“I’m sure she is well aware of the nature of their characters.”
“If that is all, I must be on my way.” He took her hand and bowed over it. “Good evening, Florence. As always, it has been a great pleasure.”
“So very gallant,” Florence murmured. A wistful expression lit her eyes. “I vow, when I see you these days with your elegant clothes and fine manners, I can scarcely believe that you are in any way related to that ragged boy who used to come to my back door offering to sell secrets and gossip obtained from Maud’s customers. I always knew that you would become successful one day.”
He grinned. “Did you?”
“Yes. The only question in my mind was whether you would make your fortune legally or illegally.”
“One of the many lessons I have learned, madam, is that there is often very little distinction between the two approaches.”
“Bah. You make a point of presenting a cold and ruthless face to the world, but I have known you for a very long time, Adam Hardesty. I am aware of how you saved your brother and sisters. I know about the charity houses for children that you have established in the stews. Underneath that decidedly rusty armor, you possess a sense of honor and a measure of nobility that would have done credit to any of the knights of the Round Table.”
Amused, he surveyed the nearest painting. It showed a knight in elaborately wrought armor enjoying the solicitous attentions of a group of scantily clad nymphs. “Then why is it that I very seldom find myself under attack by scores of beautiful, nude females?”
“Most likely because thanks to your infamous rules, you have been obsessed with avoiding scandal for the past several years.”
He studied another picture, which depicted a lovely nude woman in the arms of a knight in gold armor. Memories of the hot, sweet passion he had found with Caroline heated his blood.
“I seem to have shattered a number of my own rules lately,” he said.
“You have, indeed, managed to become the subject of a great sensation in the papers.” Florence laughed. “Which reminds me, is your connection with Mrs. Fordyce a serious matter or merely a wild, tempestuous fling for you? I am hoping it is a bit of both.”
“You know her work?”
“Yes, of course. I adore Mrs. Fordyce’s novels.”
“You force me to reveal the humiliating truth, madam. I have reason to believe that Mrs. Fordyce may be using me as her muse. In particular, she has informed me that I have become her model for the character of Edmund Drake in her new novel.”
“How exciting. I cannot wait to see if you will escape the usual fate meted out to a Fordyce villain.”
THIRTY
Adam went down the broad marble steps in front of Florence Stotley’s elegant town house and found himself confronted by a wall of fog and night. Gas lamps glowed in front of the elegant front doors that lined the street, but for the most part they provided balls of useless, glaring light that reflected eerily off the mist.
Earlier in the evening he had noticed the dense vapor gathering in the streets. Aware that the stuff would slow traffic, he had elected to walk to Florence’s address.
At the foot of the steps he turned and started back in the direction he had come, relying on the secret web of hidden walks, lanes and alleys that constituted his private mental map of the city.
Now and then the shadowy shapes of tentatively moving carriages and hansom cabs rattled past. Figures came and went like wraiths in the thick mist. They appeared briefly silhouetted against a flaring gas lamp and then vanished, leaving only the echoes of footsteps.
Halfway across a small park in a quiet square it occurred to him that he was not all that far from Corley Lane. It was just going on ten o’clock. Caroline had mentioned earlier in the day that she intended to write tonight. Perhaps she would like to hear about his visit to Florence Stotley.
It was a transparent excuse to call upon her. Then again, he did not actually need a good excuse, he decided. After all, they had embarked upon an affair. That gave him certain privileges.
In any event, there would be no harm in walking past her little house tonight. If he saw lights in the windows, he would knock. If not, he would continue on his way.
He moved silently along a tiny walk that separated two rows of town houses, cut through another park and started along a narrow street.
A short time later, he ducked into a crooked lane. The stones of the darkened buildings that loomed over the passage dated from medieval times. It was a route he had used often enough in his younger days when he had come to this part of the city to sell his wares.
The all-too-familiar shiver of ghostly electricity touched the back of his neck. A second later he caught the unmistakable scrape of shoe leather on pavement behind him.
As startling incidents went, this was a particularly interesting one.
He kept moving, not altering his stride or giving any other indication that he knew he was being followed.
Several of the doorways along the lane had been built with deep vestibules and entranceways. The pools of darkness offered a variety of hiding places. He chose one at random and moved noiselessly into a well of shadows created by ancient stones.
The footsteps stopped a few seconds later. Whoever had followed him into the lane had just realized that his quarry had disappeared. Adam breathed slowly and waited, motionless. He willed his pursuer not to abandon the chase. He had some important matters to discuss with whoever was out there.
A few seconds later the footsteps started up again, hurrying now.
Adam watched for movement in the tiny lane. The single gas lamp at the far end provided barely enough light to reveal shifting shadows. But that proved sufficient for the task at hand.
The figure of the pursuer materialized as a dark shape in the greater darkness that drenched the passage.
Adam vaulted out of his hiding place. He slammed into the man with enough force to send them both sprawling on the pavement. The pursuer landed on the bottom, taking most of the shock of the fall. A metallic object clattered on the stones.
