“Pardon me, my lady,” Mrs. Crumb said in a low voice, “but there is a caller and he insists on speaking to either you or Mr. St. John.”
Megs’s brows rose. “Who is it?”
“Lord d’Arque.”
For a moment she blinked, confused, before realization flooded her: He must’ve come about Roger and his murder. She followed the housekeeper down the stairs, feeling an odd sort of guilt at leaving Godric. But this was part of the reason why she’d come all the way to London, wasn’t it? If she could find out more about Roger’s murder, then she’d be that much closer to avenging him.
And leaving Godric.
The thought made her nearly stumble.
It wasn’t until they made the first-floor hallway and the housekeeper indicated that Lord d’Arque was waiting in the library that she remembered Godric’s dislike of the viscount. Even if her husband had been polite to the other man at the theater, it didn’t mean he would approve of a private tête-à-tête with the man.
She looked at the housekeeper. “Will you ask Miss Sarah St. John to come here, please?”
“Yes, my lady.”
She waited while Mrs. Crumb mounted the stairs, waited a moment more, took a deep breath, and entered the library.
Lord d’Arque was examining a bookcase on the far side of the room, but he turned at her entrance and crossed to her.
“My lady.” He bent over her hand but didn’t touch it with his lips. When he straightened, she saw that he was grave.
Strange. She didn’t know him at all well, but whenever she’d seen him previously, he’d almost always been smiling wickedly.
Almost as if his smile were his armor.
“My lord,” she replied. “What brings you to my home?”
He looked doubtfully at her. “I had hoped to speak to your husband.”
“I fear he is indisposed.”
He blinked, appearing to consider the matter before saying, “I came about Roger Fraser-Burnsby.”
She nodded, having braced herself for the name.
Behind her, the door to the library opened again and Sarah came in. “Megs?”
“Oh, there you are,” Megs said lightly. “I can’t remember. Have you met Lord d’Arque?”
“I don’t believe so,” Sarah said, coming nearer.
“A terrible oversight on my part,” Lord d’Arque drawled.
Megs turned. Ah, there it was. His crooked smirk was in place. Beside her, Megs felt Sarah stiffen. Her sister-in-law had decided opinions on rakes.
“My lord, may I introduce my dear sister-in-law, Miss Sarah St. John?” Megs said formally. “Sarah, this is Viscount d’Arque.”
“I am entirely enchanted to meet you, Miss St. John,” the viscount said with smooth charm. “I confess your exquisite beauty dazzles my eyes.”
“That sounds inconvenient,” Sarah murmured as Lord d’Arque straightened. “Let’s hope you can see well enough not to bump into the furniture.”
Lord d’Arque arched an amused brow, but before he could say something awful, Megs broke in.
“Shall we adjourn to the garden?” That would be quite proper. She should be able to talk to Lord d’Arque out of earshot of Sarah but still be within sight. “We’ve made several new plantings and I’m sure you’ll be pleased, my lord, to see them.”
She had no idea if the viscount was at all interested in gardening, but he murmured an assent.
Sarah arched a brow but merely said, “That sounds lovely. Shall I fetch our hats?”
Megs smiled at her. “Please.”
When she turned back around, Lord d’Arque was solemn again, but he didn’t mention Roger. They talked of inconsequential things until Sarah once again returned, a wide straw hat on her head and one in her hand. Megs thanked her and they all three proceeded to the garden. They strolled for a bit with Megs babbling about crocuses and forget-me-nots before Sarah cast her an odd look and declared that she wished to sit for a while. She sank onto one of the marble benches near the house—recently cleaned by the little maids—and gazed discreetly toward the river wall.
“Perhaps you can give me an opinion on my fruit tree,” Megs said as she and the viscount strolled in that direction.
Lord d’Arque glanced disinterestedly at the tree. “It looks dead.” He stopped. “My lady, you once asked about my friend Roger Fraser-Burnsby.”
“Yes.” She focused on the tree, searching out the tiny buds. It wasn’t dead—quite the contrary.
“I think,” the viscount said, “that you may have had a … close friendship with Roger.”
She looked at him. He was watching her frankly, and she could see a deep pain in his eyes. She made an impulsive decision. “I loved him and he loved me.”
He bowed his head. “I’m glad he found you before his death.”
Her eyes pricked and she blinked rapidly. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking the matter over since I talked to your husband at the theater. I wonder if perhaps we pooled our knowledge of his last movements, we might, between us, discover how he came to be killed—and who did it.”
She took a deep breath, once again looking at the tree. “The last time I saw him, Roger had proposed to me.”
His head jerked in surprise. “You were engaged?”
“Yes.”
“But why didn’t you tell anyone?”
She ran a finger over the gnarled branch of the old tree. “It was a secret—he hadn’t yet asked my elder brother for my hand. Roger wanted to prove himself, I think. He talked about a business proposition, one that would make enough money that he could ask for my hand properly.”
Lord d’Arque made a quiet exclamation.
She glanced at him curiously. “What is it?”
“About six months before Roger died, I was asked by a friend of ours if I wanted to take part in a business venture. One that he assured me would make lots of money.”
