“Rochland,” he began placatingly, the back of his neck prickling wildly. “I think—”
But the major continued as if he hadn’t said a word. “…or at least arrange a time to kill him. What say you, Westleigh? Dawn in some clearing? I’ve heard you are more than handy with a pistol so I choose swords. Name your seconds.”
“I’m not naming anything,” Stephen snapped. “Is this some sort of joke? Did someone put you up to it? Because I have to say it is in extremely poor taste.”
“Wrong,” said Rochland, half stalking, half stumbling forward, righteous fury etched across his face. “Extremely poor taste is you accusing me of murdering some young lightskirt. I’ve never even met a Clara Matthews.”
Caroline swayed, her fingers clawing his arm. “Wh…what? Clara from the docks, Clara? She’s dead, Stephen?”
“Yes,” he bit out, furious at the other man for his lunatic ramblings. Not even drunkenness could excuse this. “But I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, Major, I never accused you of anything.”
“I got a very detailed note this evening,” said Rochland, now mere feet away. “Which makes you a filthy liar as well as a bastard. You’re not fit to hold the title. You’re not a quarter of the man Hallmere was.”
Every muscle in Stephen’s body turned to stone. “You’re drunk,” he said quietly. “I suggest you take my wife’s advice and go sleep it off. Hopefully you won’t remember in the morning exactly how ridiculously you acted.”
Rochland smiled. In a surprisingly swift action, he swung his fist at Stephen’s face, bone and bone connecting with a sickening, painful crunch. Damn. He reeled at the unexpected blow, his ear ringing, yet still heard Caroline’s muffled scream.
“Major Rochland,” she hissed. “What are you doing? Stephen are you all right?”
“Stay well back,” Stephen growled, shucking off his dark blue superfine jacket in one harsh movement, arm swiping at the small trickle of blood escaping from a cut cheek. “The soldier and I have matters to discuss.”
As soon as Caroline scrambled to the relative safety of a spot between two empty carriages, he threw a brutal right hook of his own, and Rochland’s head snapped backwards. Good. It seemed his ‘discussion’ with Sir Malcolm had been an adequate warm up. Rochland eventually came back at him hard, but he easily feinted left to avoid it, then plowed a fist into the other man’s stomach. Tonight they wouldn’t be exchanging a few blows, spitting a few curses then sharing a bottle somewhere. There was a dark, ugly undercurrent here, like Rochland truly wanted a fight to the death.
But why? He’d only met the man the other day. And as for that horseshit about a written murder accusation…
A weak jab barely grazed his shoulder, and he immediately retaliated with a left cross/right uppercut combination to his opponent’s face.
“Oooof,” groaned Rochland as he stumbled, his cheek puffy and one eye rapidly swelling shut.
Stephen gritted his teeth. All icing and no cake, but the soldier refused to slink away. He glanced again at the group of coachmen. Still engrossed in their cards and utterly useless, but the fewer witnesses to this madness, the better. The last thing he wanted was an appearance in the scandal rags due to this Bedlamite.
“Rochland,” he muttered, “For God’s sake—”
“That all you got, Westleigh?” the major spat, wiping sweat, blood flecks and spittle from his chin with a sleeve. “Opium-eating milksop. Soon as I’m finished with you, I’m going to fuck your wife all night. Body like hers is made for punishment, bet she’d beg for it too. With us both having brown hair, no one will ever know the brat is mine. Except you.”
Thud.
Rochland sprawled on the hard cobblestones, blood gushing from a thoroughly misshapen nose. Yet seconds later a bone-chilling roar reverberated as the man rolled onto his knees, launched himself up at Stephen and bear-hugged him in a wrestling hold, his boot heels scraping the ground as he tried to hook a foot around Stephen’s ankle and trip him over.
He could hear Caroline’s frightened gasps in the background, but didn’t dare take his eyes off his opponent. Not when they were spinning around and around, him forcing a forearm under Rochland’s chin to shove him away, the soldier hanging on like a barnacle.
