by Anne Gracie
Smith’s jaw tightened.
“But I can’t honestly be blamed for it,” he continued. “Don’t tell me they’re charging babies with murder these days?”
Smith said in a scandalized tone, “Sixteen is hardly a baby.”
“Sixteen?” Zach shook his head. “I was three weeks old when my mother died of childbed fever. I was, some might say, responsible, but it was hardly my fault.”
“Ah. No.” Smith flicked through the documents that remained in front of him, and gave a tsk! of annoyance. “My apologies, my—sir, I inadvertently misrepresented the situation. I am referring to your father’s second wife, your stepmother. It’s her murder you’re accused of.”
Zach sat forward. “Cecily is dead? When did this happen?”
“Twelve years ago, sir. The night you left Wainfleet.”
Zach sat back. “Nonsense. I saw her several weeks after I left Wainfleet—we left there together—and she was in the pink of health. And she’s written to me on and off over the years. I think the last letter was at Christmas.” He frowned. “Or was it the year before? Oh well, she’s not dead, that’s the important thing.”
Smith leaned forward and gave him a searching look. “Do you have those letters?”
Zach shook his head. “Of course not. Why would I keep them?”
Smith sighed. “They might have helped prove she was alive. You’ll have to prove she is, you know. Can you?” The man still seemed to have doubts.
Zach shrugged. “I expect so. It’ll be a damned nuisance, though.”
“A nuisance?” Smith echoed him, incredulously. “You are facing a murder charge.”
“Yes, and it’s a blasted inconvenience. But tell me, I’m curious—setting aside the fact that I had no reason to want poor Cecily dead, how am I supposed to have killed her? And why, for heaven’s sake?”
“The ‘why’ is a matter of speculation. As to how”—Smith consulted his notes—“you—er, someone hit her over the head and threw her body in the lake at Wainfleet.”
Zach snorted. “Rather crude of me, I would have thought. Oh, don’t look at me like that, man, it’s a mistake.”
Smith looked troubled. “Your stepmother’s body was most positively identified.”
He raised a brow. “By whom?”
“By your father.”
“My father?” Now that was a surprise.
“And at least three servants.” Smith glanced at the file before him and added, “The body had been stripped of jewelry: her rings, in particular, were missing. And . . .”
Zach’s stomach rumbled. Outside he could hear carts rattling over the cobbles and a pie man calling his wares. He hadn’t yet broken his fast, apart from the ginger nuts. “And?” he prompted after a moment.
Smith cleared his throat uncomfortably. “A young man answering your description sold some jewelry in London some weeks later, jewelry which your father identified as belonging to his late wife—your mother, I mean. And some belonging to your stepmother. The jeweler swore an affidavit and your father identified the jewels.” Smith scanned Zach’s face. “Do you have any explanation for that, sir?”
Zach wrinkled his nose. “It’s true I sold my mother’s rubies,” he admitted. “But they were hers by right, and not entailed, and were therefore mine to sell. I sold some jewels for Cecily too—jewels that my father had given her and not part of the estate—and I gave her the money. What else was she to live on? My father never made her an allowance.”
“And the rings?”
Zach made an impatient gesture. “I know nothing of any rings. I never touched the dead woman, whoever she was. As far as I know, Cecily is still wearing her rings. Or if she isn’t, she will still have them. Probably,” he added. Cecily had no reason to keep the rings, not for any sentimental reasons.
“So you didn’t do it, sir? Kill her, I mean.”
“Of course I didn’t do it. I don’t hurt women,” Zach said irritably. He’d helped Cecily to escape his father for her own protection, dammit. “But it’ll be a blasted nuisance having to prove it.”
“More than a nuisance, I fear,” Smith said. “Forgive my blunt speaking, sir, but in my view—and Father’s too—the evidence against you is quite strong. It’s been twelve years since the murder, and for almost all of that time you have been absent from this country. It’s going to be very difficult to disprove.” Judging by the expression on his face, the lawyer thought it more like impossible.
Zach wasn’t the slightest bit worried. He knew Cecily was alive and well and living in Wales. It was almost amusing. Or it would be, if it wasn’t so blasted inconvenient. He’d planned to leave England almost immediately. After seeing Gil, he realized that he’d be delayed by having to prove his identity and deal with the various matters arising from his father’s death. But this . . . a murder charge could hold up things for a ridiculously long time.
“So the instant I prove my identity, I’ll get clapped in irons and hauled off to prison?”
“Not in irons.” Smith sounded horrified by the suggestion. “You are a gentleman, after all. But prison certainly.”
“You relieve my mind,” Zach said dryly. He gave a short laugh. “So my choice is to claim my inheritance and risk hanging for murder—unless I produce, alive and well, the stepmother I have not seen for twelve years—or to remain Zachary Black and live by my wits, as I have the past twelve years.”
Smith nodded. “In a nutshell. And until we locate your stepmother, it would be better if you continued under your current name. If you give me her last known address, I will have her traced and obtain a certified witness statement.”
Zach nodded. He’d given Cecily his word not to divulge her whereabouts to his father, but his father was dead, and Cecily now had nothing to fear. He gave it.