Megs frowned. “What was the business?”
“I don’t know.” Lord d’Arque shrugged. “I find that business propositions that promise cornucopias of money generally end up with the investor losing all but his smallclothes. I avoid them when possible. Since I turned down the proposition at once, I never found out what the business was.”
“Who was the friend who made the offer, then?”
Lord d’Arque hesitated only a moment. “The Earl of Kershaw.”
GODRIC OPENED HIS eyes to the sight of Megs sitting on a chair next to his bed. He glanced at the window and was surprised to see the light dimming. He must’ve slept all day. For a moment he watched her. She sat with her head bowed, staring at her hands as she idly twined her fingers together. She looked deep in thought, and the spark that lit in his chest just from her presence was … warming.
“Have you been there since morning?” he asked his wife softly.
She started and looked up. “No, I went down for luncheon, and we had a visitor this morning.”
“Oh?” He yawned, stretching lazily, a twinge from his left arm reminding him why he’d been abed to begin with. All things considered, he felt much better. Perhaps he could lure Megs into coming to bed with him for a repeat of this morning’s activities.
“Lord d’Arque came to call.”
He stilled. “Why?”
She bit her lip, looking a little lost. “He wanted to talk about Roger.”
She told him of the conversation she’d had with d’Arque, and by the time she was telling him that Kershaw had once asked the viscount to invest in a mysterious business, he’d closed his eyes in horror.
“What is it, Godric?”
How could he tell her? He opened his eyes, a fierce sense of protectiveness flooding him. He never wanted her hurt. The knowledge he now had would bring no relief from her sorrow. But she wasn’t a child. He hadn’t the right to decide what information to give her and what to keep from her.
He took a breath. “Two years ago, the Ghost of St. Giles—a different Ghost than me—kille
d Charles Seymour.” His eyes flicked up at her. “Seymour had been enslaving girls—small girls, most younger than twelve—to make fancy ladies’ stockings.”
“Like the workshops you told me about.” She nodded. “What does that have to do with Roger?”
“We thought the stocking workshops had been shut down with the death of Seymour. But they started again in St. Giles, not long ago. Last night I found the last one—and freed eleven little girls. I got this”—he raised his injured left arm—“when I was attacked by a gentleman.”
She simply looked at him, the question in her eyes.
He sighed. “It was Kershaw.”
Her lips parted slowly, her brows drawing together. “Lord d’Arque said that the Earl of Kershaw offered him an investment opportunity but didn’t say what it was. If Roger was made a similar offer by the earl …” She stood suddenly as if she could no longer sit still, pacing agitatedly in front of the bed. “He wanted to improve his funds before offering for my hand. If he accepted the business deal without inquiring what kind of business it was …” She stopped, staring at him, her eyes wide. “If he went to St. Giles and was presented with a workshop with enslaved little girls … dear God, Godric! Roger was a good man. He would’ve never condoned such horror.”
Godric inclined his head. “They would’ve had to murder him so he wouldn’t tell others.”
“This is the answer, then,” Megs whispered. “We must tell the authorities. We must—”
“No.”
She jerked, her eyes wounded. “What?”
He sat up, leaning forward. “He’s an earl, Megs, and we have no proof of anything, really, merely guesses. For all we know, Seymour killed Roger. Or someone else. Unlikely that an earl would do such stuff himself.”
Her hands became tight fists. “He’s still responsible, even if it was his partner or someone he hired. He helped kill Roger.”
“We don’t even know that,” Godric said tiredly. “This is all speculation.”
“If I told Lord d’Arque—”
“If you told the viscount—and he believed you—what do you think would happen?” he asked hard. “D’Arque would be forced to call Kershaw out.”
She blinked and opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it. Dueling was illegal. Even if d’Arque survived a duel—and Godric wouldn’t put it past Kershaw to cheat—he would be banished from the country.
“Give me some time,” he said gently. “I’ll investigate and learn more.”
She bit her lip and whispered, “I can’t stand the thought of him walking free when Roger is in his grave.”
“I’m sorry.” He held out his hands. “Come here.”
She came with slow steps like a reluctant child.
He took her hands, pulling her down to the bed with him, and he felt her slight resistance. “Shhh. I just want to lie with you, nothing more.”
He was afraid she would make an excuse and pull away. He wasn’t hurt and they weren’t about to have sex. There was no practical reason for her to lie with him.
But she did anyway, a soft weight against his side, smelling of orange blossoms and life. He couldn’t help but feel glad when she laid her hand on his chest and her breathing grew slow.
Still, he stared at the ceiling of his bedroom for long minutes, planning, calculating, trying to find a way to bring down an earl.
Chapter Eighteen
“Poor, poor souls!” Faith cried, and a single tear fell from her eye.
Her unhappiness so enchanted Loss that he forgot himself, letting go of the horse and clapping his tiny red hands. Swifter than the blink of an eye, Faith pushed the imp from the horse. He fell with a shriek and was trampled beneath the big black horse’s hooves.
