A Rose Before Dying

A Second Sons Mystery

By

Amy Corwin

A Rose Before Dying

Amy Corwin

Published by Amy Corwin at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Amy G. Padgett

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Contact information:
[email protected]

Cover Art by Amy G. Padgett

Editing Services Provided by: With Pen in Hand,
http://www.withpeninhand.net/

Publishing History

First Edition, 2011

Second Edition, 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely
coincidental.

Friday, July 8, 1821, London

Charles Vance, Earl of Castlemoor, hesitated
at the steps leading to the glossy black door of Second Sons,
Discreet Inquiries. He prayed his uncle’s valet was wrong. His
uncle’s private affairs were just that.
Private
. He had no
business interfering. However, Sir Edward was his sole remaining
relative, so if interference were warranted, he’d interfere.

However, as he reached to rap on the door, it
opened. A stocky, black-haired gentleman strode out, nearly pushing
him off the stoop. With a nod, Charles backed down the stairs and
waited with patient curiosity.

When he caught sight of him, the gentleman
laughed harshly. His heavy brows projected fiercely over a bulbous
nose. His face was pale with some strong emotion and his jaw worked
for a full minute before he said, “Lost your cook, have you?”

The witticism about the competition between
the wealthy for the few decent cooks in London and the subsequent
rage-induced hiring of inquiry agents to find cooks lured away mere
hours before an important dinner party fell flat on the walkway
between them.

“Cook? Good Lord, no, I….” Charles paused,
unwilling to discuss his purpose with a stranger, and a belligerent
one at that.

“Well, I doubt you’ll find what you’re
looking for here.” He barked out another sharp laugh.

A tall man dressed entirely in black moved
into the open doorway. He considered Charles for a moment. “May I
help you?” When Charles didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I’m
Mr. Gaunt.”

“Yes—it’s a pleasure—” He stepped to the edge
of the walkway to let the stocky gentleman pass. Despite his care,
the man brushed his shoulder, pushing him onto the damp grass as
the stranger stalked toward the gate. Charles stared after him in
surprise.

The man stopped with his hand on the iron
railing and glanced back. “You’re making a mistake, Gaunt. As I
informed you last week.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Phillips,” Mr. Gaunt said.
“However, I don’t believe either of us wish to continue under these
circumstances. I’m sure you’ll agree when you’ve had time to
consider.”

Mr. Phillips didn’t bother to respond. He
threw the gate open and walked away in silence, his legs and back
as rigid as a marionette’s.

Finally, Mr. Gaunt glanced again at Charles.
“I beg your pardon—bit of difficulty. Won’t you step inside?”

Charles’s gaze followed Phillips’s rapidly
retreating form before he stepped back onto the walkway. Again he
hesitated, his reluctance heightened by the brief unpleasantness.
“Thank you, however—”

“Please. I assure you Mr. Phillips won’t
return.” Mr. Gaunt stepped aside, holding the door open. “Would I
be mistaken to assume you are Lord Castlemoor?”

The tall, somber owner of Second Sons Inquiry
Agency evidently felt the need to prove he was not completely
incompetent, despite the brief scene with Mr. Phillips.

Chuckling in acknowledgement, Charles
followed Mr. Gaunt inside. “Have we met?”

“No. Your uncle is here. He mentioned you
might join us.”

“His valet was most insistent.” He removed
his hat and glanced around the narrow entryway.

A man Charles took to be the butler moved
forward to shut the door and take the earl’s hat. Preliminary
courtesies addressed, Mr. Gaunt turned sharply to the right. He
waved Charles forward into an austerely furnished office.

Dark, gleaming wainscoting paneled the lower
walls. The deep cherry was echoed in a large desk and chair
situated in front of a double window. The surface of the desk
shone, and the faint scent of beeswax and lavender lingered in the
warm air. Nothing broke the gleaming perfection of the desk’s
surface except a small, matching rectangle of wood supporting two
crystal pots of ink, a narrow pen holder sporting a single feather
pen and an odd-looking bundle of flowers. Apparently, Mr. Gaunt
kept his papers neatly locked away, or had no need of records.

Charles thought about his own cluttered desk,
piled high with various books and papers, and hummed under his
breath. In his experience, the neater the desk, the more arrogant
and irritating the man. Then he remembered the gentleman who had
bumped into him and wondered if that scene was proof that his
uncle’s valet was right to beg him to extricate his uncle from the
inquiry agency. Whatever difficulties beset him could be handled by
the two of them.

His uncle had rescued him enough times when
he was a lad. Now, he could return the favor.

Sir Edward Marlowe sat stiffly upright in the
sole chair in front of Mr. Gaunt’s desk. He twitched a spray of
smallish yellow flowers out of a cone of thick white paper and
fiddled with them.

“Please, come in, my lord.” Mr. Gaunt
gestured for him to enter the room. Then he glanced over Charles’s
shoulder toward the butler hesitating in the doorway. “Bring
another chair, Sotheby. Please, my lord, take mine.”

“Yes, sir. Very good.” The butler
disappeared, his stiff shoes briskly tapping away down the
hallway.

“Looking for employment, Sir Edward?” Charles
smiled as he strode forward, hoping to break the tense
atmosphere.

“I have quite enough to occupy my time, thank
you, nephew!” Sir Edward’s ebony walking stick slashed through the
air as if writing the words.

