Lady Killer (22 page)

“I am afraid that is not an option.”

“Why?”

“Because in less than an hour every news sheet seller in London will be spreading the word that she was arrested this afternoon as the Vampire of London,” Miles explained in a lowered voice through clenched teeth. “Which would make it very inconvenient for her to be seen in the street.”

“Maybe we could use the monkey to find her then,” Corin volunteered. “He might be able to lead us to her.”

The vein in Miles’s jaw continued to throb, but not as acutely. “You propose I go searching the city with a monkey on a leash? Who knows where the hell she is? I wouldn’t put it past her to be having tea with the queen.”

“She was not dressed for a royal visit, sir,” the redhaired youth who had been contorting his neck to hear put in helpfully. If he had been smarter he would have known that the appraising look Miles gave him indicated that his life expectancy had just been cut in half.

“Get rid of him,” Miles muttered under his breath.

“Can’t,” Corin told him. “Nephew of the chancellor of the Exchequer. The CE especially requested an important posting for him.”

“Then post him somewhere important. Maybe somewhere in Spain. Give him to the Spanish Army. Let him do his damage on their side rather than ours.”

Corin took the boy aside and dispatched him to the kitchens to await further “vital and confidential” instructions. Then he rejoined the group.

“I want you to take the monkey and these three men and head into the city,” Miles said to his manservant, pointing to three of the footmen. “You,” he said to one of the remaining two, “go to Which House and see if she stopped there or left word. And you,” to the final footman, “alert the guards we already have stationed. As soon as you find her, sequester her and send for me. I will bring her back myself.”

“If I had known that I would have waited and let you carry me home in your coach,” Clio said as she slipped in between the shoulders of the gawking footmen. “It would have spared me a great deal of pain in my ankle.”

Miles swung to face her. “When did you get here?” He hoped to hell she had not heard what he told to Corin about the news sheets.

“Just now.”

He relaxed slightly inside, but his expression remained grim. “Where the devil were you?”

Clio regarded him for a moment, trying to decide how much she felt like goading him. If things had not gone so smoothly that afternoon, she might have been tempted to ask him by what authority he was holding her prisoner and if clenching his jaw that much was as painful as it looked, but as it was she was in an excellent mood and let him off easily. “I was visiting a sick friend,” she told him.

And it was almost true. Norton Nitely had greeted her from his plumped up bed with the words “It is infinitely kind of you to pay your last respects this way, dear Clio. I fear it is the end for me this time.”

“New houseboy,” Astor had whispered to her as he passed out of the sumptuous chamber with a tray. “He’s jealous as an old maid.”

“I heard that,” Norton called after him, the sternness in his voice belied by the fond expression on his face as he watched Astor’s receding back. He briskly motioned Clio over to the bed. “I just do this dying man routine to make him feel important,” he confided to her. “After twenty-three years together, you know, I don’t want him to worry about the state of my affections.” Then he sighed. “He has been spending an awful lot of time with that new footman, though. You would not consider hiding out in the kitchens for a few days and—” He stopped speaking when the violence of Clio’s head shaking became apparent.

“No, under no circumstances and never,” Clio said firmly. “Besides, it would be a waste of your money. You know he is devoted to you.”

“Yes, I suppose you are right. But if he found out I’d hired someone to keep an eye on him we could have a huge row, and then afterwards—”

“—Afterwards your heart pains would act up,” Astor said, coming into the room again. “And you would be even less entertaining to deal with than you are now.” He tenderly brushed the hair off the other man’s forehead, seated himself on the bed, and looked at Clio. “What can we do for you, love? I assume you did not drop in simply for the pleasure of watching an old couple bicker.”

Something inside of Clio tightened as she looked at the two old comrades. They were so happy together, so content in one another’s friendship. She had met them four years earlier when they hired her to take care of a small matter involving the theft of a prized French chair in which King Francis the First was said to have made love to his mistress three times. Over the course of their acquaintance, she had learned that Norton Nitely and his business partner Astor Buff-Carter were not at all what they seemed. Their partnership was much more than financial; and their business in European furniture was merely a cover for the fact that they were very highly skilled con men.

Working selectively—only on aristocratic families that could afford it and those who mistreated their horses—Norton and Astor would insinuate themselves into a household and siphon off good pieces of furniture, but so gracefully and with such aplomb that they would actually be thanked for it in the end. Their success was based on the fact that they knew more about the nobility than anyone else in England, more about many aristocratic families than the scions themselves, and could therefore pass themselves off as long-lost relatives of almost anyone they chose at any time.

It was this knowledge that Clio had come to tap. If she accepted Miles’s arguments that she was not the vampire—which she could afford to do by day since the vampire seemed only to kill by night—then she knew that it was probably a man. A man who, according to Toast, had been at Mariana and Miles’s first betrothal ball. A man from Devonshire. Which meant that all she needed was to ascertain which males on the ball guest list had been from Devonshire. Once she had done that, she would turn the tables on him.

It was Miles who had given her the idea. “He is like a hunter setting a trap,” he had said the night before about the vampire.
A hunter
she had repeated over and over in her mind that night as she lay in bed next to him, trying to block out the memory of his kiss, of his words, of his touch, trying to ignore the desire that was pulsing through her.
(Do not worry, it will never happen again. No, it won’t.)
Trying above all not to cry.

