The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray

by Anna Bradley

  Three pairs of guilty eyes—blue, hazel, and brown—shot toward her.

  “All members must agree on a book, all chosen titles are to be read aloud, and no reading shall take place unless all four members of the Society are present.” Sophia ticked the points off on her fingers. “Shame on all of you.”

  “We’ve only just dipped into the first chapter a little bit.” Cecilia was sitting on the bed, the book balanced on her knees. Georgiana was by her side, and Emma at her feet.

  Sophia raised a brow. “You’re only into the first chapter, and the heroine is already bathed in tears, and resigned to the stillness of sorrow?”

  “Yes! Isn’t that wonderful?” Cecilia rubbed her hands together. “I think it’s going to be a very good one.”

  “Have any of the virgins swooned yet?” Sophia asked. “Unless the virgins swoon in the first chapter, it won’t be as good as the last book.”

  “Well, no, but I believe there’s a ruined abbey.” Emma sounded doubtful. “Surely a ruined abbey is a good sign? There’s usually a ghost or two or a headless corpse when there’s a ruined abbey.”

  Sophia shrugged. “Swooning virgins are better. There were loads of swooning virgins in A Sicilian Romance.”

  Georgiana gave a derisive snort. “Swooning virgins. What nonsense.”

  Sophia and Emma nodded in agreement. All four of them were mad for Gothic romances, but with the exception of Cecilia, who had a heart wider than the Thames, they adored and disdained the heroines in equal measure. Adeline St. Pierre-de Montalt, heroine of The Romance of the Forest, wasn’t likely to be an exception, no matter how engrossing her story. Soon enough they’d find themselves reacting to her with a mixture of breathless anticipation, amusement, and mockery.

  Swooning virgins were all very well in romantic novels, but a lady fragile enough to fall into a swoon in London would soon find her pocket picked, her person assaulted, and her limbs crushed under carriage wheels and horses’ hooves. Sophia in particular found it difficult to sympathize with a heroine who was continually either fainting, or bursting into floods of tears.

  As for cruel villains and bloody daggers…

  Sophia thought of Henry Gerrard, dying in the dirt in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard, and a wave of sorrow washed over her. Blood and murder were only diverting until they became real.

  “We did try and wait for you to come, Sophia, but you know Cecilia can’t resist a romance.” Emma cast a reproachful look at Cecilia.

  Cecilia bit her lip and turned her big brown eyes on Sophia. “We should have waited. I’m sorry, Sophia.”

  No one—not man, woman, god, or mortal—could resist the plea in those soft eyes. “It’s all right. Never mind, dearest.”

  “We’ll start again, shall we?” Georgiana bounded off the bed and rushed across the room to seize Sophia in a hug.

  Sophia let Georgiana tug her toward the bed and flopped down, joining her three friends in an untidy pile of limbs. Emma twisted a lock of Sophia’s dark hair around a long, elegant finger. “Oh, your hair is wet. Is it raining?”

  Sophia rested her head on Emma’s calf with a contented sigh. “Not anymore. It was earlier.”

  “What in the world is that smell?” Georgiana pressed the back of her hand to her nose. “It smells like Gussie when his fur is wet.”

  Gussie was Lady Clifford’s pinch-faced pug. He was dreadfully ugly, and had an unfortunate chronic nasal condition that made him snort. To add insult to these injuries, he’d been saddled with the name Gussie in his puppyhood, before anyone realized he was, in fact a boy dog. By then, the name had already stuck. Despite these drawbacks, he was much beloved at the Clifford School, especially by Emma, who was fonder of animals than she was of people.

  “It’s not so bad as all that.” Sophia lifted her tunic to her nose for an experimental sniff, then winced. “Bad enough, though.”

  “You look as if you’ve been hiding in a gutter.” Cecilia rose from the bed and crossed to the basin, then paused and turned back to Sophia with a doubtful look. “You haven’t been, have you?”

  It was a fair question, given Sophia had hidden in gutters before. “No, not tonight, but I did spend some time on Lord Everly’s roof.”