The stick almost gave the butler a black eye
when he entered with the requested chair. He fended off the cane
with the chair’s legs and then placed the seat next to Sir Edward.
Keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the older man’s cane, he exited
swiftly to avoid any inadvertent thumpings.

“So I see, uncle.” Charles placed a hand on
the back of the chair. “Your valet indicated you’ve been
exceedingly active, despite your injury. Too active.”

“I suppose he told you where I was, too, the
damn fool! I warned Gaunt you’d turn up if you made your usual
morning visit to my house. Well, I’ve no need of your assistance!
Injured or well, I’m capable of handling my own affairs!”

“My thoughts exactly.” He caught his uncle’s
gaze. “Perhaps we could discuss it, however? Since I’m here.”

“Might as well.” Sir Edward slapped his cane
against the seat of the empty chair. “Sit. My lord.”

“Thank you,” Charles replied with mild irony
as he judiciously moved the chair out of reach of his uncle’s
impatient swings. He nodded to Mr. Gaunt and his uncle before
taking his seat. “How’s your ankle?”

“Lame as ever!” Sir Edward swore and slammed
the tip of his walking stick against the wooden floor. “And gout,
by God! As if it weren’t enough to break the damn thing!”

“I’m sorry,” Charles murmured. “However,
you’ll recall your physician recommended bed rest—”

“A man can’t stay abed forever! You wouldn’t
do it—why should I?”

“Particularly when there are so many females
yearning to be impressed?”

His uncle chuckled, although his shaggy brows
still jutted over his eyes, deepening the shadows bruising his gray
skin. His notoriously foul temper had grown worse over the last few
weeks after a series of misadventures that plagued him. First, he
had broken his ankle while helping his lady love mount her
ill-trained horse, and then a resurgence of gout tried his temper
further. As a result, the smallest hint of disagreement set him
off, railing against fate and mankind alike.

Not that Charles could blame him. Continual
pain could make even the most sweet-tempered man irritable.

His uncle’s brief flash of amusement didn’t
last long. He punished the floor with his stick again and
continued, “So that fool, Hoopes, sent you after me.”

“Your valet mentioned something—”

“Well, he had no business doing so.”

“He was justifiably worried.”

“Nonsense.” He slammed his cane down on the
desk before he leaned forward to poke the stick at the paper
shrouding the flower. He stared at it thoughtfully. “Well, you’re
here now.”

Mr. Gaunt hastily picked up the spray before
the cane destroyed it. “Perhaps we ought to discuss your uncle’s
concerns. He brought this, along with a note—”

“She’s dead, Charles!” The words burst from
Sir Edward’s throat, raw and hard. He clenched his jaw and
swallowed, once, twice, as he repeatedly hit the side of Mr.
Gaunt’s desk with his cane. After several minutes, he mastered
himself enough to grind out, “Lady Banks. Dead.”

Charles stared at his uncle in disbelief. Sir
Edward’s closest friend—mistress according to some accounts—dead?
She was only thirty, barely three years older than Charles. No
wonder his uncle’s valet was frantic with worry. “How—what
happened?”

“Murdered, God’s teeth! And the bastard sent
those bloody flowers—taunting me…” He choked again and stared down
at his trembling hands, clenched over the brass knob of his walking
stick. Bowing his head, he rhythmically tapped the cane against the
floor with a soft, controlled beat that was, in its way, far more
frightening than his previous flailing. The sound carried such a
deep sense of grief that Charles glanced away.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last through a tight
throat. His gaze shifted from his uncle’s bowed head to the spray
of flowers. He’d never known Lady Banks, but anger filled him as he
watched his uncle wrestle with the pain. How could anyone murder a
woman? It was unthinkable. “What did the note say?”

Mr. Gaunt handed him a calling card. There
was no name engraved on it. However, the small white square
displayed an arrogant scrawl of thick black script reading, “Roses
die quickly when cut.”

“That was the first one,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“The first?” Charles glanced up from the
card.

“Some bloody-minded bastard sent it to her
Sunday morning. Along with a cluster of those damn yellow flowers,”
Sir Edward interrupted in a harsh voice. His face crumpled. Raising
a shaking hand, he covered his eyes as if the pressure of his palm
could hold back the anguished tears. “She thought—thought I sent
them to her, for God’s sake. She laughed when I tried to tell her
otherwise.”

Charles rose to stand behind his uncle’s
chair and grip his trembling shoulder. As Sir Edward fought for
control, Charles caught Mr. Gaunt’s dark, sympathetic gaze. “What
happened?”

“Shot. The local constable thought it was an
accident. Some poacher hoping to bag a rabbit for Sunday supper. At
first. But…” Sir Edward’s voice drifted away, strangled by
grief.

“But there was the note.” Charles studied the
note. A small, useless bit of paper filled with deep, threatening
taunts. “And undoubtedly, the servants heard Lady Banks tease you
about sending her the flowers. So they assumed you sent them.”

Gaunt held up another small card between his
long fingers. “And not just the one. A second note was delivered
with another spray of these same yellow flowers.” His mouth
tightened briefly. “Clearly intended to mock Sir Edward—or whoever
read it.” He read the second card aloud. “The rose speaks for the
doomed.”

“The rose?” Charles repeated. His gaze
alighted on the spray of one-inch flowers shaped like yellow
pom-poms. “That’s a rose?”

“Yes.” A brief smile glimmered over Gaunt’s
face. “Your knowledge of horticulture is on par with mine, my lord.
However—”