A Scandalous Request

by Micki Miller

  Burke leapt from the carriage before his coachman even climbed down from his seat. The front door of the house stood wide open. He hurried through. Stefon, their butler, was nowhere in sight. Burke followed the sound of weeping into the parlor.

  He recognized Constable Arness. The man stood in the center of the room speaking in a low voice to the runner Burke had seen rushing into the house. Lewis sat bent on the same sofa where the day before he had his arm bandaged, crying into a handkerchief. His sling hung empty at his side. Blood soaked one large splotch across his white shirt, as well as several smaller smears. After a quick sweep of the room, Burke’s heart picked up speed. Rose was not there.

  In an instant, he was beside Lewis. “Lewis, what’s happened? Where’s Rose?”

  “Ashton. It’s Ashton.” Lewis gulped air before saying, “Ashton is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Rose killed him. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “You saw her? Are you sure?” No. It couldn’t be true.

  “Yes. I saw her,” Lewis said. “She shot him. Rose wanted the money, wanted her independence. It’s the only explanation. She fooled us. She murdered my Ashton.”

  His last words were difficult to understand, as he had fallen into hysterics.

  Burke placed a hand on Lewis’s shoulder, but grief had too firm a hold on the man for any comfort to seep through. Burke’s head swiveled in slow rotation toward the Constable. Arness, a trim man in his mid-thirties with fair hair and a neat beard to match, stared back at him.

  “What happened?” Burke asked as he approached the man, his feet mired in dread. The edges of the room distorted in a haze of disbelief.

  Rose wouldn’t have done such a thing as to commit murder.

  She almost killed her brother-in-law. No, that was different.

  Arness dismissed the runner and nodded toward Lewis. “Apparently, when Lord Lewis Da Ville arrived at the vacant property on Vant Street, Lord Ashton Sennett was on the ground, shot once through the heart.”

  Burke swallowed through a dry throat. “Lord Da Ville told me he witnessed the murder.”

  Arness gave affirmation with a stiff nod. “Lord Da Ville heard the shot just before his curricle rounded the corner of the property. Lady Sennett was leaning over her husband’s body, checking to make sure the job was good and done, no doubt.”

  “Just because she was there doesn’t mean—”

  “The pistol in her hand still smoked. Nobody else was there. Da Ville had a good view of the area and confirmed it. Lady Sennett killed him, all right. Apparently, she hired someone to do the deed yesterday, but the assassin shot Da Ville in the arm by mistake. Took care of the matter herself this time, she did.”

  To his ears, the recounting of what Rose had done questioned his judgement, as if a faraway voice castigated him from the realm of a nightmare.

  “Perhaps…”

  “It was her pistol,” the constable continued. “Da Ville said her husband had given it to her for protection.”

  She’d told him about the pistol she carried in her reticule the night she was accosted at the foundling home.

  “There’s more damning evidence, too,” the constable said.

  Burke’s heart rebelled. His mind took immediate note from every angle in hopes of finding a mistake. But his brain could not dispute the proof. Lewis cared for Rose. He wouldn’t damn her so if it were not true. Besides, Lewis would want whoever murdered Ashton to pay for the crime.

  “What other evidence?” Burke asked in a half-hearted voice. His mind still searched for a reasonable answer. But there was a witness to the killing. Lewis knew her quite well and would not mistake her for someone else.

  “The Sennett butler, Stefon, heard this very day Lady Sennett threaten to shoot her husband.”

  She’d threatened to shoot them both this morning.

  But it was only a jest, wasn’t it?

  She’d already proven herself capable of violence. Perhaps her brother-in-law was but another innocent victim, a means to get Ashton to propose their marriage. Her sweet face, the sugar-dusted wholesomeness streaming from her, had even him believing she was guileless. All the while her machinations had been at work.

  Perhaps her next step was to elevate her status to an earl’s wife. Someone of her plotting mind could well see herself as a countess. If Lewis hadn’t come along when he did, she might have gotten away with murdering her husband. Claimed another had committed the deed, and then disappeared into the surrounding woods. With a few tears, she’d be quite convincing. Yes, like the rest of them, he’d been duped.