  The room went quiet for a moment as Cecilia, Emma, and Georgiana exchanged looks.

  “Is there any word of Jeremy?” Cecilia asked, an anxious frown on her brow.

  Sophia bit her lip. Lady Clifford discouraged them from sharing information about their assignments with each other. The less her friends knew about Jeremy’s predicament, the safer it was for all of them, yet Sophia knew they were as concerned about Jeremy as she was.

  “No change there, I’m afraid.”

  Sophia didn’t offer anything more than that, and her friends fell silent again until Georgiana approached Sophia with a damp towel in her hand. “Here. Take this, and give me your tunic.”

  “What’s Lord Everly’s roof like?” Emma asked. “Nice and quiet, I imagine.”

  “Not as quiet as you’d think. Not as private, either.” Sophia peeled her black tunic over her head. “As it happens, Lord Everly’s neighbor saw me up there and chased me from one end of London to the other.”

  The other girls looked at each other, then back at Sophia. “Chased you?” Emma asked. “No one ever chases you. Not for long, anyway. Is Lord Everly’s neighbor a racehorse?”

  “No, he’s a Bow Street Runner.” Sophia hesitated. “He’s, er…he’s Tristan Stratford.”

  Two mouths dropped open at once.

  “The Ghost of Bow Street?” Emma breathed. “Lord Everly’s neighbor is the Ghost of Bow Street?”

  Sophia sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. If I’d known, I never would have climbed onto Everly’s roof in the first place.”

  “Who in the world is the Ghost of Bow Street?” Cecilia looked from Emma to Sophia with a puzzled frown. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Only you would ask that question, Cecilia.” Georgiana leaned over and grabbed a gossip sheet from the table beside the bed and handed it to Cecilia.

  “I don’t care a whit for the gossip. It’s a waste of…” Cecilia’s voice fell away, the rest of her lecture left unsaid as she stared at the drawing in front of her. “That’s the Ghost of Bow Street? My goodness.”

  Emma took the paper from Cecilia and stuck it under Sophia’s nose. “That’s him? That’s the man who chased you?”

  Sophia glanced down at the page. Yes, it was him, all right. The drawing hadn’t properly captured the slash of his cheekbones, the sternness of his lips, the severe, aristocratic elegance of his face, but there was no mistaking him.

  For better or worse, he wasn’t the sort of man one forgot. “Yes, that’s him.”

  Emma gave her the slightly crooked smile that made every man she came across her devoted slave. “I would have let him catch me.”

  Sophia thought of his cool gray eyes and the pressure of his hand against her mouth, and a shiver tickled down her spine. “No, I don’t think you would have. Not if you’d seen him for yourself. But never mind Lord Gray. Come, Cecilia. I want to hear about the banditti.”

  Cecilia opened the book and read to the end of the first chapter, then she turned down the lamp and they tucked themselves into their beds. Her friends were soon asleep, but Sophia lay awake for a long time, listening to the soft sounds of peaceful slumber around her.

  Ghosts and headless corpses, swooning virgins and bloody daggers…

  A man lying in the dirt in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard, his life’s blood gushing from his slit throat, and Jeremy, an innocent man—no, a boy, really—taken up for the crime, and facing a ghastly death at the end of a noose.

  Do you suppose you can outrun me?

  Sophia tugged the coverlet tighter around her shoulders, but she couldn’t suppress a shudder at the memory of those huge hands gr
ipping the wrought iron spikes, the pale scars on his knuckles, the icy challenge in his gray eyes.

  I’d be disappointed indeed if you didn’t lead me on a chase.

  She rolled over onto her side and squeezed her eyes closed, but sleep eluded her until at last she threw the coverlet back and crept to the window.

  The rain had returned. The street below was damp, but aside from the muted patter of the drops on the pavement, all was silent and still. Sophia stood there for a long time, staring into the darkness before drawing the drapes across the window with a determined tug. She returned to her bed, and this time when she closed her eyes, they remained closed.

  She was no swooning virgin, and she wasn’t afraid of ghosts.

  Chapter Four

  That night, Tristan dreamed of graveyards.

