by Candace Camp
She froze, horror at what she was doing dawning on her face. “Oh! Oh, my God! What am I—you—you should be in bed.” She blushed red to the roots of her hair. “That is—I mean—I cannot do this. This is insane. You are drunk, and I—I am mad, I think.”
“Rachel! No!” He grabbed for her as she whirled and ran to the door. “Don’t go.”
“I must! I cannot stay! This is terrible. We cannot—I don’t know what came over me. I—please. I am going upstairs and changing back into my own clothes. Will you send a servant to fetch a hansom for me? Please…” she added when he hesitated.
“Yes.”
Rachel hurried from the room and dashed up the stairs. Lilith’s maid was there, and helped her out of her clothes and into Rachel’s own dress. When Rachel went back down the stairs, James Hobson was standing there, looking so much like Michael that it sent a fresh wave of guilt through her.
“Rachel…”
“No,” she said quickly, raising her hand. “Nothing like that must ever happen again. We cannot do this. I know it must not seem like it to you, but I am a woman of morals. I have a husband: I will not betray him in this way. You must understand.”
He did not answer, his eyes blazing.
“Promise me you will not—that this will not happen again. I cannot work with you anymore if we do not maintain our distance.”
“You want me,” he said in a low voice that sent a shiver through her. “I know you do. I can feel it in you.”
“That does not mean that I have to give in to it,” Rachel replied firmly.
He looked away, then said, “All right. I understand. You will not make love with any man but your husband.”
“Yes. That’s right. You have to agree to that.”
“I agree.”
“Very well. Then…goodbye.” She hesitated, then walked around him and out the front door.
* * *
Rachel stayed in her house the next day, not at home to anyone. There was no one she wanted to see except James Hobson, nothing she wanted to do except be with him. It was insanity, she told herself; if she continued seeing him, it would be sure to lead to disaster. For the first time since her wedding, she was under Eros’s spell, and it shook her to the core. She had always thought of herself as a loyal, trustworthy, honest woman, one who would never think of being unfaithful. Yet last night, she had been only a hairbreadth away from going to bed with her husband’s brother!
Hobson had had some excuse; he had been inebriated. She, on the other hand, had been clearheaded—well, no, she thought, she had not been clearheaded at all, but her mind had not been fogged by alcohol. It had been made hazy only by her own passions. She could scarcely believe that she had done what she had done, felt the way she had felt.
It was only after much cogitation that she arrived at what she thought must be the answer: the excitement and fear that had sprung into being at Hobson’s close brush with death, the worry and tension of tending to his wound, had upset her so that she simply had not been herself. They had caused her to act in a way that was completely unlike her.
In the normal course of events, she would not have done that, she decided. Therefore, it was not something that would occur again, because they would not again be put into such a situation. Surely Mr. Hobson was not shot at every day of his life.
Besides, she had faced the fact of her attraction to James Hobson and had told him that she would not sleep with him. He had accepted what she said and had agreed to their not acting on their desire, either last night or in the future. With both of them avowed to it, there would be no giving in to the highly inappropriate lust they felt.
Therefore, the next day, when she received a note from James Hobson stating that he planned to visit the footman that afternoon, she was able to send back a reply that she would come to his sister’s house at one o’clock. There would not, she told herself, be any chance of what had happened the other night happening again.
“How is your arm?” she asked James politely as he swung up into the hansom and settled in the seat across from her. Sternly she ignored the little leap of pleasure she had felt when she saw him.
“It’s all right,” he assured her, although she knew he was lying from the grimace of pain he made as he sat down in the carriage and from the awkward way in which he carried the arm. “Fortunately, it is my left arm, so it should not hamper me much.”
“Have you any better idea who did it? Or why?”
He shook his head. “Sir Robert went across the street and managed to get onto the roof. There is a handy place to hide and brace oneself behind the chimney, and the tiles there are scuffed and one broken. He thinks the assailant must have fired from there. It is of little help, however. Everyone we questioned in the buildings around here disclaimed all knowledge of the shooting or anything connected to it. There is little I can do to protect myself except resolve this mystery.”
“Or the others you are working on.”
“Yes. Or the others.”
His eyes swept over Rachel’s figure, and a faint smile touched his lips. “I see you must have raided your maid’s closet.”
Rachel had, indeed, worn a dress borrowed from her maid, a brown gabardine with a plain round collar and equally plain buttons all the way up the front to her throat. “Yes, and she clearly thought I was quite mad to ask her for it.”
He grinned, a twinkle in his eyes, as he said, “I liked the other one better.”
She colored at his reference to the much more revealing scarlet dress she had put on the other day, but she could not suppress an answering smile. Rachel had been afraid that things would be terribly awkward between them after their lustful kisses two days before, but his teasing remark had broken the ice. She could not help but wish that it was as simple to feel at ease around his brother.
It was not as difficult to find the footman’s address as it had been to find Martha’s the other day, and the hansom dropped them off almost in front of his door. His room lay around on the side of the building and up a narrow staircase, and he opened the door quickly at James’s knock.