“In Wales?” Smith exclaimed in surprise. From the way he said it, it might have been Outer Mongolia.
“Yes, with an old school friend who’d been widowed. And her letters came from the same village, so you should be able to locate her easily enough.”
“I hope so, sir. If we’re not able to find her—”
“I’ll go to Wales myself, find her and fetch her back here.” She probably would welcome a visit to London after all this time. Cecily did like to shop.
The lawyer shook his head. “Not a good idea, sir. Better if you left it in the hands of, er, impartial witnesses. Don’t want any accusations of, er, tampering with the evidence, do we?”
“Rubbish. How could producing the woman I’m supposed to have murdered possibly be construed as tampering with the evidence?”
The lawyer grimaced. “There was a case last year that caused quite a scandal. A noble gentleman’s long-lost heir who’d been missing for twenty years appeared to claim his inheritance. He was very convincing, but eventually was proved to be a fraud. Someone had noticed his resemblance to the heir and coached him thoroughly to impersonate the heir.”
He added with an apologetic expression, “People get suspicious now when heirs or witnesses conveniently turn up out of the blue. We wouldn’t want to be accused of finding a woman who looks like your stepmother and coaching her, now would we? Best leave it to us, sir.”
Zach considered it. It seemed ridiculous to him, but he gave an acquiescent shrug. He preferred to do things himself rather than to leave them in the hands of unknown people. But having crossed Europe quickly by the fastest—and most uncomfortable—route possible, he could not deny that being spared a journey into North Wales had a definite appeal. Come to think of it, he was due a few sybaritic luxuries himself.
“In the meantime, I would advise you to, er, lie low.”
“Lie low?”
Smith nodded apologetically. “It would not do if someone recognized you before we located your stepmother. So where can I contact you?” His pencil was poised to note it down. “Your addr
ess?”
Zach gave him Gil’s address. “That’s temporary. I’ll let you know if and when I find something more permanent.” He picked up his hat. “Is that all?”
Smith nodded. Zach stood and walked to the door. He glanced back at the lawyer and grinned. “Rather a piquant situation, don’t you think?”
“Piquant?” Smith stared. “I’d call it damnable.”
“You think so?” He opened the door. “But then, I’ve always quite enjoyed a challenge.” He winked at the glowering clerk and headed for the exit.
It looked like he’d be staying in England for some time, blast it. He hadn’t planned to stay more than a few days, but now he’d found there was a plot afoot to deny him his home and birthright—by Cousin Gerald, the little weasel—he was damned if he’d tamely hand it over.
In the meantime, he just had to stay invisible. No difficulty with that. Staying invisible was what he did best.
* * *
Zach walked along, munching on a pie—a good, solid English meat pie—and turning the lawyer’s revelations over and over in his mind. It didn’t make sense.
Who was the dead woman?
Twelve years ago, he’d escorted Cecily to her widowed friend in Wales, traveled back to London, sold the jewels and then returned to Wales to give Cecily her share of the money.
It couldn’t possibly be Cecily.
Not unless she’d returned to Wainfleet after he’d left her that second time, and he would have sworn that wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her back there.
His father would have if he’d found her, but how could he? Zach hadn’t told a soul and Cecily had just wanted to disappear forever—somewhere his father would never find her.
Besides, Smith had said the woman must have died the night he and Cecily had fled Wainfleet, which was nonsense. And in any case, there were his letters from Cecily.
So why had his father identified the dead woman as Cecily? His father and three servants. Damn. He should have asked Smith which servants.
His father had been a brute and a bully, but he’d also had a great deal of family pride and it wasn’t like him to lie—not this kind of cold-blooded lie, the kind that would make his only son a wanted man. Blackening the family name.
Unless he’d been in a rage . . . In a rage, especially a drunken one, there was nothing his father would not do, up to and including the beating of his fragile young wife and his only son senseless.
Had his father identified the dead woman as Cecily to hide the humiliating fact that she’d left him, fled his house with her sixteen-year-old stepson? Had he imagined, in some blind, drunken, idiotic rage, that they’d eloped? And blamed his son for the murder?
It was possible.
Or had he beaten up some other woman in a rage and identified her as Cecily to cover up his crime? That too was possible.
But it didn’t explain the servants who’d also identified the dead woman as Cecily. Zach kicked a pebble along the pavement. It just didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t as if he could just walk up to Bow Street and seek answers to his questions. If Smith was right, the only response Zach would get was arrest and imprisonment, followed by a long wait in jail until the case came to trial and his innocence was proved—and that would be damned inconvenient.
No, dammit, he’d just have to lie low until they could prove Cecily was alive and well. It was annoying, but that was all.
In the meantime, he was here, in England. He finished his pie and brushed the last of the few crumbs of pastry from his fingers. An England in which his father was dead. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
He crossed the road, pausing to let a wagon rumble by. He was coming to a more fashionable part of town, where elegant little shops displayed the kind of wares most people couldn’t dream of owning. Quite why he’d wandered in this direction he wasn’t sure; perhaps it was merely a desire to reacquaint himself with an area he remembered from his youth.
