A Devilish Slumber

by Shereen Vedam

  “If she was your friend once, how can you now believe her capable of murder?”

  “I have my reasons.” Phillip swallowed the remnants of his wine and refilled his glass.

  She shook her head when he offered to refill hers. “What reasons? If I am to assist with this investigation, should I not know everything?”

  “Rest assured, I will inform you of all you need to know.”

  “If you will not divulge what you have against her, then tell me what you have for her? Your feelings may influence your decision. How do you see the lady? Is she inconsequential? Has she hurt you? Have you harmed her?”

  “Enough.” The order was rapped.

  Good. He was angry and she preferred that fierce passion to the cold calculating man who had outlined his plans to use her weakness for him against her. When she was about to ask another provocative question, he forestalled it with a raised hand.

  Lowering his arm, he rested his head back and closed his eyes. “Several years back, some members of Parliament insisted that confidential information had been mysteriously stolen. It caused quite a stir, as you can imagine. Everybody suspected everyone else. I took on the case. My inquiries led me to Lady Roselyn Ravenstock and her sister, who had recently become acquainted with the men in question. Both young ladies had attended their dinner parties in the company of their uncle.”

  Rose’s heart skipped in dread and despair. This was the explanation she had wanted three years ago, but he had refused to satisfy her. She had to ask her worst suspicion. “You suspected Lady Roselyn of treason?”

  “All three were suspects. I arranged to be introduced to first one Ravenstock sister and then the other. Both had golden hair, but only one sister’s smile melted my heart.”

  Rose shivered at that admission and prayed it had been hers.

  He rested his elbows on his knees and stared into his goblet as if seeing the past there. He swirled the liquid. “Soon after making their acquaintance, I met Mr. Milleau, their uncle on their father’s side. He had a greater influence on the elder sister. Not surprising, since she had been given into his charge after the girls’ parents died. Under his guidance, Lady Evelyn grew up poised and daring. Lady Roselyn, brought up by her grandmother, was shy, timid, and easier to bend to my will.”

  Rose drew in a sharp breath. So, he had befriended her to plunder her family’s secrets. He had not cared about her at all. She wanted to run away, to leave this cozy nest. This man was not her friend. She set her glass on the table and stood.

  Phillip sat back and followed her movement. “Were my actions beyond your boundary for gentlemanly behavior, Turner? Have I lost all integrity in your eyes?”

  Yes, she wanted to shout.

  “This is my role in life, Ben, to protect the kingdom. It is what I live for and do, to the best of my ability. If that means you cannot condone me as your friend, so be it.”

  Their gazes locked and surprisingly, she saw loneliness there. The same sense of isolation that was often reflected in her looking glass. She glanced at the door and then, without a word, she returned to her seat. After all, was this not exactly what she wanted to hear? Phillip’s side of their story.

  “I called on Rose,” he said. “Invited her to ride with me, took her to the opera, and appeared at every ball she attended to procure my two allowed dance sets. She spoke easily about herself and her family. I concluded that her uncle and sister worked to pass information to the French. A few weeks into the Season, I had all the proof I needed to turn in Lady Evelyn Ravenstock and her uncle to the authorities for treason.”

  His story unraveled like a train chugging along a familiar track. “One evening, during a card party, I arranged a moment alone with Rose, to warn her of what would happen the next morning. Instead, unable to resist, I kissed her. Ben, you cannot imagine how complete I felt with her in my arms. For the first time, I knew whom I belonged with in this life. I balked at telling her the truth and risking losing her regard. So that night, after I escorted both sisters home, I asked Rose to arrange a meeting between her grandmother and myself.”

  She remembered that request. “To discuss Lady Evelyn?”

  “To beg her grandmother’s permission to marry Rose.”

  Rose sagged back, stunned, elated, and confused. Events of that terrible night returned in a tumble of flashes. Eve screeching that Phillip was a spy. That he meant to hurt the family.

  Their uncle insisting that he and Eve must leave for France. Immédiatement!

  Eve begging her to change places with her to draw Phillip away.

  No! Rose’s unyielding answer had brought stunned silence. She had never refused her beloved sister anything. But she would not countenance lying to Phillip. She loved him. He would never lie to her. If Eve was in trouble, he could help.

  Her uncle dragged Eve out the front door as she shouted and screamed for Rose to help her.

  Her frail grandmother had clung to Rose’s arm with an astonishingly fierce grip.

  “I had their house watched, of course,” Phillip continued in a soft voice. “Lady Evelyn and her uncle must have suspected something, because they made a run for the coast. When word came of their preemptive departure, I gave chase.”

  She knew the rest. The carriage had careened over a cliff. Eve and their uncle were thrown into the sea. The pain of her sister’s death surfaced again, but Rose pushed it away, focusing instead of Phillip’s version of this sad story.

  “I told Rose what those two had done, of my pursuit. I gave her a week to come to terms with the tragic events and then sought her out, but she refused my every attempt to contact her.” He turned in his seat to speak to her, one palm open as if pleading for her understanding. “Ben, you cannot imagine how much I regretted my part in her sister’s death. But Rose would not forgive me.”