It seemed as if he were expecting someone else, for he frowned when he saw the two of them standing on his doorstep. “’Ere now, ’oo are you?”
“My name is really not important,” Hobson said, putting his arm firmly against the door to prevent the man from closing it, then stepping into the room. Rachel followed right on his heels.
The other man glowered but stepped aside and allowed them to enter, closing the door after them. Rachel glanced around the room. It was dark, for there was but one window and its shutters were only partway open, but there was enough light to see that it was a fairly large room with a sturdy if small bed, as well as a table and two chairs, and a small oak chest of drawers. It was not, however, a clean room; it was clear the occupant had not dusted in weeks or swept the floor, either, and the bed was an untidy pile of bed linens.
Hobson pulled out one of the straight-back chairs for her to sit in, bending down first to dust it off with his handkerchief. She sat down, and he stood beside her, both of them turned to face the other man.
“Ben Hargreaves?” James asked.
“An’ wot if I was?” the other man retorted sullenly.
“Then you would be the man I was looking for,” James replied easily, reaching into his pocket and taking out a crown. Idly he flipped the gold coin in his hand, steadily watching Hargreaves.
Hargreaves looked from James to the coin and back. “I’m Hargreaves. Wot you want from me?”
“A little information, that’s all. I understand that you once worked for a Mr. Anthony Birkshaw. Is that correct?”
The other man stiffened and looked at James warily. “Aye—an’ if I did?”
“I also understand that you were working for him at the time that Mrs. Birkshaw took ill and died,” James went on.
“Aye.”
“And that you brought her food on a tray every day while she was ill.”
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�Wot of it?” Hargreaves retorted somewhat defiantly.
“Nothing. I merely wanted to establish that you are the right man.”
“Wot are you talkin’ about?” the man growled. “The right man for wot?”
“For this gold coin,” James said, flipping the coin in the air and catching it neatly. “I want you to tell me about Mrs. Birkshaw’s death. How did it happen?”
“’Ow?” the former footman replied blankly. “She took sick, like, and died, that’s ’ow.”
“I was hoping for a trifle more detail.”
The man sighed. “She must of ate something wot made ’er feel bad. She just started sickin’ up ’er food one night. Wasn’t the first time, I can tell you. She took bad like that often enough. Only that time she didn’t stop. That’s when they started sending ’er food on trays. She didn’t feel like getting out o’ bed, see.”
“Do you remember what you took her?”
“Soup, mostly. It was covered up, like. I didn’t take off the covers and look.” He shrugged.
“And did you carry it to her door and leave it there, or did you carry it into the room?”
“Usually knocked on the door and that snooty maid of ’ers took it from me.”
“And this was both before and after Mr. Birkshaw returned home?”
“Yeah. Wot of it? I didn’t do nothin’ wrong, just carried it to her door.”
“Right, then, let’s say you didn’t do nothing wrong.” Rachel noticed that Hobson’s speech was rougher and more heavily accented when he talked to this man than it was with her. Now that she thought about it, it occurred to her that his speech had been rougher when she first met him. He was, she thought, something of a reverse snob, wanting others to think that he was harder and more unrefined than he was. “What about the others? Maybe you saw somebody else put something into Mrs. Birkshaw’s food. Downstairs, maybe, before you took the tray, or upstairs after you handed the soup over to Martha.”
“No. Course not,” he replied, his face set. ‘’Oo’d be puttin’ somethin’ in the missus’ food?”
“It could have been medicine,” Rachel suggested.
“Someone could have poured something out of a little vial or scattered something atop her food.”
Hargreaves narrowed his eyes at her. “Now, why would anybody do that?”
Rachel did not answer, merely raised her eyebrows and looked at him until he shifted nervously and turned away.
“Who you workin’ for now?” Hobson asked.
“Nobody.” The man seemed relieved to change the subject. “I’m me own man.”
“Mmm.” James glanced around the room. “Nice room you got. Big.”
“I like it.” He crossed his arms and glared at James. “Wot’s it to you?”
“Nothin’.” James shrugged and touched Rachel lightly on the shoulder. “I guess we’ll go now.”
Hargreaves frowned. “’Oo are you, anyway? Wot you doin’ ’ere?”
“Earnin’ a livin’, same as you,” Hobson replied.
Rachel walked with James out of the room, but once the door was closed behind them, she turned to him, saying in protest, “Why did we leave? Why didn’t you ask him anything else?”
“Such as what? ‘Did you kill Mrs. Birkshaw?”’ James suggested. “He would not have told us.” They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and he turned right.
“You could have asked where he got the money to live, since he is not employed,” Rachel suggested.
He shrugged. “He would not have told us the truth.”
“What shall we do now then?”
“Well, I thought we might go back to the inn we visited the other day for some luncheon.”
Rachel chuckled. “That sounds very nice,” she said, ignoring the little voice inside her that warned that another secluded luncheon in a private room with this man was not the wisest course she could take. “But what I meant was what was the next stop in the investigation?”