The man’s hoarse, astonished shout of fear and rage ended abruptly. Adam heard a wheezing sound as the villain fought to regain the breath that had been knocked from his lungs.
“Don’t move,” Adam ordered.
He rolled to his feet, stepped back and slid one foot along the paving stones until it contacted an object. He bent and picked up the knife.
“I see you came armed,” he observed. “Therefore, I must assume you did not follow me with the intention of inviting me to join you for a pint at the nearest tavern.”
The man made a gulping sound and found his voice. “Message. Just trying to give you a message. That’s all. No cause to attack me like that, you bloody bastard.”
“What was the message and who sent—”
He broke off when he felt the hair on the nape of his neck stir a second time. Another set of footsteps sounded, pounding toward him out of the shadows.
He swung around and tried to move aside but he came up hard against an iron railing. The second villain was upon him in an instant, lashing out with a heavily booted foot. Adam turned away from the blow, trying to limit the damage that was going to be done.
He succeeded to some extent. The boot caught him on the ribs but it did not land with the force that the attacker had intended. Off balance, Adam slammed down onto the pavement.
“This is the message,” the attacker hissed. He closed in swiftly and prepared another jolting kick to the ribs.
Adam managed to grab a pant leg. He hauled on it with all his strength.
“Bastard.” The assailant danced wildly, trying to stay erect and retrieve his foot.
He failed, hitting the stones hard.
The first man was on his feet. Adam heard him coming up fast from behind and turned to face him, knife in hand.
The man froze a few steps away.
Holding the confiscated blade in his left hand, Adam reached inside his overcoat.
r /> The second man scrambled awkwardly to his feet.
“What are ye waitin’ for, Georgie?” he whined. “Stick him. He deserves it after what he done to us.”
“He’s got me knife, Bart.”
“True,” Adam said. “But I prefer to use my own.” He slid the blade from the hidden sheath inside his jacket, letting the men hear the whisper of steel on leather. “I’m more familiar with it, you see.”
A short silence greeted that announcement.
“Now see here, we didn’t bargain for any knife play.” Georgie edged away.
“He’s right,” Bart assured him hastily. “Been a misunderstanding here, I believe. We were paid to deliver a message, that’s all.”
“Then why assault me?” Adam asked.
“The cove what commissioned us to give you the message said you would pay more attention to it if we roughed you up a bit.”
“This cove you mentioned. Would he, by any chance, have been heavily whiskered and walk with a limp?”
There was another short silence.
“How’d ye know that?” Bart asked, sounding deeply uneasy.
“Never mind. Now, as you have gone to all this trouble, why don’t you deliver the message?”
Georgie coughed. “You’re to stop poking around in certain financial matters what don’t concern you.” He sounded as if he were reciting a school lesson. “And if you keep prying into other people’s business affairs, a certain diary will be turned over to the press.”
“Thank you,” Adam said. “You have confirmed my suspicion. The killer evidently does have the diary.”
“What killer?” Georgie demanded nervously. “What are you talking about?”
“The man who sent the pair of you to deliver his message has recently murdered at least once and quite possibly twice.”
“Ye’re mad, ye are,” Bart snarled. “The cove what hired us was no murderer. He were a man of business.”
“So am I,” Adam said.
He held the knife up slightly. There was just enough light to glint evilly on the blade.
Bart and Georgie turned and fled away down the lane.
THIRTY-ONE
“Edmund,” Lydia whispered frantically. “You must not do this. You know you will regret it when the terrible fever of your rage has passed and you discover the truth. You are wrong about me, I swear it.”
Edmund responded with ruthless kisses, plundering her senses with the determination of a marauding pirate intent only on gaining the abject surrender of his victim.
Trapped beneath him, her skirts a tumbled sea of delicate blue silk, she looked up into his savagely set features. She knew at once that she was powerless to stop him. He was so lost in his fury and despair that he was likely not even aware of her puny struggles.
When sanity returned, he would be horrified by his own actions. But by then it would be too late for both of them.
Desperate to save herself and Edmund as well, she placed her dainty hands against his broad shoulders in a vain attempt to check his rash assault.
Caroline paused and put down her pen. She was not entirely satisfied. It was certainly a very exciting scene but Edmund Drake seemed to be out of control. That did not fit his character.
The muted clang of the door knocker sounded just as she made to pick up her pen for another attempt. Emma and Milly were home early. Evidently the play they had attended that evening had failed to live up to expectations. They must have left during the intermission.
Mrs. Plummer was in bed upstairs, having taken her usual sleeping tonic: a mix of laudanum and gin. The combination was guaranteed to ensure that she slept like the dead until morning.
Caroline listened closely and then got to her feet when she did not hear the scrape of iron in the lock. Perhaps her aunts had neglected to take their keys.
