by Elisa Braden
Both were empty of everything but wind.
Behind him, coming up the hill, he heard Henry Thorpe, the Earl of Dunston, chatting amiably with his companion. “I cannot imagine what the rush might be, Humphrey.” Dunston paused, pretending to listen to the hound. “Yes, it could be the need to piss, but one would suppose that could be done anywhere. Behind a tree, onto a rock, into the grass. Well, you understand perfectly, don’t you? It’s not as though a cave is the only proper receptacle.” More pretense of listening. “Ah, yes. Perhaps he did eat too much fruit at breakfast. Fruit, heat, and exertion. That is quite the formula for urgent digestive complaints, I must say.”
Jonas arched a brow. “Nobody asked you to come along,” he called down to the climbing earl. “If you cannot keep up—”
“Never had trouble on that score, old chap.” Dunston grinned as he reached the mouth of the cave. “A hound does require water and rest upon occasion, however. Horses too, oddly enough.”
Humphrey, huffing merrily while his long ears swung to and fro, wandered to the rear of the cave. The crevice wasn’t particularly large, so Jonas let the dog sniff.
Hands on hips, he glanced around. Nothing but stone and moss and ferns. “Fool’s errand, this. Another bloody day wasted.”
“Well, now, let’s not be hasty. We’ve had a pleasant ride. Explored a bit of ecclesiastical mythmaking.”
Jonas glowered at Dunston, whose mood never seemed to deteriorate, regardless of the sapping heat or pointless wandering.
“Incidentally, how does one become a saint simply by having one’s dead body carted by one’s fellows all over the countryside? I must look into this. One never knows when such a measure might prove useful.”
The dapper lord had every appearance of a dandy. Reddish-brown hair was trimmed neatly, his blue coat flawlessly tailored to lean shoulders and a trim torso. His waistcoat was a brilliant shade of emerald—Dunston preferred a bit of flamboyance in that quarter. Everyone thought him both affable and fashionable.
Jonas had recognized a kindred creature from the first. Affability was an effective disguise for deadliness. So were grinning charm and disarming gestures and a lazy stride.
He should know.
“The maid did say it was St. Cuthbert’s Cave, did she not?” Jonas hadn’t slept in two days, so the question was a real one. Perhaps he’d imagined it.
“That is what she said. Though, to be honest, she struck me as—well, let’s put it kindly. I have used sharper instruments to scoop marmalade.”
Jonas rubbed the back of his neck. It was soaked with sweat.
“You should dispense with the coat.”
“I need the pockets.”
Dunston sighed. “If you’re carrying an arsenal in there, Hawthorn, I assure you, you’re going about this whole clandestine crime hunter business wrong.”
Jonas moved to the entrance and leaned against the rock. An insect scrambled over the back of his hand. He didn’t care.
“The trick,” Dunston continued, “is to focus upon a singular weapon. Daggers are both lethal and conveniently sized, particularly useful when wielded in tandem.” He withdrew twin daggers from inside his well-fitted coat. “You see? No need to perish inside a sweltering hell of misshapen black wool.”
“Why would she claim something so specific as St. Cuthbert’s Cave?”
“Why do women do anything? They are mercurial.”
Jonas had spent the past four days interviewing Grimsgate’s vast array of servants—Nash, the army of footmen, a half-Prussian housekeeper who spoke with her teeth clenched, gardeners and scullery maids and stable boys. Everyone. Nobody had answers until a trembling chambermaid had given herself away before he’d even reached for his notebook. She’d begun weeping when he’d inquired about the last place she’d seen the trunk.
The watery, spoon-sharp Miss Allen had developed a habit of sneaking into Lady Wallingham’s dressing room to try on her ladyship’s slippers. The trunk was routinely stored there, locked and close at hand.
The morning Lady Darnham and Miss Meadows had arrived early for their visit, the staff had been in an uproar. The half-Prussian housekeeper had sent the girl to the village on an urgent mission to obtain oranges. A man had approached her.
