Courting Trouble

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  “There is no better man than you,” Nora said, rising on her toes to press a soft kiss to his cheek so she could whisper in his ear. “You stitched my life back together when I thought no one could…and that, dear husband, is why I will always love you.”

  Sneak Peek: Dancing With Danger

  Chapter 1

  London, 1881

  The man blocking Mercy Goode from the murder scene was an incomparable idiot.

  And yet he had the audacity to sneer down at her in that condescending way menial men did when granted a little bit of authority. His shiny badge declared him Constable M. Jenkins. A tall but scrawny bit of bones scraped together between comically overgrown mutton chops.

  “If you don’t vacate the premises now, I’ll see you sleeping behind bars tonight, and make no mistake about that.” He narrowed beady eyes and loomed in an attempt to intimidate her.

  Mercy glared right back. Since she was entirely too short for a proper loom, she bared her teeth to do him one better in the foul expression department.

  She’d been more frightened by an errant bee than this blighter with his ridiculous feathery mustache. From the moment he’d arrived, he’d tried to get rid of her, and that she would not abide. She refused to leave until she could be certain justice would be done.

  “See here!” Mercy poked him in the chest. “I’m the one who found the body thus murdered and sent for Scotland Yard. Therefore, I’m a valuable witness at best and a possible suspect at the very least. If you advise me to leave before a detective inspector arrives, he’ll be furious. You could lose your position, which…” She trailed off, scanning the man up and down for any possible signs of capability. “If you want my opinion, might do both you and the London Metropolitan Police a favor.”

  The slack-jawed blighter blinked in mute amazement, his dull brain taking an inordinate amount of time to process her statement.

  Mercy used his dumbstruck torpor to sweep around him and slide into the stately, feminine solarium where the corpse sat propped in a high-backed burgundy velvet chair.

  Poor Mathilde.

  She swallowed a lump of regret so large, it threatened to choke her. They’d both known a violent death was a possibility. They’d discussed it at length when Mathilde—bruised, battered, and quite drunk—had come seeking shelter at the Duchess of Trenwyth’s Ladies Aid Society. They’d hatched a plan to ferret the woman out of the country as soon as humanly possible.

  But, it seemed. Not soon enough.

  Mercy’s fingers curled into fists. If only they had made other arrangements for the woman.

  If only she’d skipped her weekly appointment last evening and squired Mathilde away under the cover of night, instead of waiting for the safety of daylight.

  When she wanted to dissolve into frustrated tears, Mercy only allowed herself to indulge in a hitch of labored breath before she bit into the flesh of her cheek. It was imperative she contain herself. She couldn’t show weakness.

  Not here.

  Not in front of a man who would whip her with it and make her wait somewhere else until she calmed her “feminine hysterics.”

  Somewhere she could be of no use.

  The very idea was intolerable.

  “I’m so sorry I failed you,” she whispered to the unnaturally still woman. Her finger itched to brush back one errant lock of what was otherwise a perfect brunette coiffeur.

  Mathilde had been a beautiful woman in the prime of her thirties. Scandalous, sultry, and…scared.

  They’d only ever met in person but twice. And yet, Mercy felt this tragedy as if a dear friend had passed.

  “I vow I will not rest until they find who did this to you,” she whispered.

  At those words, a strange, feverish chill washed down her spine and prickled along her nerve endings. She was suddenly bathed in awareness of someone behind her.

  Watching.

  Glancing about, she only found Jenkins, apparently roused from his stupefied confusion at her feint around his blockade.

  Perhaps it was time for her to rethink her position regarding ghosts.

  She’d been categorically opposed to the idea of the supernatural in almost every respect.

  Until now.

  Certainly Jenkins didn’t carry such a aura of malice.

  Even though she’d made him cross.

  “Oi!” He stormed into the room after her, expression morphing from one of surprise to suspicion. “The detective inspector isn’t but a moment away, so don’t you dare touch anything.”

