Dimm sent a cloud of smoke into the air. “I watched, you know. You never even looked at their eyes. They say eyes are the windows to the soul. I can usually tell a cold-blooded killer by looking at their glims, but I’m never as fast or as confident as you seem to be.”
“It’s not the eyes, it’s the voice.” And the colors.
“You must have done a powerful lot of research,” Dimm said, a hint of wistfulness in his own voice mixed with a heavy dose of disbelief. “Bless you.”
Rex walked a little jauntier as he made his way back to Royce House. He hardly noticed his bad leg or who was watching him limp. He stopped at a nearby bookseller and asked what the ladies were reading nowadays. He bought two, so Miss Carville could have a choice. Then he bought flowers to bring to her, roses and violets because he could not decide which. Now he had gifts to bring, along with information, the support of two vastly different but powerful men, and the gun.
Chapter Thirteen
He brought her hope.
Amanda felt a warmth she had not known in ages, long before the current disaster. Lord Rexford did not have to bring flowers and books. Gracious, he did not have to do anything at all. He was helping her to satisfy his father’s demands, his mother’s pleas. But the flowers? They must have been because he wanted to, nothing else. Charles Ashway, her onetime suitor, had sent her a bouquet after a dance, out of politeness. Rexford was not polite by any means. Ashway had never made her feel special—or atingle—not even when he came close to an offer of marriage.
Amanda wanted to throw herself into Rexford’s arms, an impulse she had never felt for Ashway, not even when she contemplated accepting the offer that never came. She might have done such a hoydenish thing—her reputation was gone, what did it matter?—except the viscount was holding a gun.
Then Mr. Stamfield came home, and she did throw herself at him when he brought her parents’ portraits. He turned as red as Lord Rexford’s uniform coat. His lordship turned green, it appeared, scowling and tapping his cane on the floor, which made Amanda’s smile grow brighter. He did care!
She propped the small paintings on Lady Royce’s sitting room mantel, since Nanny refused to allow the gentlemen into Amanda’s own bedroom. “Oh, you have both made me very happy! I know these are the first steps, but I was stuck in a morass, unable to move. Now we can find the owner of the gun.”
The viscount stopped tapping. “What if it proves to be your stepfather’s? Then the evidence still points to you. I do not want you to get your hopes too high. There is not much distinctive about the pistol. We might not be able to trace its ownership at all.”
She sniffed first at the violets, then at the roses, refusing to be defeated. “But we might, and that is more than I had yesterday. And now I have the paintings, too.” She lowered her eyes. “And I have friends in you, Mr. Stamfield—”
“I wish you would call me Daniel, if we are to be friends.”
“Then you must call me Amanda, because I will cherish that friendship no matter what happens. And yours, Lord Rexford.”
“Rex. That is what my friends call me.”
The king—how fitting. Except for his swollen nose, his lordship looked regal enough for royalty, tall and strong and in command. His bearing held more authority than the foolish prince could muster, in all his medals and ribbons. “Rex.” She tasted the name on her tongue, drawing out the final sibilance. “It is my pleasure to be given the privilege of first names.” She had known Charles Ashway two months before they became so familiar, and then only in private.
“The pleasure is mine.” Oh, how Rex wished it were, to hear his name on her lips, on his pillow. The woman was looking healthier, although she was still pale, still too thin. Jupiter, was it only yesterday that he’d pulled a limp rag out of the trash heap of Newgate? The flowers and portraits—or the gun—had brought an animation to her face that he found irresistible. The sight of her smile had rendered him near speechless. For that matter, the sight of her in Daniel’s arms had made him murderous.
Daniel was grinning, so Rex gathered what wits he had after her declaration of friendship. One wrong move, he knew, and he’d be stepping into the parson’s mousetrap. “Very well, we are friends. Now let us discuss our findings. Daniel, were any of the servants still at Hawley House? I have possible addresses for some who told Bow Street they were leaving.”