“Oh. Well, I shall come back here and spend a few evenings in that tavern down the street, see what his neighbors have to say about him, find out how freely he has been spending money and for how long. Then, I think, Bow Street might be interested in talking to him.”
Rachel started to speak, but he forestalled her, holding up a hand and saying, “No.”
“You didn’t even let me say anything.”
“The answer is still no. You cannot go to the tavern with me. It would inhibit everyone, including me, to have a woman with me while I am drinking with the people there. I don’t care how you dressed. I would find out nothing.”
Rachel grimaced, knowing that he was right, but feeling left out anyway. “It’s not fair.”
“No,” he agreed placidly. “The world seldom is.”
There was something about the way he said the words that reminded Rachel suddenly and so intensely of Michael that it made her chest squeeze in pain. What was she doing here? It was wrong, no matter what she said to herself about it.
“However,” he went on, not noticing the change in her expression, “you can go with me to interview someone else. In fact, I imagine your presence is necessary.”
“Who?” Rachel asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Your friend Mr. Birkshaw.”
“Anthony?” Rachel repeated in surprise. “Why?”
“I have been wondering about some things. Why did he tell you this story about his wife’s death now?”
“I told you—he thought that Michael could help him.”
“No. I mean, why now? Why at this particular time, six or seven months after she died, did he suddenly decide to investigate her death? What made him wonder if it was murder, given the fact that everyone at the time seemed to have assumed that it was merely an illness?”
“I don’t know. Why did Mrs. Birkshaw’s relatives hire you right now?”
“What? Oh. They, um, hired a Bow Street Runner some time ago. He found nothing, so finally he told them that I might be willin’ to do it. I’ve had some luck with a few things.”
“I see.” Rachel nodded. “I guess it is a trifle strange, isn’t it? After all this time…”
“It occurs to me, maybe this fellow Birkshaw knows something else.”
“All right. Let’s go see Mr. Birkshaw,” Rachel agreed.
Michael glanced at her in some surprise. Jealousy had been roiling deep inside him from the moment he learned she had talked to Anthony Birkshaw, and it had only increased the other night when she had taken Anthony’s side, arguing that it could not be he who had killed his wife. He would have expected her to protest the two of them going to see the man.
She frowned. “But how are we to explain you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, your resemblance to Michael. He will be certain to notice.”
He shrugged. “What does it matter? Tell him I am Westhampton’s half brother.” Even as he said it, he realized how much it would further entangle him in this nonsensical story of Lilith’s; the existence of this phantom bastard brother would be all over the Ton.
“Oh, no,” Rachel protested quickly. “It would be bound to get out somehow, and then Michael would be embarrassed. He doesn’t even know about you. I could not possibly give Mr. Birkshaw that knowledge when Michael doesn’t even know.”
He looked at her, oddly touched. “Well, then, I shall simply pretend to be Michael.”
“What?” She stared at him.
“Yes. You bring me a suit of his clothes, and I shall put it on. I can seem quite the aristocrat if I choose.” He assumed a haughty expression, raising his chin and looking down his nose. “Here. You. Bring around my carriage, there’s a good fellow.” He whipped his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it delicately to his nose. “Egad, how the masses smell. ’Tis positively ghastly.”
Rachel chuckled at his performance. “You cannot act like that if you expect him to believe you are Michael.”
He smiled. “I shall moderate it a bit, then.�
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“What about your hair?”
He shrugged. “Does he know Lord Westhampton that well? Will he not just think that he was mistaken as to the color of his hair?”
“Yes, you are probably right. That would be much more likely, of course.”
They reached the The Red Boar, the inn where they had eaten the other day, and were once again ushered into the private dining room.
“I thought it would be better if we talked here,” he explained. “I dislike imposing on my sister any more than I have to, and, well, it isn’t exactly a proper place for a lady like you—especially when Sir Robert is there.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow. “You need not protect me, Mr. Hobson. I am a grown woman—and married.”
“Still…it is an awkward situation.”
“I am surprised—” Rachel began, then stopped, aware that what she had been about to say might sound rude.
“You are surprised by what?”
She shifted a little uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, I am just a bit surprised that you take Mrs. Neeley’s…relationship with Sir Robert so equably.”
He smiled faintly. “Truth is, I have little to say about the matter. She is, as you pointed out about yourself, a grown woman.”
“That would scarcely stop my brother,” Rachel commented wryly.
“No, I am sure not,” Michael agreed, with a grin.
“What did you say?” Rachel looked at him oddly.
Michael realized that he had made a slip. He should not know what Devin Aincourt was like. “I, uh, I mean, he is an aristocrat, and I cannot imagine one of them not having the arrogance to run your life.”
“Well, Dev is not arrogant,” Rachel defended her brother. “But he would feel he had to protect me.”
“Lilith does not need protection from Rob. He is—I know him well. We worked together during the war. The fact is, he loves my sister very much. I am sure that he would, in fact, defy all the social rules and marry her if he were free to do so.”
“He is married?”
He nodded. “It is a terrible situation.”
“An arranged marriage?”