  Anger set a slow boil in the sick twist of his stomach. He’d given her more trust than he’d given any woman since his mother. Both times had been monstrous mistakes. At least with his mother he had a good excuse. He’d been but a child. He was a grown man now, and Rose had managed to make a fool of him.

  “Where is Lady Sennett now?” Burke asked, already knowing what the man would say, and glad for it.

  Arness sent him a hard look. “Where she belongs. Newgate.”

  Chapter 11

  Rose huddled on the bare, straw mattress upon the floor, her back pressing into the rough, stone wall. The narrow bed took up almost a third of her windowless cell. A dented chamber pot sat in the corner.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees in an effort to keep warm. It was useless. Even if one of the gray walls hosted a hearth fully afire, the cold engulfing her ran too deep, and the chill temperature of the cell could only take partial blame.

  Her husband was dead. Ashton, her sweet savior, her dearest friend who had gone to outrageous lengths to secure her happiness, murdered.

  And she sat imprisoned for the crime.

  Fresh tears rolled down her face. Their warmth a sharp contrast to her cold skin. The first tears she’d shed had fallen onto Ashton’s body, the salty drops instantly lost in the mass of blood spreading across the white of his shirtfront. And then Lewis was screaming at her, accusing her. How could he think she would do such a horrible thing?

  Nobody believed her. The way things looked, nobody ever would. She was going to spend the rest of her life in this filthy, dank cell, and worse, whoever had killed Ashton would get away with murder.

  Rose had another worry, too. The foundling home. With this horrendous scandal, the contributors would run. The project would wither and the children would grow to adulthood in that crumbling mess. Whoever pulled that trigger condemned many innocent lives.

  Had Burke yet heard what had happened? She wondered. Would he use his status and influence to help her? Or would he believe the worst? He’d known her in the most intimate of fashions. He must know she was not capable of such a horrendous act. Of course, Lewis knew her well. They’d shared a home for months. They were friends. Yet, Lewis had damned her for the murder upon first sight.

  From a cell somewhere down the dim corridor, a woman’s long and mournful wail echoed like a heartbroken ghost imprisoned in this wretched place for all eternity. The woman had been sobbing straight for an hour or two. Her cries grew louder these past minutes.

  So pitiful the sound, Rose wanted to go to her, to offer some bit of comfort. But even if she could, even if iron and stone did not separate them, what encouragements could she dredge to offer? Hope shunned all locked in this fetid gaol.

  Rose stared through the bars. Across and to the right of her cell, a torch in the wall gave her a bit of orange light. Some small, long-tailed critter scurried across the pocked floor just outside the bars. She drew her feet in closer and tucked her gown, still stained with her husband’s blood, under her feet. She then wrapped the grimy blanket that had been in the cell when she arrived, around her, too.

  The sobbing woman cried out two more times in long, weeping howls. Following her wails was the sound of heavy boot-steps and the jingle of keys ever dangling from the guard’s belt. Rose couldn’t see him, but his voice carried down the dim corridor to her cell.

/>   “Shut yer yap, before I come in there and shut you up.”

  The woman quieted, and the guard walked away. Then she cried out again. This time, her voice was muffled, as if she screamed into her blanket. The guard’s footsteps ceased, and Rose willed the woman to quiet herself before she took a slap to the face.

  The heavy boot steps picked up once more, growing louder. He passed the point where the woman’s cell would be, and kept walking. Rose threw herself down on the mattress and pretended to sleep. The trick had worked before. Her heart pounded as she tried not to react to the foul reek of the mattress, and hoped the guard would pass her by. He didn’t pass, though.

  His heavy footfalls stopped outside the bars of her cell.

  “Ye are a pretty one, aren’t ye?”

  Rose held herself still, eyes closed, saying nothing.

