by Candace Camp
“How kind of you. But I assure you that I can handle things quite well myself.”
“Oh, really.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “And exactly how are you plannin’ to find your way out of here, may I ask? Where will you find a hansom?”
Rachel faltered. Much as she disliked it, she had to admit the truth of his words. She hadn’t the slightest idea how to find her way out of this place, and she did not much relish the idea of trying. And, frankly, despite his boorishness, she felt much safer now that Hobson was with her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked again, this time in a calmer tone. “Why are you paying people to find out where Martha Denton is?”
Rachel glanced at him. “Well, I could say that I was in need of a good lady’s maid.”
“You could, but we would both know that was a lie.” He cast her a sideways glance.
It occurred to Rachel that his eyes were a beautiful color, the palest of grays in the sunlight, almost silver. Yesterday evening, in the carriage, they had been dark, filled with emotion. She stumbled a little, and he whipped out a hand to steady her. Rachel blushed, for she knew that she had stumbled because she had been thinking about his eyes—and also because that brief touch of his fingers on her arm had sent a thrill all through her.
She cleared her throat and turned to look ahead. “I want to talk to the woman. I am trying to help…a friend. Martha Denton was lady’s maid to his wife, who died, and he—he has some suspicion that she was murdered.”
“So he asked you to look into it for him?” Michael blurted out, his voice rising.
“No, of course not. He would not have asked me. No one would have asked me to do anything useful.”
His eyebrows sailed up at her last rather bitter statement, but he said nothing.
“He wanted me to ask Michael to look into it. I told you that he thought Michael was the one who investigated things for Bow Street. He did not realize that it was you. I told him I would ask Michael, but obviously I cannot, since he does not do such things. But I—well, my friend seemed so upset that I hated to tell him that Michael refused to do it, and besides, Michael has reason not to like him, and Mr. Birkshaw would think it was because of that. And I did not want him to think that Michael would be petty.”
He glanced at her in surprise. “Why not?”
The gaze she returned to him was also surprised. “Why, because Michael is not petty. Not at all. I am sure that, had he known about it and been able to, he would have tried to help Mr. Birkshaw.”
Her companion snorted inelegantly. “I find your faith in your husband touching, my lady. Very few men are eager to help a man whom their wife…befriends.”
“You make it sound as if it were something it’s not!” Rachel snapped. “I cannot conceive why you are so determined to think the worst of everyone—me, Michael, Anthony—when you don’t even know us.”
“I know the aristocracy,” he answered gruffly, continuing in the rather bitter persona he had established for his alter ego.
“I understand why you feel the way you do,” Rachel said, “but I can promise you that Michael is nothing like his father.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. And you needn’t sound so scornful. Michael is a very fair man.”
“And you think he is so fair that he would be happy for you to be out here tramping about the East End, mingling with people like me and worse, looking into a murder?”
“Well, no.” Rachel was too fair herself to pretend otherwise. “He probably would not. He would doubtless be afraid that I would get into some sort of trouble. I am not generally considered someone who is capable of doing things, you see.”
He turned to look at her, his brows drawing together in a frown. “I don’t think—” He paused and cleared his throat, then continued. “I don’t think Lord Westhampton would look at it that way.”
She cast him a quizzical glance. “This from the man who was just disparaging Lord Westhampton and all the aristocracy?”
Michael made a face. “I’m just sayin’ a man would want to protect you—if you belonged to him, I mean. He would worry about you and want you to be safe, and that’s why he wouldn’t want you wandering about here by yourself. Not because he thinks you cannot do things. What sort of things? You look quite capable to me.”
Rachel chuckled. “No, I don’t. I probably seem even more useless to you than I do to Michael. I am, after all, like most of the women of my station—bred for pouring tea and stitching pretty things, but not for thinking or doing anything important. My brother married a woman who runs her own business. Her father used to take her into the wilds with him when he traded with fur trappers. She can shoot a gun and even use a knife.”
“Your sister-in-law sounds like a rum ’un to me.”
Rachel laughed, a silvery sound that snaked down through Michael’s gut. “No, she is not a ‘rum ’un.’ She is from America.”
“There you go, then.”
“But my other—well, I guess he is not really a relative anymore, but my friend—anyway, his wife is a well-bred Englishwoman, but she is capable, as well. She worked as a governess for years, and she helped Richard solve a mystery at his estate at Christmas. And—and, well, she speaks her mind, and Richard respects her opinion.”
“I am sure your husband respects you.”
“Oh, he respects me, as any gentleman would respect his wife, but that isn’t the same thing as respecting my opinion—thinking that what I say has worth and—”
“You think he discounts you?”
She looked at him, considering his question. It surprised her that she was discussing such things so freely with this man, whom she hardly knew. But there was something freeing about talking to a man who did not really know her, who had no concern with how she should act or talk. James Hobson would not care if what she said was unladylike or did not reflect well on her husband or her family. Yet at the same time, because of his similarity in looks to Michael, he seemed familiar to her. It was almost like talking to Michael, but without any worry about how he would take what she said, given the events of their past.