She crossed the carpet and went along the corridor to the front hall. There she paused to peer through the small panes of beveled glass that framed the door. Shock snapped through her when she saw Adam. He seemed to be leaning rather heavily against the jamb.
Hastily she unlocked the door and yanked it open. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
“It is a long story.” He braced one hand against the doorjamb and looked at her with a veiled expression that did nothing to conceal his prowling tension.
She was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was garbed only in a dressing gown and slippers.
“Something is wrong,” she said, trying to read his hard face. “What is it?”
“May I come in?”
“Yes, of course.” She stepped back to allow him into the hall.
He shoved himself away from the doorjamb. When he walked through the opening, she saw that he was not moving with his customary masculine ease.
“Are you all right?” she asked. She noticed the beginnings of a dark bruise under his right eye and answered her own question before he could speak. “No, I can see that you are not. You have been hurt.”
“I could do with a glass of your aunts’ sherry,” he admitted, tossing his hat onto the hall table. “Make that two glasses.”
He winced when he started to peel off his overcoat.
“Let me help you.” She reached up to ease the garment off his shoulders. “Please tell me what happened.”
“Could I have the sherry first?”
She led him back along the hall to the study, sat him down in a reading chair and poured out a large measure of sherry.
He took a long, grateful swallow and lowered the glass with a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan.
“It has occurred to me this evening that I am not as young as I used to be,” he said. “No wonder everyone is pressing me to get married.”
“You are making me very anxious, Adam. Kindly tell me what has happened.”
He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “A message was delivered to me a short time ago by two gentlemen of the criminal class. It was made clear that if I did not cease my inquiries into the matter of the fraudulent investments and, presumably, the murders, the diary would be turned over to one of the more flamboyant newspapers.”
Horrified, she leaned down and gently touched the incipient bruise. “You could have been killed.”
He opened his eyes. She saw the predator in him and shivered.
“As it happens, I wasn’t,” he said.
She had never seen him in this strange, unpredictable mood. Whatever had occurred tonight, it had been dangerous and violent, she thought.
“I noticed that you favored your ribs when you removed your coat,” she said, trying to maintain an air of Florence Nightingale calm. “Do you think you have broken any bones?”
“No.” He touched his side somewhat tentatively and then shook his head with more certainty. “Nothing is broken. Just a few bruises.”
“Wait right here.” She hurried toward the door. “I will fetch a clean cloth and some of the salve that Aunt Emma uses for bruises.”
He frowned. “There is no need—”
She ignored him and went down the hall to the kitchen to find the things she needed.
When she returned a few minutes later with the cloth and salve, she discovered that he was no longer seated in the chair where she had left him. Instead, he was standing behind her desk, reading the scene she had been working on when he had arrived. She noticed that he had helped himself to another glass of sherry.
“What the devil is going on here?” Adam looked up, scowling. “Drake is attacking Miss Lydia?”
“There has been a dreadful misunderstanding,” she explained, opening the jar that contained salve. “Edmund Drake believes that Miss Lydia has lied to him. In his anguish and rage he has lost control of his passions.”
“Only a brute or a madman is allowed that excuse,” Adam said flatly. He swallowed more sherry.
She paused in the act of applying the salve to the cloth. “You are right. I knew there was something wron
g with that scene. I shall have to come up with some other reason to explain his behavior.”
“Why? I thought he was the villain of the piece. Villains are brutes and madmen, are they not?”
“Never mind.” She cut off a section of the salve-soaked cloth and pressed it gently to his bruised cheek. “Hold this while I prepare another bandage for your ribs.”
Absently he held the cloth in place. “Where are Emma and Milly?”
“At the theater. Mrs. Plummer is here but she is asleep upstairs.” She soaked another section of cloth in the tonic. “This is for your ribs. Stand still while I remove your shirt.”
He sucked in his breath when she gently tugged off his shirt, but he said nothing.
It was only the second time she had seen him without a shirt. The sight of his bare chest lightly covered in crisp, curling hair momentarily diverted her attention. He was her lover, she thought. She had a right to see him like this.
Pulling her scattered senses together with an effort of will, she wrapped the long strip of damp cloth around his ribs. Adam winced and swallowed the rest of the sherry.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously.
“No. The salve is cold, that’s all.”
“That is part of the benefit.” She tied the ends of the strip very carefully. “Cold helps restrain the bruising.”
He looked down, watching her hands as she worked. “I trust that your aunt does not use arnica in her salve?”
“No. She says that although it is very good for bruising, it is simply too dangerous to use. If it enters the body through a cut or an open wound, the effect is quite poisonous. Adam, these men who attacked you—do you think by any chance they were involved in the murders?”
“I’m almost certain they were not. They claimed that they were hired by our old acquaintance, the man of business who sports too many whiskers and walks with a limp.”
“But what if—”
Without warning, he tossed aside the cloth he had been holding to his cheek, bent his head and kissed her with a fierceness that shook her to her toes.
When he eventually raised his head, she had to clutch his sleek shoulders in order to steady herself.