Too Wicked to Kiss: Gothic Love Stories #1

by Ridley, Erica

  Tempting.

  “Hold this.” Edmund shoved his now-empty goblet at the Stanton chit, who was apparently surprised enough to accept it. He stuck out one sweaty hand toward Miss Pemberton, who still reclined on Gavin’s thighs with her hand rubbing the top of her head. “Allow me to help you up.”

  To say Miss Pemberton recoiled from Edmund’s touch would be to make an understatement of the most grievous kind.

  She recoiled her way right up Gavin’s chest until her bottom rested against his crotch and the back of her head once again knocked against his jaw. Then she blushed, rolled off his lap, and sprang to her feet without anyone’s aid.

  “What the hell was that about?” Edmund demanded.

  “Evangeline,” the Stanton chit said as she shoved the empty goblet back into his hand, “doesn’t like to be touched.”

  Edmund snorted. “What the devil was she doing with Lioncroft, then? She lets that profligate pull her onto his lap whenever he wants.”

  Miss Stanton shrugged. “He’s Lioncroft.”

  Francine cast him an appraising glance, as if suddenly re-judging his worth.

  Gritting his teeth, Gavin rose to his feet. Yes. He was Lioncroft, man of scandal. But he was not going to be relabeled a murderer thanks to someone else’s actions.

  “First of all,” he began, then paused as he realized he couldn’t start with a “first of all” regarding Heatherbrook’s killer when his uninvited guests were busy gawking at the miraculously re-conscious Miss Pemberton. “Are you all right now?”

  She responded by crossing her arms over her bodice.

  “Excellent.” He turned to face the footman. “Milton, would you fetch that slip for me? Thank you.” Gavin sat against the front edge of his desk. “While a few of us are together, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out any given guest could have killed Heatherbrook.” Their blinking stares indicated he might’ve been better served with some kind of segue between the two topics. Deciding to forge ahead now that he’d broached the subject, he continued, “We’re all in agreement on how he died, correct?”

  Francine arched an eyebrow. “Strangulation?”

  “Smothered,” the Stanton chit corrected her.

  “Oh, right.” Edmund fished a flask from a pocket. “Miss Pemberton chatted with God about that.”

  The lady in question froze, then placed her fingertips to her temples. She very carefully did not look at Gavin or either of the Stanton women, no doubt terrified any one of the three would divulge the truth of her visions to Edmund, Benedict, and Francine.

  How could Miss Pemberton claim not to be a witch? Gavin now knew her to be a liar, and still he ached to crush her to him and claim her mouth with his. What other explanation could there be?

  He forced himself to turn in such a way as to face the others without also facing her. Perhaps if he couldn’t see her, she couldn’t bewitch him.

  “What did God say, again?” Francine asked.

  “Said Heatherbrook was smothered to death.” Benedict tugged a fresh handkerchief free from his pocket. “With a pillow.”

  Edmund sniffed the contents of his flask. “Did God send proof?”

  “Actually,” Gavin said as his footman returned to the room, “He did. Thank you, Milton. That will be all.”

  “What,” Lady Stanton said, her fan beating double-time, “is that?”

  “A pillowslip, Mother. A much stained one.”

  “From the Heatherbrooks’ guest chamber,” Gavin confirmed.

  The Stanton chit peered closer. “Killers often use a weapon of convenience. And what could be more convenient than a feather pillow, when the victim lay sound asleep in his bed?”

  “Look.” Gavin held the damaged silk by the corners and shook the wrinkles out as best he could. A few flakes fell from a scab-colored splotch in the center. “Blood.”

  Miss Pemberton tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “Lord Heatherbrook’s forehead was wounded, was it not? The blood must have transferred to the slip when the killer placed the pillow atop the earl’s injured face.”

  Edmund refilled his empty goblet with the amber contents of his flask. “How do we know Lioncroft didn’t smear Heatherbrook’s blood on there himself, right after Miss Pemberton chatted with God?”

  Gavin bared his teeth at him. “While I appreciate your unfailing belief in the extent of my audacity, I could not have done so.”