“A dark man, ’ee were,” she’d exclaimed as though describing an encounter with a ghostly apparition.
He’d frowned. “Dark?”
“Aye. ’Air like yours.”
“Brown, then.”
“Aye.”
“How tall was he?”
“’Ow tall are you?”
“Six feet.”
“Aye. That’s it.”
“And what of his frame? Heavy? Thick? Or lean?”
She’d eyed his shoulders. “Lean, I’d say. But ’ee could lift three trunks like ’er ladyship’s all on ’is own, I’ve no doubt. Appeared quite fine.”
“Fine.”
“Aye. ’Andsome.”
“Miss Allen, are you describing the man who you believe stole Lady Wallingham’s belongings?” He’d had to ask, as the girl had not ceased staring since she’d stopped crying.
“Oh, aye.”
He’d had his doubts about the maid’s reliability, but he’d asked her what the thief had demanded.
“’Ee wanted the trunk.”
“No, I understand that’s what he wanted. What did he say?”
She’d lowered her voice to a mockery of maleness. “’I know what you been doin’, Miss Allen. And you’d best ’elp me or I’ll tell yer employer.’ Only ’ee mighta called me Elly.”
“Why would he call you that?”
“’Tis my name.”
He’d blinked, gathering his patience. “Yes, but why would he know your Christian name?”
She’d shrugged. Then, her eyes had widened. “D’you suppose ’ee’s a gypsy? I met one at the fair in Alnwick once. She claimed she could tell ’oo you were to marry from the shape of your ’and.” She’d thrust her palm under his nose before retracting it for her own examination. “She said as my ’usband would be tall and ’andsome. Dark, too.”
In the end, he’d managed to coax sufficient details from the girl to set him on his present course. The thief had threatened to expose Elly Allen’s surreptitious slipper fittings if she did not provide him entry through a door near the kitchens. He’d described the trunk to the maid then blackmailed her into telling him where it was stored. If everything was as she claimed, the trunk had indeed been the target.
She’d begun weeping again when she confessed to letting the man kiss her. Jonas had found that bewildering, but she’d sobbed that he’d returned on another three occasions to kiss her more, and in his “moments of passion” had told her where he was keeping the trunk—St. Cuthbert’s Cave.
Jonas had asked the maid to describe the man while he drew his face.
Now, with his shoulder propped against cool stone in the second empty St. Cuthbert’s Cave, he reached into his topmost pocket and withdrew the sketch.
Dunston came over to examine it. “This is her thief? Looks like you, Wallingham, and Atherbourne defied the laws of all things holy to spawn offspring.”
Jonas rubbed his jaw. Blast. He needed a shave. “Either she’s smitten or she’s lying. I haven’t determined which.” He glanced behind him to where Humphrey investigated a half-scorched fern. “The trunk isn’t here, that much is certain.”
Dunston clapped his shoulder. “Take heart, man. Perhaps she is mad. A mad maid with wild fantasies about being ravished by a highwayman.” He took the sketch from Jonas’s hand. “Who, coincidentally, looks like you and Wallingham, only handsomer.”
“Bloody hell, Dunston. This is not helpful.”
“This is what you get for taking my twelve guineas.”
“I need to be done with this task.”
“Why the rush?”
“A castle full of nobs gives me hives.”
“I think that may be your coat, old chap.”
He gla
red at Dunston then shrugged out of the greatcoat, draping the heavy wool over his arm. “Happy?”
Dunston’s dark-blue gaze turned assessing. He refolded the sketch and handed it back to Jonas. “Have I ever told you about my pursuit of Horatio Syder?”
Jonas retrieved his water flask from one of his pockets before replying, “Syder. I remember the name.” He took a drink of water then wetted a handkerchief and wiped his nape. “When I first came on at Bow Street, it seemed he was behind every thieving ring and gaming hell in London.”
Leaning back against the wall of the cave, Dunston crossed his arms and glanced out at the wide, rolling landscape. “He was behind a great deal more than that.”