The Hellequin chuckled under his breath. “Those demon imps have been my sole companions for an eternity, yet you’ve rid me of them in one day.”…
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Late the next morning, Megs stared down at her figures and did the calculation again. For the third time. Both because she always got a bit muddled when it came to numbers and because, well, they couldn’t be correct.
Yet the result was the same: She’d missed one of her courses and was late for the second. How was that possible? She tried to scowl at the numbers on the scrap of paper, but a gleeful grin kept taking over instead. She was trying very hard to be practical, to ignore the rising tide of elation within her breast. It was much too soon, she chided herself. If she got her hopes up, she’d be terribly disappointed to find brown stains on her linen tomorrow.
But what if she didn’t? Have her courses again, that is. What if she were really, truly with child?
She giggled aloud.
The thought had her jumping up, too restless with possibility to sit still. She crossed into Godric’s room almost without thought—and then was disappointed to see he was not there.
Megs wrinkled her nose, looking around. She tiptoed to his dressing room and peeked in.
Her Grace lay on a man’s shirt—Megs truly hoped it was a castoff of Godric’s—nursing her puppies. The dog raised her head and looked inquiringly at Megs.
“It’s quite all right,” Megs whispered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
She watched for a minute more because the puppies were making quite adorable snuffling sounds, and the chocolate one kept trying to push his paw in his sibling’s face. After a while she turned back to Godric’s room, meaning to return to her own. Something about his dresser caught her eye, though. The top drawer was pulled out, the key still inserted in the lock.
She went to look—it was a quite irresistible urge.
The key was a small one on a silver chain, and she realized, looking at it, that it was the same key that Godric wore around his neck. She touched it with one finger, making the silver chain swing gently.
Then she looked in the drawer.
At the front was a messy pile of letters. Behind it was a much neater, thin stack of letters bound in black, and in the corner of the drawer was a pretty blue and white enameled box. She picked it up and opened the hinged lid. Inside were two locks of fine hair, one brown and the other the same shade of brown but with gray mingled in the threads as well. They must’ve been Clara’s, and it struck her how long he’d known his first wife—long enough for her hair to start to gray. The thought made her melancholy. He’d had years of living and loving Clara while she—
But that didn’t matter, did it? She hadn’t come to London for Godric’s love.
She frowned and slowly replaced the enameled box.
Megs looked closer at the two stacks of letters. The one bound in black was obviously from Clara, but the loose pile …
Her heart began beating faster.
She recognized her own sprawling writing on the top. She riffled through the letters and found that they were all from her. She stared. Godric had saved every letter she’d written him. The thought made her back prickle. All those missives hastily scrawled off without any forethought, all those ramblings about Laurelwood and Upper Hornsfield and her daily life and … and kittens. Why had he ever bothered to save them?
She picked up one randomly from the pile and opened it, reading.
10 January 1740
Dear Godric,
What do you think? We have piles of snow here! I don’t know where it came from. Battlefield has been mooning about all day muttering about how he’s never seen such snow hereabouts in his lifetime, which, as you know, is extensive—some would say overly extensive—and Cook has had three revelations of the Second Coming already today and we haven’t even had Luncheon yet. Despite the possible Apocalypse, I do hope the snow stays, for it is quite lovely and ices every little tree branch and window ledge. If it snowed every winter I might come to quite like the dark season.
I’ve watched a wee robin all morning, hopping along the branches of the hawthorn tree outside my bedroom window and pausing now and again to pick out some startled insect from beneath the bark a
nd gobble it up. Some of the stable lads and the younger footmen spent the morning in a snowball skirmish that only ended when Battlefield was accidentally hit in the back of the neck (!) and a forcible peace was enacted.
Bother! I haven’t yet asked you the question I meant to with this letter and now I’m nearly out of paper, so here it is. Sarah mentioned this morning how much you enjoyed Laurelwood when you were younger, and it gave me a nasty start. Has my presence kept you from visiting? I do hope not! Please, please, please do come visit if you have a mind to—and despite the descriptions above, which, really, would put any sane person off. Cook might be mad, but she does make the most divine lemon tarts, and Battlefield is Battlefield so we must all put up with him, and I am scatterbrained, but I will make every attempt to appear solemn and serious and … well, I do wish you would visit.
Yours,
M.
The last bit was written in a very cramped hand because she had run out of paper after all that. Megs smoothed the letter, remembering that day in winter and how happy everyone was and how she seemed to miss something. She’d already known she’d wanted a babe by that point, but there was something more that she’d needed when she’d written this letter.
The door to Godric’s room opened.
She looked up, not bothering to hide the letter in her hands.
Godric paused on the threshold, arching his eyebrows mildly at finding her in his room going through his personal possessions. “Good morning.”
“You kept them all,” she blurted out.
“Your letters? Yes.” He strolled in and closed the door to the room. He didn’t seem put out by her riffling through his secrets.
Which made her feel guiltier, of course. She hadn’t kept all of his letters—just the most recent ones, and those she’d tossed in a drawer at Laurelwood. “Why did you keep them?”
“I liked rereading them.” His voice was deep, and she shivered as if it were rasping over her spine.