Not that anyone who’d known him then would look twice at him at the moment. There were still enough shabbily dressed people, even in this area, for him not to stand out.
With a faint jolt of surprise, he realized he was enjoying himself. He’d missed London, missed the sound of English, in all its variations, all around him; the call of hawkers, the shouts of street urchins, the genteel murmur of a pair of well-dressed ladies as they passed him in the street, the distant bellow of a frustrated carter, shouting at people to get out of the road—all in different accents, but all English.
He was home. It was a strange feeling.
Ahead, a small knot of fashionably dressed people emerged from one of the shops, just as an elegant town carriage pulled up. Some ragged children loitered nearby but the fashionable people swept past them.
It was the girl that caught Zach’s eye—a slender creature dressed in blue and gold, like something out of a fairy tale. She was the last out of the shop, and after she emerged, she waited a few steps behind her companions searching for something in her reticule.
Zach’s attention was drawn to the comedy of errors playing itself out ahead of her; a large footman in livery, a maid, and a companion by the look of her, all laden with parcels, fussing around a frail-looking, aristocratic old lady who was struggling to climb into the landau, crossly batting away any helping hands, and knocking several parcels to the ground.
He glanced back at the golden girl. The street urchins had gone, but now her attention was not on the fuss around the old lady, but on something else happening down a narrow side alley. Even as he watched, she stiffened and ran into the alley. Had the children stolen something? Was she in pursuit of them? Foolish if she was.
Her companions didn’t seem to notice; the old lady continued to struggle to mount the carriage without assistance, the footman, juggling parcels, began to load them carefully into the boot of the carriage, the other two females fussed around the old lady while the coachman fended off abuse from the traffic he was holding up.
Curious as to what would cause such a gently nurtured flower of the aristocracy to venture alone into a dirty London side street, Zach closed the distance in a few long strides and looked down the alley.
And with a muttered curse started running.
A group of youths were gathered in a circle, kicking at something—Zach couldn’t see what, but clearly the girl had. She burst into the knot of ruffians at full pelt, giving the biggest one a hard shove that caught him off balance and made him stagger.
The tallest youth quickly recovered from his surprise, grabbed the girl and shoved her hard against the wall of the alley. Zach put on speed, but before he could reach them, the girl’s knee came up in a most unladylike move. She connected too. The leader bent double, swearing horribly. His friends closed in.
She faced them white-faced and tense, holding her reticule up like a weapon. She opened her mouth—to scream, he supposed—but then she saw Zach coming. She instantly swiped at one of the thug’s heads with her reticule. The youth ducked, and she missed his head, but as a distraction it was sufficient.
Zach grabbed the two nearest thugs by their collars and slammed them hard against the wall of the alley. They subsided there, groaning. The remaining three youths swung round to face him warily. They eyed his rough clothing. “She’s ours, gypsy. Bugger off.”
Zach’s reply was to place himself between the girl and the youths.
“You ain’t from ’round ’ere,” one of them said, drawing a knife. “You dunno who you’re dealing wiv.”
In a swift movement, Zach kicked the knife from the youth’s hand. It clattered against the cobbles. “Consider ourselves introduced.”
“Best not interfere if you plan on livin’ long,” his friend said, sounding suddenly less assured.
Zach gave the youth a cold smile. “Try me.”
“Behind you,” the girl warned him. Zach
jabbed an elbow in the throat of a lad who’d recovered from being flung at the wall and was creeping up on him from behind. He reeled back, choking and coughing.
“Next one who makes a move toward myself or the young lady, I’ll break his neck,” Zach said calmly.
The three young men exchanged glances and edged away. One of them held up his hands. “We don’t want no trouble, mister.”
“Then get out of here—and take that rubbish with you.” Zach jerked his head at the youth stirring groggily on the filthy cobblestones and the one still clutching his throat.
Hastily the three gathered up their mates and hurried away down the alley.
Zach waited until they’d gone, then turned to the young woman. “Are you all r—” The words dried on his tongue. The sounds of the city faded away. He stood, neither knowing nor caring where he was, drowning in a pair of wide blue eyes, blue as the sky on a Greek summer’s day . . .
She stared back, not moving or saying a word.
The moment stretched. Then her eyelashes fluttered. Breaking his gaze, she glanced away, and took in a long, shivery-sounding breath.
The city sounds and smells rushed back. Zach blinked. What the devil was he doing? He never lost concentration. He glanced back down the alley, but the youths were well and truly gone. His gaze returned to the young woman. She was staring at him again, and again he was caught by that blue, blue gaze.
Mastering himself, he dragged in a ragged breath and said, “Are you all right?” His voice sounded hoarse.
She was trembling—and no wonder—but even as his hands went out to steady her, she seemed to gather herself and edged away from him.
Damn, he’d forgotten how he was dressed. “Miss?” he said, remembering his role at last.
In danger of drowning again in that blue gaze and losing his ability to think, he lowered his eyes, and found himself focusing on her mouth instead.
Bad idea. Satiny, full, eminently kissable mouth. Wild roses and strawberries.
“Y-yes.” It was hesitant, and she bit uncertainly on the lower lip with small, even teeth. He felt his body stir.