  “I know better than to disturb a murder scene,” Mercy announced with a droll sniff.

  “What makes you reckon she was murdered?” he asked, eyeing her with rank skepticism. “The lady could have very well died in her sleep. You know something you’re not telling?”

  Despite her distress and remorse, Mercy felt a surge of relish at being able to finally trot her extensive knowledge of the matters of murder in the presence of an arrogant dolt.

  “Prepare your notepad, dear constable, and I shall elucidate.” She pinned her hands behind her back in a regimental posture. One her brilliant brothers-in-law often adopted when lecturing her about being more judicious.

  Not that it was effectual in her case.

  But they appeared especially important and erudite while standing thusly, she’d noticed as she’d not been listening.

  “Do you see the slight edema there at her neck?” She motioned to the open throat of the dead woman’s high-necked gown where the once-porcelain skin was now tinged a blue-grey. “This suggests asphyxiation, but there are no ligature marks, nor is there bruising.” She bent closer, inspecting the wound. “But a distressing bit of an interruption in the cords of her muscle, just there, leads me to believe that when your coroner arrives, he’ll find that her neck has been broken. Possibly at the C2 or C3 vertebrae.”

  Mercy exhaled a shaking breath, grasping onto her composure with both hands. If this dull bulb could keep his wits about him when faced with such a tragedy, then she was equally determined to.

  “She wouldn’t have died instantly,” Mercy murmured, her throat rasping over traitorous emotion. “Likely she’d have been paralyzed, but able to talk and scream until the pressure crushed her trachea.” Her fingers reached for her own neck in sympathy, her bones heavy with guilt and her heart surging with an ardent vow to retaliate. “Her name was Mathilde Archambeau. That’s A—R—C—H—” She glanced over at Jenkins. “Why are you not writing this down?”

  “Because we know exactly who this woman is,” said a stolid voice from the doorway. “And we have already surmised who is responsible for her death.”

  Mercy whirled to find a short and portly man in a billycock hat and matching grey morning suit. He strode into the solarium with his coat lackadaisically draped over one arm. His chins wobbled like summer pudding as he used his entire head to conduct a thorough and disrespectful examination of Mercy’s person.

  He was at least twenty-five years her senior and wore a wedding band on his left finger.

  Marriage didn’t stop men from ogling her, Mercy had found. Most men possessed a weakness for a young slim woman with gold ringlets and a passably attractive face.

  That was all they saw when they looked at her with the same desire she witnessed now. Her smooth, unblemished youth. Her diminutive shape, fair hair, and sparking blue eyes.

  She could disarm just about anyone with her winsome charms.

  Until she opened her mouth.

  Then their desire melted into anything from dismay to disgust.

  As Mercy’s father often said, she’d make a perfect wife if only someone could relieve her of her wits and her willfulness.

  Or at least her tongue.

  Her charms, as it happened, were only skin deep.

  Ah well, C’est la vie.

  Fingers the size of breakfast sausages curled around her gloved hands as the newcomer bowed over her knuckles. “I’m Detective Inspector Martin Trout, at your service, Miss…”r />
  Trout. A more apropos surname was never given.

  “You know who did this?” Mercy plucked her hand away, blithely stepping around his subtle press for an introduction. “You know who murdered Mathilde?”

  “That’s a relief. I was beginning to think it was her,” Constable Jenkins gestured toward Mercy, his brass buttons catching on the afternoon light streaming in through the windows from the back gardens.

  One such window, Mercy noted, was open.

  In February?

  When even the fire blazing in the hearth wasn’t enough to ward off the moist chill in the room.

  “Don’t be ridiculous Jenkins,” Detective Inspector Trout said, sidling closer to Mercy. “Our division is very familiar with this household. Mrs. Archambeau was unquestionably killed by her ham-fisted husband, Gregoire.”

  Mercy deflated instantly. So much for the police being any help. “No, Detective Inspector, that is where you are wrong. It had to have been someone else.”