“Oi! What’s goin’ on!”
Time slowed to a crawl, and he couldn’t exactly say how the next events actually came about. In the space of a moment, four coachmen were sprinting towards them and Rochland’s whole body jerked and collapsed hard against him.
“Bassstard…” the soldier hissed, the unnatural sound sending cold chills down his spine. Stephen staggered backwards under the inert weight, lost his footing on the uneven ground and fell heavily.
“Stephen?” said Caroline, and he wanted to see her, reassure that apart from seeing stars he was fine. That Rochland had just passed out, but he couldn’t get the drunken fool off him.
Suddenly she screamed.
“Ma’am?” said an urgent but unfamiliar voice. “Ma’am? What’s wrong?”
There was a long pause, then someone else breathed “Jaysus…”
Stephen blinked furiously, trying to wade through the fog in his brain. Christ, Rochland was heavy. And wet. How could anyone sweat so much? Yet even as the thought lodged, he stilled at a horrifically familiar scent. Not sickly-sweet, but metallic. Blood. Lots of it. As from a mortal wound. Had he been shot? He didn’t seem to hurt anywhere except a tender cheek from Rochland’s first blow and a bruised backside, but he was cold and so damned dizzy.
Eventually he managed to coordinate his limbs, and half-slid out from underneath the other man. Then he saw the dagger. Buried solidly to the highly decorated hilt in Rochland’s white-shirted back and surrounded by a large red stain.
A very familiar weapon.
Most recently on display in his own library.
Rocked to the core, he lifted and stared blankly at his blood covered hands. Black spots swirled in his vision and bile burned his stomach and throat.
Had he just killed a man?
“I’m not. I didn’t,” he muttered jerkily. “A doctor. Call for a doctor.”
Two of the coachmen gently lifted Rochland’s body away from Stephen, their eyes flint hard. Accusing. Another knelt down and pressed two fingers to the major’s neck. He shook his head and spat on the ground near Stephen’s boot. “No damned point callin’ for a sawbones. What we need is a constable. Looks like your knife to the back did the poor bugger good and proper, may he rest in peace.”
Horror choked him. He was a murderer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Right sorry, guv, but there seems to be a spot of trouble up ahead. Cor, look at that! It’s a gent being taken away, all covered in blood. Wonder who he is.”
He smiled grimly at the hackney driver. “The Earl of Westleigh.”
“Westleigh? Never you say! Always heard he was a good sort.”
“Wolf in sheep’s clothing, my friend. Do you think they would ever take away a lord unless they had ample proof of his guilt?”
The older man shrugged. “Guess they wouldn’t, at that. You want to stay an’ gawp with the crowd or carry on?”
“Let’s be on our way. Quite a distance to travel.”
“Aye then,” said the driver, expertly brandishing his whip as they ducked and weaved around meandering passer-bys, carriages and carts.
Eminently satisfied, he sat back in his seat and glanced up at the heavens. Had she watched his tireless crusade for justice? Did she nod and smile?
Because all this was for her, his lost beloved.
His angel.
Hermia.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Do I need to repeat the question, Lord Westleigh?”
Stephen stared coolly at the senior constable. The stuffy, sparsely furnished room might be shrinking by the minute, but by God he wouldn’t blink first. Verity and his much younger, greener colleague Fyfe had been first to arrive at Ardmore’s courtyard after the alar
m was raised, and they’d politely offered the option of Forsyth House or their Wapping offices for a ‘discussion’. Stephen had immediately chosen Wapping; as if he wanted those two ferret-faces traipsing through his home and scaring his staff. But as the hours passed and the questions got more direct, he’d begun to yearn rather pathetically for the spacious comfort of his own domain. And a few dozen bottles of whisky.
“No, Mr. Verity.”
“I must say, you aren’t being very helpful. May I remind you a man is dead in highly suspicious circumstances?”
Like he needed reminding.
