “As opposed to Colburne?”
“Oh, let’s not talk about your many aliases just now,” said Lazonby. “I’m not sure I can count that high. But you are clever, my dear. I should have realized how clever back when you started hounding my every step, and insulting my character at every turn—in the newspapers, no less.”
Her smile was faint. “Whatever roles I may have been playing, I have never denied that I’m Sir Arthur Colburne’s daughter,” she said. “But since my aunt and uncle Ashton were compelled to raise me once that monster killed my father—”