  Francine raised a thin eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Because,” Miss Pemberton answered slowly, “when we got to the bedroom last night, the blood had already dried. Remember? The front of the bandage was dark and crusty, and the bit trailing down the side of his nose was kind of scabby-looking, with a tinge of—”

  “Miss Pemberton, enough.” Lady Stanton’s painted fan closed with a snap. “You’ve made your point. The blood had to have been transferred from cloth to cloth while Heatherbrook was still alive.”

  Gavin laid the pillowslip across the desk, blood side up.

  “Pah,” Benedict scoffed. “We can see blood, but it could be anyone’s blood.”

  “Yes and no,” Miss Pemberton countered. “If it were someone else’s blood, what would it be doing on Lord Heatherbrook’s pillowslip unless it came from the killer himself? I am uninjured. Lady Stanton and her daughter are uninjured. Mr. Lioncroft is uninjured.”

  In the space of a heartbeat, Gavin decided his very favorite female trait would forevermore be the ability to reason. He grinned at Miss Pemberton, who was busy glaring at Benedict. She’d not only pointed out the flaw in the new lord’s logic, she’d made sure to intimate Gavin’s potential innocence. Perhaps now the focus could finally be on finding the true killer.

  “We’re all uninjured,” Francine put in with a sigh.

  “So it seems,” Benedict agreed. “Therefore, it must be Heatherbrook’s blood. I see no other explanation for—” His handkerchief flew to his face as Benedict erupted into another fit of vicious, hacking coughs.

  “Seems to me,” Edmund slurred, “you do a fair bit of bleeding yourself, old boy. Your handkerchief is fair covered in blood. Maybe you suffocated the selfish rotter last night and then coughed on him.”

  Benedict froze.

  “No.” Miss Pemberton shook her head. “The blood on his handkerchief is minimal compared to the pillowslip, and covered in mucus besides. There’s no mucus on the pillowslip.”

  “Miss Pemberton, really.” Francine shoved a fist to her mouth, her narrow face looking more than a little wan beneath the layers of rouge.

  Edmund swirled his goblet. “So we’re back to Lioncroft, then, are we?”

  “No,” Miss Pemberton said again. “We’re back to ‘it could have been anyone.’”

  “Although we did agree that Lioncroft seems the most likely,” the Stanton chit put in helpfully. “He had the motive to do so, the means to do so, and the opportunity to do so. We all saw the two of them argue at the supper table, and Lioncroft himself admitted being more than angry enough to—Ow! Bloody hell, Evangeline, did you step on me?”

  Miss Pemberton shot Gavin a nettled look. He could’ve kissed her.

  Lady Stanton rapped her daughter’s shoulder with the closed fan. “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “—what the rest of us are thinking,” Francine interrupted. “My apologies, Lioncroft, but you know it to be true. We might as well put it to words.”

  Gavin’s jaw clenched. He did know it to be true—they’d all assumed his guilt from the moment Heatherbrook turned up dead. And from their current expressions, they’d never expected anything different from one such as him.

  The only reason they descended onto his home in the first place was because of their relationship with Rose, and the only reason they continued to linger beneath his roof was because they were all selfish scandalmongers more interested in exploiting his pocket than quitting his company.

  Were he poor and ill-connected, not a one of them would be present
. But with the abundant food and endless drink and the generous solicitude of his servants at their disposal, the present company were more than willing to overlook so vexing an interruption as murder…for now.

  However. Even they, fashionable parasites though they were, must have their limits.

  “Well,” Edmund began, as though reading Gavin’s mind. “If we’re putting our suspicions into words, ought we also put them into action?”

  “Action?” Gavin repeated, unrepentant that the danger in his voice caused even the drunken Edmund to recoil a few steps backward. “And what action might that be?”

  “I’m sure he means the gallows,” the Stanton chit piped up. “In fact, I’d wager—Ow! Bloody hell, Evangeline, if you do that again, I’ll—Ow! All right, Mother. You don’t have to bruise my shoulder. I’ll mind my tongue.” She crossed her arms and glared at the company.