The suffocating heaviness of a corpse sprawled on top of him, the gut-roiling stench of blood and gore and death on his hands, his hair and soaked through his evening clothes would be difficult to forget. As would the sight of Caroline’s face when she’d stared at him with shocked, uncertain eyes. Somehow her reaction was the worst part of the entire evening. He knew she recognized the ceremonial yet deadly sharp dagger, a gift from his father when he’d graduated from Cambridge, which usually sat in a display case on the mantelpiece above his library fireplace. But for his wife to ponder guilt, to think he might commit murder let alone something as despicable as stab an unarmed man in the back, felt like a thousand jabs to the solar plexus.
Stephen forced himself to breathe evenly. Verity might look like a favorite uncle with his neatly-pressed clothing, salt and pepper hair and deep-set amber eyes, but he was a cunning old bastard. Getting agitated and punching him in the nose would not help anything, no matter how temporarily pleasant it might be. “I am well aware of the outcome of events, Mr. Verity. What I am unable to assist you with is exactly how they occurred.”
“Hmmm,” Verity replied, continuing his slow pace around the perimeter of the room, the labored drag and shuffle of his booted feet against the stone floor about as annoying a sound as could be mustered. “Then perhaps Mr. Fyfe should summarize the key points again. It might help your recollection of matters.”
Fyfe beamed like a puppy given an unexpected treat. It was perhaps unfortunate the rookie constable also resembled one, with his rumpled clothing, equally rumpled light brown hair and wide brown eyes.
“Of course, Mr. Verity. Number one…”
“That really isn’t necessary,” Stephen bit out.
“All right,” said Verity. “Perhaps we should just start at the point where it all gets rather, er…hazy.”
Stay calm. You are not a murderer.
“I wouldn’t say hazy,” he replied as steadily as possible.
“Oh? I do beg your pardon. What would you say?”
“I would say difficult to explain. One minute Rochland and I were fighting, the next he slumped hard against my chest, whispered the word ‘bastard’ and died.”
“I’m not surprised. A six-inch blade had just been buried with great force in his back.”
Stephen ground his teeth. “But not by me.”
“So you say. And yet you admit the dagger belongs to you.”
“That is correct. But it’s a showpiece which sits in a display cabinet. Not an everyday method of protection.”
Verity paused in his pacing, his sympathetic nod at odds with sharp, cold eyes. While Fyfe seemed reasonably professional, it had been obvious from the outset the older man despised his chief suspect. If the senior constable had his way Stephen probably would have been packed up and sent straight to the gallows at Tyburn, never mind any kind of investigation or trial.
“Do you ever carry a weapon on your person, Lord Westleigh?”
“Occasionally.”
“Are you proficient with a dagger?”
“Adequate enough, I suppose.”
“But you’re so good with a pistol,” said Fyfe, his tone more than a little admiring. “And fists. I’ve heard very few can outlast you at Jackson’s. Stands to reason you’d be better than adequate with a dagger.”
Stephen shifted uncomfortably. Much like gambling, there were too many variables with knife throwing so he’d never really taken the skill seriously. “I assure you, Mr. Fyfe, I am not.”
“Although,” mused Verity, “stabbing a drunken man in the back does not require great ability.”
“I did not kill Major Rochland.”
“Yet four men of good standing found you on the ground under Rochland’s bloodied corpse. Tell me, my lord, did you enjoy that?”
“Excuse me?” he said incredulously.
Verity perched on the small wooden table in front of him, folded his scrawny arms and tilted his head. God. The face might be ferret but his eyes were coldly hypnotic, like being sized up by a viper. Stephen would put a large investment on this man being incredibly successful at gaining criminal confessions in rapid time.
“Oh, I know all about noblemen and their vices, Lord Westleigh. Demon drink. Loose women. Illicit substances. Yet there are a small percentage who are also excited by, shall we say, pleasures of a darker kind. Are you one of them?”
Bile rose in the back of Stephen’s throat and he coughed. “No, Mr. Verity. I do not find death exciting in any way, shape or form.”