“No,” she said after a moment. “Michael would not act like that. But I do not think he would assume that I could do anything difficult, either. I never have, so I cannot see why he would think I could. But, you see, I can do this,” Rachel told him earnestly. “I can talk to Martha Denton. Better than you can, I warrant, for I can manage to see her at her new place of employment, but I doubt Lady Esterbrook would give you permission to speak to her.”
“No. I imagine you are right about that.”
They walked on in silence for a moment. Michael glanced at Rachel thoughtfully, then said, “I know where there is an inn not far from here. We could go there and get a bite to eat, mayhap.”
Rachel had to admit that she had worked up a hunger, but she hesitated. “But I cannot—what would people say if I went into an inn with a strange man?”
His brows rose comically. “You think you are going to see anyone you know going into an inn anywhere around here?”
“Well, no.” Rachel smiled. “Probably not, but…”
“Besides, you know how much I resemble Lord Westhampton. Anyone who saw you would assume that you are with your husband.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right. Although they would wonder why you were dressed so oddly.”
“We can discuss this investigation further over luncheon.”
Rachel looked at him warily. “What do you mean? You are going to try further to convince me not to do it?”
A smile quirked up his mouth, lighting his face in a way that reminded Rachel forcibly of Michael. “No. I mean, perhaps we could, um, work on it together. Perhaps you could do the sort of things that you are better at, like speaking to Lady Esterbrook’s new maid, and I could talk to the men who work for Birkshaw—as an equal, see, ’cause they’ll tell me things they would not tell a toff. And we could tell each other what we found out, and talk about it and what
it means. After all, we are trying to find out the same thing.”
“All right,” Rachel replied, feeling rather daring. After all, there was, she told herself, nothing intrinsically wrong with dining with this man.
She remembered what had happened the last time she had been alone with James Hobson, but she immediately dismissed the thought. It had been an aberration, she told herself, something that had been brought about by that particular situation. Their emotions had been aroused, and even if it had been anger that she was feeling, somehow it had made it easier for her to slip into an unaccustomed passion. Being together in a public place like an inn, talking about working together on this case, would be an entirely different thing.
It took only a few minutes to arrive at the inn, named The Red Boar, a large, busy stopover for travelers. Hobson was able to procure them a private room in which to dine, and they were waited on by the innkeeper himself, who, Rachel noticed, addressed them as my lord and lady.
After he had bowed out, leaving them alone, Rachel turned to her companion, saying accusingly, “You told him you were Michael, didn’t you?”
Hobson shrugged. “I told you no one would think it odd to see you dining with your husband. Besides, it got us a private room. You wouldn’t want to be stared at by the common mob, would you?”
“I doubt there is a mob in this inn,” Rachel pointed out, then admitted, “But no, I would prefer to dine alone.” She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. “How often do you do that? Pretend you are Michael, I mean?”
He grinned, his eyes dancing with merriment. “Only as often as it helps me—and I can get away with it.”
“You are utterly shameless,” Rachel scolded, although it was all she could do not to return his grin, there was something so engaging about it. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that you profess to disdain the man, then use his identity whenever it will get you something you want?”
He shrugged. “It isn’t as if I steal anything from him. I don’t even do anything that would reflect badly on him: I always pay my shot. I just use his name to get me the things that it gets him. He got that name from his father, didn’t he? It isn’t as if it was somethin’ he earned, now, is it? He was born to it. And since his father is my father, it seems to me that there’s nothing wrong with me getting a little bit of that, even if I didn’t happen to get the name.”
“You have a way of making things sound very reasonable,” Rachel replied.
“That is because I am a reasonable man.” He picked up the bottle of wine the innkeeper had brought to them and held it over her glass, raising his brows in question.
Rachel hesitated. It was also not proper for a well-bred lady to be drinking wine, especially so early in the day, and even more especially with a strange man. But who would know? And she felt so invigorated by her activities this morning, so much freer and more daring, that she could not resist trying something else that was not proper.
She nodded, and he poured her half a glass. Rachel took a sip. It was not very good wine, rather sour, actually, but she drank a few sips, just to do it.
Rachel leaned back in her chair, leveled a serious gaze on Hobson, and said, “Now, then, tell me why you are wanting to talk to Mrs. Birkshaw’s maid.”
When he hesitated, she prodded, “It’s only fair—I told you why I was there. And if we are to work together…”
“Yes. Of course, you are right.” Except, of course, Michael thought, that he could not tell her the truth—that the husband she thought incapable of pettiness was so jealous and suspicious that he saw the possibilities of murder in what had in all probability been a simple, natural death.
“I was hired,” he said, using Cooper’s explanation of Bow Street’s involvement, “by a cousin of the late Mrs. Birkshaw, who thought that her death was suspicious.”
“But Anthony was not even at home when she became ill, isn’t that true?”