  “Wrong?” The man echoed the word as if he’d never heard it before, shadows passing over his ruddy features.

  Mercy nodded. “Mathilde and I had someone follow Gregoire onto a ferry to France where he was to conduct business for three days. You see, while he was away, she was going to leave him due to the aforementioned mistreatment of her.” At this, Mercy’s brows drew together as she speared the man with her most imperious glare. “Which begs the question, Detective Inspector Trout, if you were aware that Mr. Archambeau was a cruel man, why didn’t you arrest him or at least take measures to keep poor Mathilde safe?”

  Ah, there it was. The dulling of his desire.

  All semblance of approbation drained from Trout’s murky eyes and was replaced by antipathy. “Mathilde Archambeau is a notorious alcoholic, and recently made a cuckold of her husband with a younger man,” he informed her stiffly.

  “Yes,” Mercy clipped, “Mathilde admitted to me that she drank, among other things, to dull the anxiety and misery of living with such a man as Mr. Archambeau…” Stalling, Mercy also recalled the rapturous expression on the woman’s features when she’d confided that she’d taken a lover recently. One who’d coaxed such pleasure from her body, she’d become addicted to him, as well.

  If only Mercy hadn’t been too embarrassed—and too stimulated—to ask the man’s name.

  For, surely, he was a suspect.

  “Certainly Mathilde’s indiscretions didn’t warrant violence against her. Indeed, she didn’t deserve this terrible fate,” she said.

  “I don’t know about that,” Trout gave a tight, one-shouldered shrug and twisted his lips into something acerbic and ugly as he glanced down at the departed. “Were I to catch my Missus with anyone, I don’t imagine the outcome would be much different. She’d be lucky to escape with a sound hiding, and he’d be certain to end up in the Thames.”

  This, from a man who’d undressed her with his eyes only moments before.

  Mercy decided to take a different approach.

  It was that or lose her temper.

  “Look over here,” She hurried to the window and swiped at the ledge, the silk of her white glove coming away dirty with mud from the garden. “I entered the Archambeau household through the front door, as would Gregoire, if he’d come home early. Someone very obviously climbed in this window recently. Someone strong and limber, to have scaled up to the third-floor terrace in last night’s rain. Strong enough to say… snap a woman’s neck with his bare hands.” She moved the drapes out of the way, uncovering one large footprint in the arabesque carpet. “I deduce that if you find the man who wears this shoe, you’ll find Mathilde’s murderer.”

  She couldn’t say that she expected an ovation or anything, but the grim consternation on both the lawmen’s faces threatened to steal some of the wind from her sails. “Confirm Gregoire’s absence from the country if you must—no one would fault you for being thorough—but also it’s your duty to examine and investigate any other evidence, and this is certainly compelling.” She looked at Trout pointedly. “Do you happen to know the name of her lover? Maybe he—”

  Trout moved with astonishing speed for a man of his girth and was in front of her in an instant. Those large sausage fingers of his spanned her wrist in a bruising grip and yanked her away from the window.

  “Unhand me, sir!” Mercy demanded.

  “It’s time for you to leave.” He dragged her toward the door, speaking through clenched teeth. “Regardless of her supposed wealth, Mathilde Archambeau was a degenerate who associated with students, theater folk, socialists, and suffragists. Her husband is little better. I do not know to which group you belong, but I’ll tell you this… you’ll be hard pressed to find a detective who will spend extra precious time and energy on behalf of a drunken immigrant slag. Her death means there is one less nasty woman in my borough—”

  Mercy’s hand connected with the detective’s cheek before she even realized she’d meant to slap him. Her palm stung, even beneath her glove, and she’d barely time to close her fingers around it before her blow was answered with a backhand to the cheek.

  The force was such that her neck gave an audible crack when it wrenched to the side. She would rather have died than allow a cry to escape, but the pain was so acute, so startling, she couldn’t hold in the whimper.