“Yet you’ve danced with it so often recently. At the Bruce Estate. On a Piccadilly footpath. Now Lord Ardmore’s courtyard. And death did gift you all you have, did it not? In your place, some men might consider themselves beyond fortunate.”
Stephen leapt to his feet. It was fifty-four years since the last peer, Earl Ferrers, danced on the wind at Tyburn for murdering his steward. The crowds were probably itching for another spectacle like that, and he was about to oblige them by killing a senior constable. Regrettably his place in the annals of criminal history was interrupted by the door banging open. In the space stood a vaguely familiar ginger-haired man wearing clothing even more rumpled than Fyfe’s, and looking as though he hadn’t slept or seen sunshine in at least two years.
“Ah, Lord Westleigh,” the stranger said politely. “Thank you, gentlemen, but I shall take it from here.”
“Sir,” protested Verity, clearly annoyed. “I’d like to continue this line of questioning. I do believe we may be getting somewhere.”
The ginger said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow, and both constables bowed low and practically sprinted from the room. Whoever this man was, he held a great deal of power.
Stephen’s gaze narrowed. “Pardon my ignorance, sir, as I think perhaps we may have met before, but who are you?”
The man smiled briefly. “Call me White.”
Bloody hell. He was William’s employer, the coordinator of the government’s intelligence operations.
“Well, White, how does a man of your standing come to be involved in a run of the mill murder investigation?”
“Considering the players involved, it’s hardly run of the mill, now is it?”
“Spare me the repartee. Between a ball, a death and a long interrogation, I’ve about had enough for one evening. Why are you really here?”
White leaned against the table, utterly unperturbed. “Blunt, just like your father was. I like that. England lost a fine brain when he died although from what I hear you surpass him, and Standish too. Never understood mathematics, rows of gibberish to me, but languages, ah, now there is something to sink your teeth into. The power of words can never, ever be underestimated—”
“I’m sure William greatly enjoys your scintillating conversations.”
“But of course. Hard for ton men to have intelligent discourse while they’re choking to death on perfume or brandy. Who do you think sent Rochland the note regarding Clara Matthews?”
Stephen blinked at the lightning fast topic change. “I have no idea.”
“Who do you believe murdered Rochland?”
“Are you saying you don’t think it was me?”
“I’ve seen the dagger. Concealing something that size in what you are currently wearing is not plausible. Neither is suggesting you removed it singlehandedly from a sheath while fighting. I’ve also seen the body and the wound site. One clean point of entrance,
straight in, no deviation and full depth. Impossible for someone with his arms pinned and in motion to inflict such an injury.”
“Indeed,” Stephen said softly, the large block of stone in his gut slowly beginning to dissolve.
“Lady Westleigh said it was as if the dagger just appeared.”
“You’ve spoken with my wife?”
“Of course. She is a key witness. Now where was I? Oh yes, the dagger. My expert, although terribly unimpressed to be dragged from his slumber, concurred. He believes the weapon was thrown, with vigor, from at least twenty feet away.”
Stephen looked away and rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin, lest White see the sudden moisture in his eyes.
“You move fast,” he muttered at last.
“Occasionally. But before you add me to your Christmas gift list, I am involved because of Rochland, not you. We’ve been keeping an eye on the major and his chums for some time now, especially since your father and brother’s…accidents. When I heard of the girl Matthews’ death after last being seen at their dock offices, then Rochland attacking you because he received an accusatory note, let’s just say my curiosity was well and truly piqued.”
“But why is this happening? Why are these people being killed?”
White pinned him with a very direct look. “I can think of two far better questions, Lord Westleigh. Firstly, who was able to remove that dagger from your home? And secondly, who holds such a grudge against you that he or she would go to rather elaborate lengths to frame you for murder?”
~ * ~
Click clack. Click clack. Click clack.
Caroline smiled extra sweetly at the scowling desk clerk as she paced the length of the dungeon-like waiting area. The sound of her heels might be frightfully loud, but sitting down and pretending everything was fine simply wasn’t an option. Not with her husband currently the number one suspect in what appeared a rather cut and dried murder.
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