Michael nodded, watching her with narrowed eyes. “Still, there is always some suspicion when a person dies at a young age…and when the spouse stands to inherit a great deal of money.”
“And who would inherit the money if Anthony Birkshaw were to be found to have killed his wife?” Rachel asked shrewdly.
“You are right, of course. The cousin would inherit, so there is self-interest behind his request.”
“I wonder if we could work together, then,” Rachel went on. “Would we not be working at cross-purposes—you to prove that Mr. Birkshaw did it and I to—”
“I would hope,” he put in, leaning forward and looking earnestly into Rachel’s eyes, “that we would both be looking for the same thing—the truth.”
Rachel felt as if it were suddenly difficult to breathe. She could not move her eyes from his, and she was unaccountably warm all over. They were talking about Anthony and a murder, but her wayward mind seemed to want to turn only to the kiss she had shared with this man yesterday.
“Yes, of course,” she said, scarcely noticing what she was saying.
His hand lay on the table, palm up, and she reached slowly across the table and touched the tips of his fingers with her own. His eyes, still locked on hers, darkened. He turned his hand so that their palms faced each other and slid his fingers through hers, interlacing them. His skin was searing. His eyes drew her in. Rachel leaned forward, too, stretching instinctively toward him.
CHAPTER 12
The handle of the door turned noisily, and both of them jumped at the sound. Rachel sat back in her chair, clasping her hands together in her lap as the innkeeper backed into the room, carrying a large tray. After him came a lad carrying another tray.
They busied themselves setting the trays down on a sideboard and bustling over to set the dishes of food on the table before them. Rachel looked away from Hobson, seizing the opportunity to bring her breathing—and her thinking—back under control. What had she been about to do! If the innkeeper had not barged in, what would have happened? Was she so weak, Rachel wondered, so unable to control her baser impulses, that she would have kissed Michael’s brother again? She could scarcely believe that she would have, yet neither would she have believed she would have reached out and taken his hand!
By the time the innkeeper had laid out their lunch and retired from the room, Rachel had her face set in calm lines again. She did not look at James as she dished out food onto her plate, but chattered in an aimless manner about how good the food looked, how delicious it smelled, how little she would have guessed that such an unassuming inn would turn out such fare.
It was a relief to her to stop talking and begin eating. She thought, with an inner spurt of amusement that it was probably a relief to Mr. Hobson, as well.
By the time they had finished eating, Rachel was able to look Hobson in the face again. She knew that she should not work with the man on the investigation any longer. Obviously, she thought, she had some sort of bizarre reaction to Michael’s half brother, some sort of…attraction, though she could hardly bring herself to think the word.
For his part, Michael was wondering what sort of insanity had prompted him to offer to let Rachel work on the case with him. There would be so much more possibility of his identity being discovered, not to mention the fact that he would be putting his gently bred wife into situations and places that were far from anything she had ever experienced in her sheltered life, even, perhaps, into possible danger, should it turn out that Birkshaw’s wife actually had been murdered.
But there had been such unhappiness in Rachel’s voice when she had talked about the way she thought people viewed her, about the boredom and lack of purpose in her life. He had wanted to protest that he did not think her useless or incapable at all, that yes, he wanted to protect her, but only because she was the dearest thing in life to him. But of course he could not tell her those things. And, wanting to lift her spirits—and, yes, wanting to be with her, he had to admit that, too—he had offered her this chance of working together. It was another symptom of the pure idiocy that seemed to af
flict him every time he was around her.
“About our working together…” he began.
His words sent a chill through Rachel. She was certain that he was about to rescind his offer, so she jumped in before he could say anything more.
“Yes, I suppose we had better divide our duties, hadn’t we? Well, I will talk to Mrs. Birkshaw’s maid. I do not know Lady Esterbrook well, but I am sure that she will permit me to question the maid,” she said, presenting him with the thing that made her participation useful—a personal lady’s maid was the person who a man, either genteel or common, would have the most difficulty getting to interview. “I shall start to work on it tomorrow. What will you do?”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I shall drop by the tavern most likely to be frequented by the servants from Birkshaw’s house and engage one of them in conversation.”
“And what if they don’t imbibe?” Rachel asked.
“Then I will have to find some way to approach them at his house. Confusion over a delivery is often a good way.”
“This could take some time, I suppose. How will we…communicate whatever we learn?”
“Send me a note and I’ll come around—no, that wouldn’t work.”
“No. I think my servants might find it a bit odd to see Michael dressed that way coming to pay a call on me. When I find out anything, I shall go to your sister’s house and tell you.”
“All right.” Michael knew that he should tell her not to come, to simply send a note with her news, but he could not. He wanted to see her again, wanted the chance to spend a few more moments with her. It was odd, but there was something freeing about being with Rachel like this, all the constraints that seemed to bind them as man and wife suddenly gone. She had talked to “James” with an ease that was both a joy and a stab of pain. Why had she never told him—Michael—about her feeling that others viewed her as useless and incompetent? Was he so remote? So difficult to approach? So unlikeable?