  It began quietly, as dreams often do—quietly enough the dreamer is deceived into thinking he’s found a warm, safe cocoon, just before he’s hurled into a nightmare.

  In the dream, he was alone in a graveyard, wandering among the headstones under the watchful gaze of a pair of sightless stone angels. Their wings were spread wide, the feathery tips joined over the arched doorway to a white marble crypt gleaming dully in the moonlight.

  He’d come to the graveyard to fetch someone, to save her from some terrible but unknown fate, but each time he drew close enough to catch a strand of her long dark hair, she melted into the fog hanging low over the headstones. He might have wandered from one headstone to the next for an eternity, chasing that cool, transparent mist if he hadn’t stumbled and fallen to his knees.

  He’d tripped over something—

  Someone.

  Henry Gerrard, his eyes open, blank, staring at nothing, warm blood still oozing from the gash in his throat. In the next breath Tristan was running toward the church, his hands dripping with Henry’s blood, a plea for forgiveness on his lips, but when he staggered into the confessional his voice was gone, and he was left alone with his sins and no hope of a blessing—

  He woke with a jerk, his heart pounding and his nightshirt clinging to his damp skin. He sat up and dragged a hand through his hair, also drenched with sweat.

  It wasn’t his first nightmare, nor would it be his last.

  At first, there’d been no pattern to them, no logic or reason. When Tristan crawled into his bed and closed his eyes, he never knew which of his demons would choose to haunt him, but over the past few weeks the nightmares all ended the same way.

  When he opened his mouth to beg for forgiveness, he’d be struck dumb.

  Sometimes he was begging Henry’s wife, Abigail, to forgive him, but more often it was Henry himself. Sometimes Henry would be just as Tristan remembered him, with his trusting brown eyes and laughing mouth, but in Tristan’s worst nightmares he’d be as he was tonight, soaked in blood, with vacant, staring eyes and a jagged slash across his throat.

  Then Tristan would wake, shaking and panting, and trade his sleeping nightmare for his waking one—one where Henry was still dead, murdered in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard, and Tristan was still the man who’d failed to save his best friend.

  Before tonight, he’d never dreamed of priests and confessionals, or dark-haired ghosts and white marble crypts, but he could hardly fail to trace those particular demons back to their source.

  I’m anxious to confess my sins. I’m quite wicked, you see.

  Tristan did see. He saw a great deal more than she could ever imagine.

  He didn’t know how or when he’d realized she was running to No. 26 Maddox Street tonight. They’d still been a dozen streets away from the Clifford School when he’d changed course to get ahead of her. At that point, she could have been going anywhere.

  But she hadn’t been. And somehow, he’d known it.

  Perhaps it was nothing more than the way she ran from him. He knew the city as well as he knew the pattern of scars on the backs of his hands, yet he’d lost sight of her more than once.

  Tristan didn’t lose people. Ever.

  She was too clever not to have realized she couldn’t outrun him, so what might have been a quick enough chase led to a race through every back alley in Westminster. She’d led him down one darkened street after another as if he were a clumsy, dull-witted cat and she—small and quick and like a shadow herself in her black clothing—a particularly wily mouse.

  If there was a corner to duck into, she found it. Once she’d made it through the churchyard and onto the Strand, she stayed close to the sides of the buildings where the darkness gathered, clinging to the walls as she passed, slipping silently around London’s edges.

  All the way to No. 26 Maddox Street.

  There was nothing unusual about the sprawling brick building there. Nothing to distinguish it from any other Mayfair residence, but then nothing about the Clifford School was what it appeared to be, least of all its inhabitants.

  There was a brass plaque fixed to one side of the front door. It was small, unobtrusive—not meant to draw the eye.

  The Clifford Charity School for Wayward Girls. Lady Amanda Clifford, Proprietress. Pupils accepted by private recommendation only.

  Tristan hadn’t approached the door tonight. He hadn’t ventured from the shadows to read the plaque. He already knew what it said. He’d memorized it weeks ago, after Jeremy Ives, one of Lady Clifford’s servants, was taken up for the murder of Henry Gerrard.