  Back then, Rose believed that if you loved someone, you could not lie to them. But she loved Phillip—there was no denying that after his kiss earlier today—and yet she had done nothing but lie to him for the past two days. In continuing her pretense as Ben, she was lying now.

  So, was it not possible that Phillip had truly loved her? Perhaps still did? He might have used her to obtain information, but in the course of his work, he fell in love with her. Why else would he have intended to offer for her?

  The heaviness that had resided with her since that terrible night began to lift. She gazed at him with eyes stripped of that pervasive sense of betrayal. “Ask Lady Roselyn’s forgiveness again. She may be ready to hear your side of events now.”

  “Hah!” His open hand clenched into a fist.

  Rose did not need that cue—his bitter tone said it all.

  “Have you forgotten that she is our prime suspect, Turner?”

  Turner again, no longer Ben. He was closing down. “Surely you do not really believe that, sir? How can you both love her and suspect her of murder?”

  He jumped up and strode away. “Did I say I loved her?”

  “It is obvious that you did once and might still do.”

  “You are ever the optimist, Turner.” Phillip turned with a crooked smile that did not reach his eyes. “How can I love someone who is a cold-blooded murderess?”

  “We do not know that!”

  “I do!”

  “You do not.” It was her turn to jump up and face him. “Our evidence encompasses some crumpled, half-written invitations. Mrs. Beaumont may not have even sent such a note, but merely worked on one. The woman described by the man on the docks could be any one of a hundred women. Just because the murderess had blond hair and was the right height does not make her Lady Roselyn. There are many Roselyns in London.”

  “She was there.” He spoke in a firm unwavering voice.

  “You cannot be sure of that.”

  “Oh, but I can.”

  Why mus
t he persist in the belief that she had killed Helen? She had been nowhere near that warehouse before today. She wished she had not thrown Helen’s letter with the newspaper account of her death into the hearth last night. For this morning, Hannah, wrongfully assuming her mistress did not want either, had used them as tinder to start the morning fires. “Do you not want to believe in her innocence?”

  “I would love to do so, Turner. There is one tiny difficulty with that option.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I saw her leave the warehouse that night.”

  “What?”

  “Rose ran out of the warehouse, blood on her gown, eyes wild with the fever of having killed. I know that look. I have seen it on many a guilty man. Torn between assisting Mrs. Beaumont on the chance she was still alive and apprehending the culprit, I chose the former.”

  Rose’s world shuddered. This was why he had been so certain that Ben Turner was not the killer. But it had been late at night when Helen died. Why must he be so quick to jump to conclusions? “Maybe this killer just looked a little like her. How can you be so certain?”

  “This was in Mrs. Beaumont’s fist.” He took a cloth out of his pocket and flung it onto her lap.

  She glanced at the scrunched-up material, a sickening feeling building in her guts. Slowly, she opened up the crumpled handkerchief, her gaze going swiftly to the top right corner in search of the crest. It was there. A raven, its feet splayed. Rose’s heart thudded in shock. She could not tear her gaze away from the bird’s feet. With trembling fingers, she brought it closer for inspection. Her mother used to make a game of it between Rose and Eve, sewing these family crests.

  No one else would likely notice the difference but each member of the family had a different letter depicted on the raven’s feet. M for her Melinda, her mother. P for Penelope, her grandmother. R for Roselyn. And as the three prongs clearly noted on this handkerchief, E for her sister, Evelyn.

  But Eve was dead.

  “We were unable to recover her body. She is presumed dead.” Those were Phillip’s exact words the day he came to deliver the devastating news about the carriage accident.

  Presumed dead.

  Only her uncle’s body and that of the carriage driver had been recovered, floating face down in the ocean. Eve’s was assumed to have been swept out with the tide. Every year for the past three years, Rose had placed flowers at Eve’s gravesite, but belowground, her casket was empty.

  I have news about your family, Helen had written to Rose before she died. That reminder bolstered her spirits. Helen could have come across the handkerchief somewhere in her travels. Or someone could have sent it to her. From France, where Eve lived for many years. That could be what she wanted to speak to Rose about.

  Her mind was a riot of confusing thoughts. She could not fathom what was true and what was false anymore. All that really mattered was that Phillip truly believed she was capable of murder. As if in a dream, she returned the handkerchief to him. “Why were you there that night, sir?”

  He shoved the cloth into his pocket and began to pace across the length of the room. “I, too, received a note from Mrs. Beaumont that day. She asked me to meet her at that warehouse and mentioned Lady Roselyn.”

  He waved his arms as if he argued with himself. “At first, I thought the missive a jest. It had been three years since I last set eyes on Rose. How could this stranger even know of our connection?”

  At that question, Rose recalled telling Helen one day of her heartbreak over Phillip’s betrayal. Could that be why her friend had contacted him for assistance? Knowing he had once professed to love Rose and might be willing to help her with the news about the handkerchief with the Ravenstock crest and all that might imply?

  Phillip went on with his rant, as if now that he had begun this tale, he could not stop until all he needed to say had spilled out. “Since news leaked to the newspapers about my role in recovering those blasted missing naval plans, I have been inundated with pleas from strangers asking for all manner of silly things. I threw those into the fire. This missive, too, would have found its way to the flames, but for her reference to Rose. I could not ignore that. So, though late, I went.”