“A stiff-rumped butler, Hareston, opened the door. Reluctantly, I might add, until I showed him a coin and Miss Carville’s—Amanda’s—note. A nasty piece, that one. My money is on him for the killer. He watched me every second, so I never got a chance to look for a safe or through Hawley’s desk drawers.”
“The safe is behind a hunting scene in Sir Frederick’s office,” Amanda told them, “but I do not know where the key is, or if it has a combination.”
“I should have a warrant tomorrow,” Rex said, “a legal writ so no one can deny us access. As soon as we have that, we can go back, and to the bank also. Who else was there besides the butler?”
“According to Hareston and another coin, Brusseau the valet left to take up a post elsewhere,” Daniel said. “Hareston said he did not know with whom.”
“That was fast, for a man whose last master could not give him a reference. His name is not on Bow Street’s list. We’ll see if we cannot discover who hired the valet. I’ll put Murchison on that.”
“Murchison, your valet who Nanny says does not speak?” Amanda asked.
Rex shrugged the question off. “Who else was at the house, Daniel?”
“A couple of footmen. A housekeeper.”
“That would be Mrs. Petcock,” Amanda explained to Rex. “She sleeps near the kitchen, so could not have heard anything.”
“That’s what she said, and added a few uncomplimentary words for her late employer. She is staying, she says, in hopes of being kept on when the place is rented out.”
Amanda clutched the bouquet of violets tighter. “Has she heard from Edwin already then? He does not have plans to come to London?”
Amanda was disappointed, thinking her stepbrother would come to town to settle his father’s affairs as soon as the funeral was over. Edwin might believe her, might help her, might give her a home with him.
“I do not think the housekeeper knows anything definite,” Daniel said. “More what she wants to see happen. She hasn’t been paid since the new year.”
“But we had new gowns and new upholstery in the drawing room.”
“The better to make a good impression on Miss Elaine Hawley’s callers, I suppose. Everyone seemed in agreement that she was to marry well—not just a title but money also—to pull her father out of River Tick.”
Amanda knew Sir Frederick was miserly, but she thought he had funds enough. “He had my mother’s money, and my dowry, plus income from his own estate.”
“Well, perhaps he kept a fortune tucked away in his safe or the bank, but he was not generous with his gold.”
“No, he was never that.”
Daniel suggested perhaps someone was blackmailing the baronet, bleeding him dry.
“And I frightened the extortionist away when I arrived home early,” Amanda guessed.
Rex put a stop to their musings. “No blackmailer would kill his source of income. What else did you discover there, coz?”
“The butler gave me itchy feet.”
“Ah.”
Amanda offered to search the countess’s dresser for talcum powder.
Daniel shifted in his chair. Wood creaked, so he stopped his embarrassed twitching. “You see? I’m not fit for polite company. Shouldn’t have mentioned my feet.”
“Or your itch,” Rex added, with a narrow-eyed warning.
Amanda looked from one to the other. “But I am not missish, and we must not stand on ceremonies while discussing my case. We are friends, aren’t we?”
Daniel smiled. “I knew you were a right ’un. I just felt he wasn’t telling the truth. No, that he wasn’t telling all of the truth. I�
��d wager he knows who hired that valet Brusseau in such a hurry. I never thought Sir Frederick was so well turned-out that his man should be in demand.”
Rex made a note in his pad. “I’ll try the butler tomorrow. Do you know if he’s been paid?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not in a while. I believe he is skimming enough off the household budget to survive, but he will be below hatches if a tenant or the new owner does not arrive soon.”
“What about the grooms and the footmen? Did you question any of them?”
“What do you take me for? A novice? Of course I did. The ones who were not attending the ladies at Almack’s say they were all in the mews, throwing the dice. It’s too far away from the house to hear a pistol shot or a solitary horseman. No one called at the house that they remembered; no one came near with a carriage or a horse needing stabling.”
“Drat. Do you think they were lying, too?”
“Unfortunately, no. They knew nothing.”
Amanda asked, “You are sure?”