Indeed, every low creature and poor wretch east of Mayfair had whispered the name Horatio Syder as one might speak the name of the devil. Once an obscure solicitor, the man had amassed a vast empire of illicit businesses—brothels catering to the wickedest perversions, hells built on cheating and exploitation. Syder had ruled the city’s darkest quarters, bribing officials to remain free of punishment, controlling his empire through fear. Some had called him the Butcher, for he’d been fond of torturing and killing those who defied him inside a Whitechapel slaughterhouse.
“I hadn’t realized you helped Drayton take him down,” Jonas said. “Makes sense, though. Half of Bow Street had taken payment from Syder. An outsider would have been necessary, I expect.”
For years, Dunston had secretly worked with the Home Office to pursue particularly elusive criminals within England. Jonas had assumed Holstoke’s mother, a murderess and a traitor, was the earl’s primary target. But apparently, he’d been tasked with bringing down the Butcher, as well.
“More accurately, Drayton helped me, but yes.” Dunston slanted him a glance. Half his face lay in shadow. The other half was harder than stone. “He was a monster, Hawthorn. Every day that I failed to stop him, innocents suffered. Yet, I could do nothing but follow threads, one by one.”
Jonas understood the feeling. Often, petty thieves like Bertie Pickens were his quarries. If their crimes went unpunished, some wealthy nob lost a ring or a pretty bauble. But last summer, when the only thing standing between Hannah Gray and death was his ability to stop a murderer, he’d known what desperation truly was.
“How did you do it, in the end?” he asked.
“He prized his businesses above all,” Dunston explained. “His wealth protected him. His brutality made finding turncoats within his employ near impossible. A direct attack would only ricochet, and I had other targets to concern myself with.”
“Lady Holstoke.”
“Indeed, though I didn’t know it was her, at the time. I didn’t even suspect the Investor might be a woman.”
“Investor?”
Dunston gave him a hard stare for long seconds. “That is what we called the figure who initially funded Horatio Syder.”
Jonas recoiled. “Bloody hell. They were connected?”
“He started as her solicitor then became her protégé and, eventually, her partner.” Again, Dunston went silent, examining Jonas’s face as though making a calculation. “They had a falling out. She wanted him to kill a mother and child, you see.”
Jonas frowned. “The Butcher balked at killing?”
“Oh, the mother he dispensed with readily enough. But the child, yes. He grew … fixated upon her. Took her as his ward. Kept her as a hedge against his former benefactress.”
A dark chill slithered up his spine. A child in the hands of such a man—the thought was grotesque. “So, you chased Syder to get to the Investor.”
Dunston nodded. “Drayton and I went after his businesses piece by piece. We sent a man into one of his worst hells to gather information. That man was later tortured for my name, but he refused to give it. Another of my contacts at the time, a man I’d worked with whilst pursuing the Investor, obtained his release. But he was in a bad way.” Dunston’s head swiveled to look out at the hillside. “In time, he recovered. Married. Then, Syder took his wife. The blackguard cut her throat whilst this man watched, and the man gutted Syder for it. Understandable, really. I would have done worse.” Dunston released a sigh then rolled his head back in Jonas’s direction. “Remember the house in Knightsbridge?”
Jonas frowned and nodded. The previous year, when he’d hunted the villain responsible for a string of murders centered on Holstoke, a final victim had turned up in an empty Knightsbridge townhouse. She’d been a Covent Garden prostitute known as Midnight Mary for her black hair and light eyes. The resemblance had not escaped him.
“That house is where Syder met his end.” Dunston’s eyes were hard as a steel blade. “A just end, if an inconvenient one.”
“Inconvenient?”
“He was killed before I could use him to find the Investor. I was a few minutes late to Knightsbridge, it would seem.”
This explained why the prostitute had been placed there. The poisonings, as it turned out, had all been an “offering” in Lady Holstoke’s supposed honor. Placing one of the victims in the house where the murderess’s former partner had died would have seemed appropriate to the lunatic responsible. He glared now at Dunston. “Might have been useful to know about Syder’s connection to the place last year.”