  The jangle of keys at the guard’s belt, she was sure, was him fumbling for the one needed to open her cell door. Her heart almost stopped at the sound of one of them sliding into the lock.

  “Freddy!” a man’s voice called from the other end of the corridor. “Freddy, we need some help up here, now!

  The guard spat a round of curses before yanking out the key and trotting away.

  Rose turned her face into the rough, filthy blanket, and she wept.

  Chapter 12

  Burke paced the floor before the hearth in his bedchamber. The solid thud of his boots pounded a harsh contrast to the fire’s soft crackle.

  As he passed his bed, his eyes flickered toward it. His jaw tightened and his hands clenched into fists as he remembered the feeling of abandonment when he awakened to find Rose had snuck away. He’d gone directly to her house, like an ignorant, besotted boy who’d experienced his first taste of passion. She’d made an utter fool of him, of all of them during her violent, social ascension.

  He’d cared for her. He’d believed her guise, even after his mother had taught him better by her abhorrent example. Worst of all, what kept eating at him, was a part of him still yearned to believe Rose innocent.

  She was not innocent, though. The sweet Rose they all knew was a well-crafted façade, a fraud of the worst sort, a cold-hearted murderess.

  There was a witness. Her own friend, Lewis, had seen her kill her husband. Burke had believed Rose to be above other women, women who set out to get what they wanted, without regard of the cost to others. She was worse. Her deceptions more refined, her goals substantial, and her ruthlessness knew no limits.

  Her disguise was good, very good. Her behavior at the foundling home, pretending to be unselfish, drew him in like she had Lewis, and poor Ashton. But Burke’s life experience should have given him the advantage. He should have known better. He was not a man easily taken in. Yet Rose duped him as if he was dull as a mooncalf.

  Snatching his glass of whisky from the table, Burke drained it in one hasty swallow. He then hurled the fine crystal into the fire where it shattered and flashed a violent blue.

  The clock downstairs chimed midnight. If he had any sense at all, he’d go to bed and forget he ever heard her name, forget Ashton Sennett’s ridiculous request and everything after.

  What Burke could not forget, however, was the way Rose had responded to his kisses, to his every touch. In that, at least, his mind held no doubt she’d been sincere. Her innocence had been intact and she had not the experience to affect such a deception.

  Nor could he forget the way his body responded to hers.

  Never had he experienced such a union with a woman. When their bodies joined, the ecstasy enveloping him transcended primal sex. At her climax, her heart beat in perfect rhythm with his. And in that moment when his body tensed and flowed into hers, the beats linked not in tandem, but as one.

  Cursing himself six ways a fool, Burke stomped down the stairs, grabbed his coat, and stormed out the door.

  ****

  Burke followed the skinny, slovenly guard he’d overpaid to let him into the prison at this late hour. The watchman wore clothes at least a size too big. Neither he nor his garments had seen the inside of a washtub in some time. Once they’d descended the stone steps, the man’s stink mingled with the other foul odors embedded within the dismal walls.

  The stench of sweat, unwashed bodies, and human waste permeated the air. Burke had been inside but a few minutes, and already he longed for a breath of fresh air.

  Rose was somewhere in this horrid place.

  The guard led him down a long, dingy corridor consisting of a pitted floor, a damp, stone wall on one side, and small cells on the other. Flaming torches in brackets on the wall lighted the miserable place at intervals.

  They passed by the cells of a dozen or so women in all manner of disarray. Some were curled up and sobbing upon their thin mattresses. Others paced. It was quite clear a couple of them were crazed. One was having a whispering argument with herself. Another woman stood in the center of her cell, in full nudity. She danced in a provocative manner when he glanced her way.

  A fat roach scurried across the floor. One of the women wailed as they passed by her cell, her cry muffling into her blanket before they had moved on. Two vacant cells in a row came next. A bloodstained bonnet lay upright on the floor of one. On they walked through the ghastly prison. It took no imagination whatsoever to hear a spectral dirge leach from the very walls.

  At last, the guard stopped at a cell and shouted as he slid in a key.