  Gavin rose from his perch against the desk and stretched himself to his full height. “There can be no conviction without proof. And you have no proof.”

  Lady Stanton cast a pointed glance toward Miss Pemberton. “We’ll unmask the murderer quite soon. I have no doubt.”

  The Stanton chit edged closer to her mother. Francine and Benedict exchanged a knowing look. Edmund smirked behind his goblet. Which could only mean the party had long since decided upon the culprit, and now the only thing in want was evidence to hang him.

  Gavin’s cravat felt suddenly too tight.

  Chapter 22

  After dining alone in his chamber—for he had no wish to renew conversation about the likelihood of his guilt in the late earl’s death—Gavin began to feel restless. Typically at such times, he would spend the evening in the library with a book, or while away the hours outside strolling the land behind the manor or perhaps riding to the nearest pugilism club. But any one of his skittish, suspicious guests might be within the library, no stars lit the night sky, much less his fields, and he had no wish to explain why he’d left a “party” to go fighting in a neighboring town.

  When his desire for motion at last outweighed his desire for solitude, Gavin exited his bedchamber via the primary door instead of his hinged mirror, and strode into the hall.

  Shadows teemed along the deserted corridor, but enough candlelight flickered within the sconces for even the most casual of observers to note the content of the oil paintings framed along the passageway.

  Miss Pemberton was right. Not a smiling face among them. No faces at all.

  Landscape after landscape swirled across the many canvases. Here, a dark river, frothing with rage beneath leafless trees twisting in the wind. There, a lifeless chasm, filled with dirt and rock and ice, smothered with a layer of murky fog. And, ah, this one, a torrent of sleet slashing across a desolate highway, snapping the fragile stem of a single frost-tipped flower protruding from the muck.

  He was not, it seemed, overfond of portraiture. And why would he be? Of whom would he commission portraits?

  As if appearing before him merely to spite his thoughts, one of his nieces stood at the crossroads between his wing and the guest wing. With both pale hands gripping the banister, Nancy stared dully over the ledge to the marble vestibule below. She leaned forward. Closer. Lower. Her pink ribbons and blond ringlets dangled precariously before her.

  Within seconds, Gavin reached her side.

  “Please tell me you’ve no designs on jumping,” he said softly, placing a tentative hand across her white knuckles.

  “I—no.” She straightened, swallowed, blushed. “Fantasy. That is to say, folly. I could never…Mother’s been through enough without me worsening things further.”

  His breaths once again came easy now that he no longer feared she might tumble over the edge. And with the return of air to his lungs came the return of doubt. Gavin imagined himself the last person she’d hoped would discover her in such a position, and he had no inkling of how to proceed now that he had. Although Nancy had made no movement to remove her fingers from beneath his, Gavin shoved his hands in his pockets, leaned against the railing, and tried to guess at the thoughts of a seventeen-year-old miss.

  He suspected whatever had Nancy contemplating the shortest path down the long spiral staircase had to do with something even greater than Heatherbrook’s death. He hoped like hell her distress had nothing to do with a romance between herself and Mr. Teasdale. He considered his niece far too young to have to leg-shackle herself to a man old enough to be William the Conqueror’s grandfather.

  Having thus done away with the topics of death and marriage—neither of which were desirable states in Gavin’s estimation—what subjects were safe to discuss with one’s estranged niece? She seemed in desperate need of cheering up, but at seventeen, he could offer her neither porcelain dolls nor Irish whisky.

  “After…things return to normal,” he ventured, hoping he’d found a reasonably bland topic, “will you be heading to London for your first Season?”

  Nancy’s cheeks paled. Her eyes welled with tears.

  “No,” she choked out, as if the words were ripped from her soul. “I shall never have a Season, Jane shall never have a Season, the twins will never have a Season, and things will never, ever return to normal again.”

  And with that, she ripped herself from the banister and tore down the corridor toward the guest chambers in a flash of ribbons and ringlets and tears. With a muffled, hitching sob, she careened around the corner and out of sight.

  That…had not gone well. Gavin turned to face the burnished cherry railing. Death by spiral staircase suddenly seemed as viable an option as any.