  “Late, sir?” He was strict about punctuality.

  He looked devastated by his mistake. “If I had not vacillated about meeting her,” he whispered, “I might have saved Mrs. Beaumont’s life, Ben. And kept Rose from committing murder.”

  ROSE WALKED home alone on wet cobbled streets. It must have rained while she and Phillip talked by the fire. She had rejected a quick ride back in a hackney, preferring the slower midnight walk to give her time to think.

  A group of well-dressed gentlemen hurried past, deep in discussion. Probably a late sitting at Parliament. Men exited or entered clubs. Beggars snored in the corners of buildings. One lout, reeking of brew and three sheets to the wind, stumbled across her path. She pushed him away and kept walking.

  The night soil collector nodded to her. A watchman came around to call the hour.

  The sights, sounds, and smells of London held a comforting familiarity. Though she had never been out at this time of night, these sounds had filtered in through her bedroom window. Tonight, like most nights, they barely registered. Instead, Phillip’s comment that he had seen her run away from Helen’s body echoed in her ears. The image he painted of that blood-spattered scene would not leave her in peace.

  Although she, as Ben, had agreed to meet him the next day to plan their next move, Rose did not know if she ever wanted to see him again. He did not merely suspect her of murder, but firmly believed she was a killer. And because he was blaming himself for not preventing the crime, he was more determined than ever to bring her to justice. As he had Eve.

  She forcefully shook off the slim possibility that her sister might still be alive. That was a fool’s dream. And she had long since outgrown the fairytales her mother used to read to her and Eve at bedtime. Helen might have been given that handkerchief by someone who had also known Eve when she lived in France.

  As for Eve, if she were alive, she would have contacted Rose by now. No, her sister was as dead as her uncle and Helen. As were her grandmother and her parents. None of them were about to climb out of their graves, either in the ground or in the sea, to hug her and tell her they still loved her.

  And even though Phillip professed to have once loved her, he did not believe in her innocence. What kind of love was that? It contained not an ounce of faith or trust. She gazed about the dark street. So far from the theater district, the street had not warranted gas lighting. Ahead was a bridge. She walked over to lean on the rough stone railing and stare at the gently flowing water. The moon’s hazy round reflection spoke of its losing fight to pierce the mist.

  For a moment, she had harbored hopes that Phillip still cared for her. After her grandmother died, a life without love had seemed the safest course. There was less chance of her heart being broken a second time. But after one meeting with Phillip, she had abandoned that sensible plan and wished for things that could never be.

  Both her spirit and body were now exhausted. Her face twitched, anxious to release the shift. She pushed away from the stone railing and hurried home. She could moon over Phillip while looking like herself in the privacy of her home.

  She was almost back when she heard booted footfalls behind her. Unfortunately, the mist prevented her from identifying anyone past a few steps. She increased her pace. The echoing footsteps matched her speed. Hunting in her vest for keys, she ran down the pavement and up the steps to her front door. Inserting the key, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Before she could close it, a hand barred the action.

  She tensed, ready to scream if necessary.

  “It is I,” a man said.

  Trenton? She looked around the door. In the dim moonlight, she recognized the alliance member. “What
are you doing here?”

  “Had you forgotten it is my job to protect you?”

  Rose took a breath of relief. He had simply followed her on Mrs. Weatheringham’s orders. Still, she had no intention of speaking to him at this time of night. “I believe it is you who has forgotten, Mr. Trenton. I said I did not wish to be involved with your alliance. In any event, we can discuss the matter on the morrow. Good night.”

  Again, she went to close the door.

  A hefty push sent the door careening open and her stumbling backward. He stepped inside and shut the door. “Not so fast, my lady. Or should I say, ‘my lord’? We will discuss your protection, or lack thereof, before another hour passes. And the name’s Daniel.”

  She could not see him in the darkness but she refused to let him intimidate her. “Does your protection include frightening me as well, sir?”

  “I hardly need do that. You are more than capable of putting yourself in danger’s path.”

  She debated running upstairs to hide, but what good would that do? No, if he wished to speak, best if she allowed him to unburden himself downstairs. It was closer to the front door.

  She fumbled on the side table for a brimstone match.

  A snap of his fingers and flame roared on his thumb.

  That trick still elicited a sense of awe, and also oddly calmed her fears. In the flickering light, his face was masked in shadows and jagged planes. He was a good head taller and stood so close his flame warmed her lips. His intense blue eyes suggested he was seriously displeased.

  That accusatory look straightened her flagging spine. After standing up to an autocratic Phillip and his sneering friends, Daniel’s overprotective behavior was the last straw.

  She grabbed a candle from the end table and, making eye contact, cheekily lit it using his flame. Though his face remained forbidding, a slight crinkle about his eyes suggested her show of bravery had amused, more than annoyed.

  She turned and led the way to the drawing room. Immediately, she realized her mistake. The room now reminded her of Phillip’s kiss. In the morning, she would ask Hannah to rearrange the furniture. Maybe shift the piano before the door so Phillip could not get back in.