  “Wake up, gel! You got yerself a fine, fancy visitor.”

  The door creaked open and the guard motioned for Burke to enter. As he did, the guard sent him a leering wink and said, “Ye take yer time. Just make sure the cell door is locked when ye leave and you bring the key back.”

  Burke ignored him and stepped into the cell.

  “Oh, Burke,” Rose cried, springing up from her curled position on the mattress. A moment later, her arms were around his middle, squeezing him, her head pressed against his chest. “You came.”

  He didn’t put his arms around her, though it killed him not to do so. He wanted to believe it was all a mistake so he could take her out of this putrid hellhole. But she wasn’t innocent. She was a deceiver, a liar, and a killer.

  At his rigid stance, she stepped back and looked up at him. “Burke?”

  “I just want to know why, Rose. Why did you do it?”

  “Oh, Burke,” she whispered, shrinking before his very eyes. “How could you think I would kill Ashton? There was no one dearer to me.”

  “Spare me your denials. There was a witness. Or have you forgotten one of your own friends happened by at the precise moment you murdered your husband? He saw you.”

  “Lewis is mistaken, or lying, though I don’t know why he would lie. Everything was so wonderful.” She shook her head then, perhaps to emphasis her denial. “I would never hurt Ashton. Why would I? He saved me. He gave me everything.”

  “Perhaps if he’d been one of those husbands who left his wife in a country estate while he lived in London, he’d be alive today. Isn’t that what you wanted, Rose, to simply be left in peace?”

  “My life with Ashton and Lewis has always been peaceful.”

  “Has it? You had to be his wife at every ball, every party, at every social event. You must have found the Season intolerable. You said yourself you hate such activities. As a widow in mourning, you could spend the rest of your life alone with your walks and your books.”

  “I never wanted to be alone!”

  Tears filled her eyes, and a tremor passed through Burke’s heart. Ignore it. Don’t let her make a fool of you again.

  “Why did you come here?” Rose asked.

  For a moment, Burke stood silent. He couldn’t answer the question even to himself. She was so convincing, still, with all the evidence against her. A man with less sense would find it difficult not to be susceptible to her fashioned ploy.

  Finally, he said, “To make sure you are where you belong.” He then gave a quick once over to her dank, filthy cell before saying, “You are.”r />
  Giving her his back, he was out of the cell in two strides. He slammed the bars behind him with a loud, ringing clank, then he turned the lock and took the key. After a step or two, he swung back around. He couldn’t help it. It was as if an unseen force spun him back to her one last time.

  She stood in the center of the putrid cell. Her chin was to her chest and she gulped air. In that instant, Burke also found it hard to draw a breath. His foot slid an inch or two over the gritty floor before he stopped himself.

  No, he would not go back and comfort her. He shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Yet, he did not leave right away.

  Rose sank down to her small mattress. She reminded him of an autumn leaf in an early winter frost, letting go, conceding to her fate, simultaneously falling and dying.

  Burke forced himself to wheel away from the sight before he gave into his irrational wants. After making a brief stop at the keeper’s house, he walked away from the prison in long, brisk strides. With each step putting distance between him and Rose, he was able to let his anger, and the irrefutable truth, fold over the piercing ache in his heart.

  Chapter 13

  Viscount Andrew Worthington set his glass of brandy on the polished, teakwood table between him and Burke, his poor, stinking drunk friend. Drew had taken little more than a sip of this, his second drink. It was clear from early on one of them was going to have to stay within close sight of sober. That someone would not be Burke.

  Burke could not quite keep his posture right. Focus evaded his usual sharp attention. His sight drifted here, there, nowhere in particular. He spoke too loud and said too much, at least for a public place. All of it unlike him.

  As good fortune would have it, Drew had managed to get them seated near a corner with Burke’s back to the room. The salon he’d chosen in White’s, their preferred club, was not much populated this time of day. The day, however, was rolling into evening. Others were sure to stream in soon. As of yet, their presence had not snagged anyone’s attention. Such luck would not hold.