The cousins looked at each other. “We are sure.”
“But how?” she wanted to know. “People lie all the time.”
“Not to us, they—” Daniel started, to be stopped with a glare from his cousin.
“It’s a, uh, a scientific thing.”
“It is?” Daniel and Amanda both asked.
“Yes, we made an extensive study in the Peninsula. People who lie give clues. Like blinking faster, or shifting their eyes, or breathing hard. Their voices change, too.”
Daniel started to rub at his ear.
Amanda was fascinated. “So you did not really torture prisoners.”
“Of course not!”
Indignation cured Daniel’s itch. “I would challenge anyone who claimed to my face that we did. Can’t stop whispers behind our backs, but that’s all it is.”
“I could not see how such accusations could be true, you have been so kind. But why let the stories of cruelty last?”
Because they had not thought of the Aide’s brilliant pretense of research, Rex thought. Aloud he said, “Because the rumors worked in our favor. If enemy prisoners were afraid I would slice off their, ah, ears, or Daniel would sit on them, they were more liable to tell us what we needed to know. Flashing a knife”—he pulled one from his boot in a streak of light—“or swinging Daniel’s anvil-sized fists was intimidating enough. They talked. Every minute mattered when the generals were waiting to deploy our own troops or defend a position. They needed to know where the enemy was, what his plans were. If the prisoners knew, we found out.”
“I did not believe anything else.”
Well, she almost disbelieved the gory tales, Rex could tell from the orangish cast to her words.
“And your mother never credited a single one of the rumors.”
Lady Royce knew the truth, but Rex did not wish to think about that.
Amanda was asking, “Can you show me?”
“Show you?”
“How to judge the truth.”
“Hmm. The research has not been made public for national security reasons, but perhaps, since we are all friends . . . Look at Daniel carefully. I am going to ask him simple questions, and he is going to lie sometimes, say the truth sometimes.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you are. What is your mother’s given name?”
“Cora.”
“There, did you see that?”
“What?”
“Watch again, more closely. Daniel, what is your mother’s given name.”
“C—” He saw Rex shake his head and changed his reply to Carolyn. He scratched his nose.
“Aha! You see, he blinked more.”
“I must have missed it. Let me try. Daniel, what is your middle name?”
“I never tell anyone!”
Rex laughed. Amanda pleaded. Daniel looked over at his cousin who silently mouthed, “Lie.”
“Ralston.”
Amanda set the violets aside. “I cannot tell.”
Daniel said “Good,” and stopped rubbing at his nose.
Amanda turned to Rex. “Do you like me?”
“Great gods, what kind of question is that?” Rex was blinking. His voice had raised an octave. His eyes were shifting from her to a grinning Daniel to the Staffordshire dogs on the mantel.
“Yes,” he croaked. “Do you like me?”
She did not hesitate, blink, or bleat. “Yes.”
Blue, and Rex’s heart swelled in his chest.
Amanda never knew she could be so forward. The proper young lady she’d spent twenty-two years refining seemed to have disappeared in jail. No female of breeding asked such personal questions of a gentleman she had known for two days, and without a proper introduction, to boot.
Amanda was no longer a lady in the eyes of polite society, whichever direction the trial took, so in a way she was more free to say what she thought, to think what she felt, to feel. Staring at the possibility of a sentence of death, or a short, brutal lifetime in prison, refocused one’s sights. Politeness, conventions, missishness—heavens, she had no time for that nonsense.
Lord Rexford—Rex—liked her, which somehow made her less of a burden to him. She could almost believe that a wealthy, well-born gentleman might truly befriend a penniless woman of no distinction but a murder charge and a blackened reputation.
He’d brought her gifts. He’d said he liked her. The world was not entirely bleak; not when violets bloomed and honest blue eyes smiled at her.
Chapter Fourteen
Nanny shooed the gentlemen on their way and ushered Amanda back to her bedroom. Tomorrow, the old nursemaid declared, missy might be permitted downstairs to take luncheon with the viscount and his cousin, although there was no guaranteeing the quality of the meal with the housekeeper doing the cooking.