  Except there, at the bottom, came his footman. Milton plodded up the curved marble stairs, one hand bearing a small silver tray with a franked parchment atop.

  Gavin met the footman halfway, thanked him, and broke the seal on the missive. Its contents read as follows:

  * * *

  Dear Mr. Lioncroft,

  It has come to my attention that you are harboring a runaway, namely, my stepdaughter. Because she has not yet reached her majority, she belongs at home and I must request her immediate return.

  As we are both gentlemen, I shall expect to receive confirmation of your intent to facilitate her prompt departure. To that end, my man is waiting for your reply. If she is too much trouble to deal with easily—and I am quite aware of how much trouble Evangeline can be—it is of no consequence whatsoever for me to come fetch her myself.

  I am sure you are a reasonable man who will not allow a simple family matter to escalate to dramatic proportions. My stepdaughter belongs in my custody.

  Please inform me of your expenses during the time you housed her, and I will ensure you are properly reimbursed.

  Yours, etc.

  Mr. Neal Pemberton

  * * *

  Gavin read the letter three times before any of it made sense. Once it did, he crumpled the entire sheet in his fist.

  Miss Pemberton, it seemed, was an even greater liar than he’d first supposed.

  Here by happenstance, as a special friend of Miss Stanton’s, was she? Ha. Yet another bloody parasite, here to take advantage of his roof and food and pockets. How had she talked Lady Stanton into allowing her to impose upon a house party? As silver-tongued as she was bewitching, no doubt.

  “Beg pardon, my lord,” murmured the footman. “But there’s a messenger waiting belowstairs. Should I…?”

  “Ah. Right.” Gavin’s fist tightened around the crumpled missive. “I shall pen an immediate reply.”

  One neither Mister nor Miss Pemberton was likely to enjoy. For he was not yet ready to give up his beautiful liar. Considering she sought to use him for his money and shelter, she could not object to Gavin using her particular attributes in return.

  After all, she possessed the singular ability to prove his innocence by uncovering which of the ingrates below his roof was responsible for Heatherbrook’s murder.

  The law might say Neal Pemberton could have his duplicitous stepdaughter back… but not until Gavin
finished with her first.

  Chapter 23

  The next morning, wet paintbrush in hand, Gavin turned to face the footman hesitating in the doorway to the studio. “Has something happened?”

  “Only that the packages you ordered are here. Where shall we store them?”

  “I suppose you can deliver them directly to—no, I prefer to do it myself.” He stepped away from his easel. “Where are they now?”

  “Belowstairs. They’ve only just arrived.”

  A familiar, pungent stench enveloped the room as Gavin uncapped the jar of turpentine in order to clean the bright oils from the coarse hairs of his paintbrushes. He had thought to paint dawn instead of dusk. Something new, different, cheerful. He had failed. The sun lilted drunkenly in the sky, its effect garish, its rays overbright, illuminating the muck splattered across an abandoned cottage and the dirt crusted on the cracked windows.

  “And Madame Rousseau? Has she responded?”

  “Yes, my lord. She leaves immediately.”

  “Excellent.” Gavin recapped the turpentine and laid his brushes across a paint-stained cloth to dry. “Anything else?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Very well. Thank you.”

  The footman bobbed and left.

  Gavin replaced his paints, latched the door to his studio, and strode down the corridor. He wondered what Mr. Pemberton thought upon receiving Gavin’s no-doubt unanticipated response. Promising to return her “soon” instead of “immediately” was not at all the norm, but most likely a small delay would be of little concern. After all, she was fed, chaperoned, and entertained, and Mr. Pemberton—who claimed his stepdaughter a nuisance—had no cause for alarm. Aside from old rumors, that was. Gavin’s reply had failed to mention the more recent murder. Or his intention for Miss Pemberton to solve it.

  When he reached the vestibule below the spiral staircase, a pair of maids handed him his packages. The two large boxes contained the twins’ new dolls. The smaller, part of his birthday gift for Jane. He fervently hoped thirteen-year-old girls liked jewelry.