  Jenkins stepped toward them. The frown of concern twisting his mustache blurred as hot, unwanted tears muddled Mercy’s vision.

  “Inspector, is such brutality necessary—”

  “Shut up, Jenkins, and get me the shackles. I’m arresting this harpy for accosting an officer of—”

  The sound of splintering wood froze all in the room into a momentary tableau of shock as the door on the far wall shattered beneath an overwhelming force.

  Mercy’s pulse slammed in her veins as recognition seized her with a queer and instantaneous paralysis.

  The last—well the only—time she’d seen the newcomer, his gait had been lazy and arrogant. His movements loose-limbed and lackadaisical, as if he’d conquer the world when he bothered to get around to it.

  He had made it abundantly clear to her in the past that he did nothing lest it pleased him.

  And what he took pleasure in at this moment, was violence.

  All semblance of charm and leisure had been replaced by a body coiled with the tension of steel cables and grey eyes glinting with all the lethality of gunmetal.

  He was across the room in a blink, lunging like a viper.

  He struck. Struck again.

  Blood flew and bone crunched.

  Suddenly, Trout was no longer grasping her but crumpled in a moaning puddle at her feet.

  When Jenkins reached for his cudgel, the interloper only had to whirl and point a long finger in his direction to cause the lawman anxious hesitation. “If you raise that weapon against me, mon ami, I swear in front of God—and this beautiful woman—that I will take it and deliver the most humiliating beating you’ve ever received.”

  His voice like a saber, smooth and wickedly sharp, was tinged with the barest hint of a French accent. It slid into her ear with that same vague sensation of malevolence she’d experienced only moments ago, raising every hair on her body.

  Some primitive instinct roared to life in his presence, one that warned her of imminent peril.

  “The last man who raised a weapon against me…will never walk again.” He stood with his back to her, squared against the indecisive constable. Lean muscle flexed rigid beneath his exquisitely tailored suit as vibrations of aggression and intimidation rolled off his wide shoulders in waves and stole whatever courage poor Jenkins possessed.

  The policeman returned trembling fingers to his sides as he, no doubt, recognized how close he stood to death.

  Because the man in front of him was possessed of one of the most identifiable names in the empire.

  A notorious libertine.

  A flagrant and lawless fortune hunter.

  A gangster bequeathed with all the masculine beauty
of Eros, himself.

  He turned back to her, brushing an errant ebony forelock of hair out of his eyes to aid in his unrepentant assessment.

  What Mercy read in his gaze stupefied her further.

  Where before there had been intellect, charisma, and cunning, only ferocity resided now. Ferocity and…something that looked confoundingly like concern.

  His evaluation was a tangible thing. It caressed her in places she’d given no man license to touch.

  Least of all him.

  His scan of her body started at the hem of her dress and left no part of her untouched until he met her eyes.

  And then, right in front of her, the ferocity dissipated, replaced by that signature insouciance he was so famous for.

  It was said he’d smile like a Cheshire cat whilst disemboweling his enemies.

  Mercy didn’t doubt it in the least.

  He lifted his knuckles to brush against her still-smarting cheek, and she flinched away.

  Not because she feared him—though she did.

  But because she wasn’t ready to find out what the sensation of his touch would do to her. When his very presence set her nerves alight with such volatile, visceral thrums of awareness, how could she bear the pressure of his skin?

  He obviously misinterpreted her retreat as a muscle flexed in his jaw. “I will relieve him of the hand he struck you with, Mon chaton.”

  He said this as if offering to shine her shoe.

  A siren broke the moment as the thunder of horse hooves clattered into the cobbled courtyard. Voices shouted and the very rafters shook with the force of a veritable army of police.

  The arrival of his comrades injected the constable with fresh nerve.

  “No one will believe this,” Jenkins marveled. “I’ll be the man who arrested the Raphael Sauvageau, Lord of the Fauves, and hanged him for murder.”

  Chapter 2