And tomorrow, Nanny muttered on her way out, the countess had better come home, for all their sakes.
“She’s right, you know,” Daniel told Rex over a glass of sherry in the formal drawing room.
“That Miss Carville, Amanda, will be vastly improved by tomorrow? She has made a great recovery, hasn’t she? The lady looks as if a gust of wind could blow her away, yet she has withstood the storm. I think she is brave, for a female. Don’t you?”
Daniel scowled over his wineglass. “I think you aren’t thinking with your head. What I meant is Nanny is right that you need a proper chaperone here. Not good for the gal to be alone with us, you know.”
“Why? We’re here to help her, not destroy her health altogether.”
“When did you get so dense? It’s the chit’s reputation that has Nanny in a swivet, not her health.”
“When did you start worrying over the punctilios of polite society?” Rex countered. “And you such a pillar of respectability. Wasn’t it you swilling gin in a sty of swine a day or two ago?”
“I never said I was a model of proper behavior, and that’s the problem. Neither one of us is fit company for a gently bred female. A young, unmarried female,” he added, in case Rex had forgotten.
Rex raised his glass to that. He could barely trust himself not to bash her door in just to see her angel’s curls and sweet smile. Of course he wouldn’t stop in the doorway; not in his dreams, at least. In reality, he would never step over the line, figuratively or not. He did know the dangers, without any reminder.
Daniel was going on: “Rumors are already starting, that you’re setting her up here as your mistress.”
“Damnation!” Rex might wish it, but how dare anyone speak so ill of Miss Carville. And of him. “They think I would ruin a lady? And bring my lover here to the countess’s house? What kind of loose screw do they take me for?”
Daniel hunched his broad shoulders. “A spy and a slime, same as me. It’s a bad reflection on your mother, too, or that’s what the clucking tongues will say, with Aunt Margaret turning a blind eye on the situation.”
“The countess is not even here!”
“Exactly. I suggest we cha
nge a few minds tonight.”
Rex squeezed his still-swollen nose. “I am not ready for another bout of fisticuffs. And I do not see how drawing anyone’s claret will change the ton’s opinion of me or Amanda. Or Lady Royce.” Although the last was the last on his list of worries.
“Fighting won’t, but if you are seen out and about, at the clubs, a party, something fashionable, people will see that you aren’t hiding away, slinking in shadows. You have to assure them that you and Miss Carville are mere houseguests together, strangers under one roof, only until her health is restored and her situation is resolved.”
“That is what we are, strangers to each other.”
Daniel rubbed at his ear. “Best if you tell people she’s been near unconscious, under constant care of nurses and maids, which is almost true. You can spread that around Lady Arbuthnot’s daughter’s come-out ball tonight. Your mother would have been invited. Bosom bows, don’t you know.”
How would Rex know the countess’s friends? “A ball? You and I?”
“Actually, I thought you’d toddle ’round by yourself.”
“Think again. If I go, you go. Or else people might think you are back here, seducing the lady.”
Daniel smiled at the idea. “They might, mightn’t they?”
Rex vowed not to leave his cousin alone with Amanda ever again. “You are coming. We’ll do the pretty, act unconcerned, and tell people that Amanda is sick abed with Nanny watching, without bending the facts. Now that I think on it, going out might serve other purposes. We might learn something about Sir Frederick, too.”
“And we might get a better meal than the housekeeper here can provide. I hope your mother gets home soon, with her cook.”
Rex was looking forward to the countess’s return about as much as he looked forward to putting himself on display at Lady Arbuthnot’s. Both were necessary evils.
Daniel was starting to pull at the neckcloth Murchison had tied in an Oriental knot. They were barely through the receiving line where Lady Arbuthnot had lied through her teeth in greeting. The only truth she spoke was that unattached gentlemen were always welcome at debutante balls. Unattached gentlemen of means, they all knew she meant.
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