“By the time I knew the Knightsbridge murder occurred, you were full of arrows and half out of your mind—”
“That’s a load of shite. You should have told me.”
Dunston sighed. “Perhaps. My point is it took nearly two years following Syder’s death to learn who the Investor was. So, you see, Hawthorn, some investigations simply take longer than others. The threads remain stubbornly hidden and must be coaxed to the surface. Have patience. At least Lady Wallingham’s trunk cannot feel pain.”
Again, Jonas felt the cold slither. He took another long drink, mulling what Dunston had told him. “What happened to the ward?” he asked.
When he met the other man’s eyes, they were no longer hard—they were sad. Dunston took a long time to answer. “She survived. But not without scars.”
The water in his belly churned. He wiped his mouth with his wrist.
A low, grumbling whine sounded near the fern. Humphrey snuffled and trotted over to Dunston. In his mouth was something purple.
Dunston pulled it free with a pat on the dog’s head. As he turned it over, it caught the light—black spangles and purple velvet.
“Bloody hell,” Jonas breathed as he realized what this was. What it meant.
Grinning wide, Dunston extended the fanciful slipper out to the sunlight to get a better look. “You see, Hawthorn? All you need is a bit of patience.” He gave Humphrey a pat. “And a boon companion by your side.”
*~*~*
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I find you tolerable.”
—Lady Dorothea Penworth to Malcolm Charles Bainbridge, Earl Bainbridge, in a letter expressing newfound affection.
Hannah liked him. More than she’d expected. More than she wanted to. Andrew Farrington was everything Charlotte Chatham had claimed, only better.
His hair was the precise color of the sand in Primvale Cove after the tide had gone out. His handsomeness was the sort unlikely to form expectations. His eyes danced when he laughed. He was shorter than Charlotte by two inches, which put his chin even with Hannah’s forehead.
And the first thing he said to her was, “Has anyone complained yet about the shortage of peach tarts? That is the only reason to attend one of these picnics, you know. Peach. Tarts.”
He’d made her smile. He’d put her at ease. He’d charmed her silly.
Now, she watched him greeting his tall, flame-haired cousin, who promptly knocked his fawn hat from his head with an inattentive gesture. He caught it midair and tossed it end-over-end before putting it back on as though performing a well-practiced trick. Charlotte laughed and kissed his cheek.
Hannah laughed too, surprising herself. Mr. Farrington slanted a dimpled smile her way and gave her a wink.
Good
ness, charming was right. His face was wide open. His thoughts lit his eyes bright—even his enchantment with her was plain to see. Why he should find her enchanting remained a mystery, but the interest was there if she wished to pursue it.
She could love him, she decided. She could. Given time and effort, it was possible.
Charlotte’s oldest son, Jameson, came over to inform his mama that his papa was searching for her. The boy rolled his extraordinary turquoise eyes. “Margaret ruined her dress again. Strawberry jam again. Papa has made it worse by trying to clean it. Again.” Every “again” had the long-suffering tone of a brother who had little desire to play messenger.
As Charlotte left them, Mr. Farrington placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “How many peach tarts did you hide?”
The boy’s gaze took on a cunning gleam. “Well, now, that depends, Uncle. What are you willing to give me for them?”
Mr. Farrington narrowed his eyes then removed his hat with a flourish. “I’ll let you wear it for, say, a half-hour.”
The boy raised a single brow and folded his arms. He looked so much like Lord Rutherford in that moment—sable-haired, calculating, and sardonic—that it was like seeing an echo come to life. “An hour. For two tarts.”
“An hour for four.”
“Done.” The boy held out his hand, and Mr. Farrington held it above his reach.
“Your mother taught me very early to collect my purchases before delivering payment.”
Jameson sighed. “Very well. Stay here.”
When he ran off toward the castle, Mr. Farrington chuckled and donned his hat again. “He loves nothing better than a good negotiation. A trait he inherited from both Charlotte and Rutherford, no doubt.” The words were full of affection.
Hannah tilted her head and examined the man at her side. “You enjoy children,” she observed.