  Ives was currently being held at Newgate. In another week he’d stand trial for his crimes, when he’d certainly be found guilty. Tristan was looking forward to his hanging with grim anticipation.

  He threw the coverlet aside, rose from his bed, and made his way to the window. He shoved the drapes back to find only darkness waiting for him on the other side of the glass.

  Not that the hour made much difference. He’d have no more sleep tonight.

  He didn’t keep track of time anymore, but he must have stood at the window for hours, staring blindly into the darkness, because when he came back to himself the sky had lightened, and the sun was edging over the horizon.

  You look like an aristocrat, rather high, I think.

  An accurate guess, on her part. He hadn’t been quite so accurate, on his.

  She wasn’t a thief. Or perhaps it was more appropriate to say she wasn’t just a thief.

  He might have learned more if Daniel Brixton hadn’t emerged from the shadows like some kind of disembodied spirit. If he’d been in his rational mind, Tristan would have been expecting Brixton to materialize. The man had preternatural instincts, and he was a proper watchdog.

  Massive, but cautious. Quiet, and clever. Above all, deadly.

  Lady Clifford chose her people well.

  Even without Brixton’s sudden appearance, Tristan might not have gotten anything more out of the girl. She’d been afraid, yes. He’d felt her slender body trembling against his. Fear did tend to loosen most people’s tongues, but then she, like all of Lady Clifford’s disciples, wasn’t like most people.

  Not that it mattered much by then. By then, Tristan knew enough.

  He’d lingered in the darkness outside the school for some time after Brixton was gone, staring up at the dark windows, fury gathering like a storm in his chest. She’d told him she’d gone to St. Clement Dane’s Church tonight to say her confession.

  Perhaps she should have done so, while she still had the chance.

  * * * *

  “You look like death, Gray.” Caleb Reeve, Lord Lyndon, threw himself into the chair across from Tristan’s at the dining table and signaled the footman for coffee. “No use burying yourself behind that newspaper. I can see you’re a bloody wreck.”

  Tristan peered over the edge of the Times. “What the devil are you doing here, Lyndon? It’s not calling hours.”

  Lyndon snorted. “Calling hours are for debutantes and their marriage-minded mamas. I’m not here to co
urt you, for God’s sake.”

  Tristan set his paper aside with a sigh. “Why are you here, then?”

  “I came for Mrs. Tribble’s apricot pastries, of course.” Lyndon rubbed his hands together as the footman set a plate of steaming tartlets in front of him. “I could forgive your ghastly appearance this morning if I thought you’d gotten up to a proper debauch last night, but you left White’s before ten o’clock. No doubt you were in your bed by half ten. Now then, Gray. Why so feeble this morning?”

  Lyndon spoke with studied nonchalance, but Tristan heard the note of concern in his friend’s voice. He and Lyndon had been at Oxford together, and knew each other far too well to have secrets between them.

  Henry’s murder, the circumstances surrounding his death, Tristan’s nightmares—Lyndon knew all of it, and though he’d scoff at any suggestion he was worried for Tristan, he’d appeared in Great Marlborough Street far more often these past weeks than he’d been in the habit of doing.

  “You’ll be pleased to know I wasn’t in bed by half ten. I went out again after I left White’s.”

  “Well, that sounds promising. Where did you go?” Lyndon took an enormous bite of his tartlet, groaning with appreciation.

  “Well, since you ask, Lyndon, I spied a young boy on the roof of Lord Everly’s pediment, chased him from Great Marlborough Street to St. Clement Dane’s Church, discovered he wasn’t in fact a boy at all, but a young woman, then I chased her through a graveyard and every back alleyway in Westminster until I caught her on Maddox Street.”

  Lyndon had been making happy noises as he devoured his tartlet, but by the time Tristan finished, he was choking on it. “Urg…Ack…”

  Tristan waved over the footman. “James, if you’d be so kind as to thump Lord Lyndon before he expires in my breakfast room.”

  “Yes, my lord.” James darted forward and whacked Lyndon on the back until soggy bits of apricot tartlet spewed from his mouth. “Beg your pardon, sir.”