He is a hunter. And I, she had realized suddenly, am the prey.

But not for long.

She supposed she could have gone to Elwood with this. He was, in fact, originally from Devonshire. But she knew he would demand to know why she wanted the information and she did not want him involved. Plus, she could not get around the fact that accepting that she was not the vampire meant accepting that someone—possibly even Elwood himself—had drugged her. So she called upon Norton and Astor instead.

“Who on this list is from Devonshire?” she asked, holding out the three sheets of paper on which she had transcribed the names of those invited to the ball.

“Conceivably we could all be, if we went back far enough,” Norton told her, dropping the guise of the invalid entirely. “There are those who think Devonshire is almost Eden. But I assume you mean in the last two generations.”

Thus narrowed, Norton and Astor found six names on the list for Clio. Two of them were very elderly and slightly infirm, making it unlikely that they had hauled a girl up a ladder, and one of them was the woman, Lady Starrat, who had been entertaining Miles’s cousin Sebastian in the library the night before. This left only three real candidates. Clio proffered her sincere thanks to Norton and Astor and was just about to take her leave, when she thought of something.

“What about the Mayhew family? Serena Mayhew?” she asked as she rose from her chair. Serena Mayhew was one of the two victims of the vampire that Clio and Miles had been unable to definitively link to Devonshire the night before.

“Mayhew,” Astor repeated, tapping a finger on his cheek. “Married?”

“I do not know. Why?”

“There was a Serena Arlington from Devonshire, who married Lord Winston Mayhew,” Astor hazarded.

“But he was from Kent,” Norton put in. “One of our ‘friends.’ Man was a real tyrant. Do you remember how we found his horses?”

“He said it was his son that beat them,” Astor reminded him.

“Hogwash,” Norton declared. “That man was a—”

“What about Theolinda Rightson?” Clio introduced the other victim’s name in a desperate effort to change the subject. She knew from experience where their tirades over the treatment of horses could end up if not checked immediately.

“Rightson?” Norton repeated, frowning. Then his face brightened. “Oh yes, of course. Rightsons of Devonshire. Old family. Not much money. Kind to their livestock, though. Sent their boy Samuel to London to make something of himself. Wonder what became of him.”

Under other circumstances Clio might have stayed to discuss that interesting question, but since there were no Rightsons on the guest list she had in her hand and since she had quite a lot to do before it grew dark, she kissed both men on the cheek and left.

From Norton and Astor’s she went to see that word was spread warning women from Devonshire to be on their guard, and took out a small advertisement in the news sheets that anyone with information about the vampire should communicate with her, just in case either the fiend or the Special Commissioner thought his attempts to scare her away had worked. Then she headed to Which House, where a brief consultation with her client had been enough to secure the fact that he and his sister were also from Devonshire and a brief check of
A Compendium of Vampires
had confirmed one of the premises on which her plan was based. With her copy of the
Compendium
stashed on her person, she had gone to complete her final errand, depositing the five-hundred pounds she owed Captain Black in the hands of one of his thugs. The nearly quarter moon was lightly visible in the sky and the sun was just setting as she slid into the servants’ entrance of Dearbourn Hall and made her way back to Miles’s apartments.

She had felt a brief pang at Which House when she had looked at a calendar and realized it was her twenty-fifth birthday and that it, like the twenty-four that preceded it, was going to pass unnoticed, but she reminded herself that she did not care. Besides, paying off her debt had left her feeling light, almost giddy, especially toward the Deerhound, whose purse had enabled it. That, coupled with the fact that by the next day she would have caught the vampire, assuming she was not the vampire herself, had worked to erase her disappointment and put her in a very good mood.

Miles was having none of it. “What sick friend? Why did you visit a sick friend?”

His deep glower only made his eyes look more golden and did nothing to dull Clio’s happiness. “I went hoping I would catch whatever he has and pass it on to you,” she explained. “I read in a book once that certain ailments can be almost instantly fatal.”

“He? You went to visit a man?”

“Two of them, actually. Handsome ones. Does that make you jealous, my lord?”

Miles knew she was only teasing, but the hell of it was, it did. He was flat-out jealous. Worse, he found himself checking over her clothes to see if they looked tousled in any way. Not that he could tell with the tattered state they were in. Damn this woman. “Why haven’t you put on any of the gowns I had sent in for you?” he demanded.

“I—I couldn’t,” Clio replied, the challenge draining from her voice. “They are too lovely. I couldn’t wear them.”

“You can and you will,” Miles said, dead serious. “Right now. And you won’t go out again. Anywhere. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Miles snarled.

“Why would I put on a beautiful dress if I cannot go anywhere in it? That makes no sense. Surely even you must see that, my lord.”

Miles could have sworn he heard a snicker coming from Corin’s direction, but he ignored it. He moved closer to her. “You will put it on because I asked you to.” His eyes were burning into hers. “And then you will wait in my chamber, here, until I come for you.”

“What if I choose not to?”

“I do not recall saying that you had a choice. But I will tell you that if by some miracle you manage to break through the cordon of guards and leave this apartment again without my permission, I will personally find you, bring you back, and see to it that you are tied up in such a way that it will be impossible for you to get out again. I hesitate to take such steps now, but I will if I must. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes,” Clio said. “I am very good with short words.”

Miles ignored her. “I must make an appearance at this ball, but in two hours I will be back and we will dine together and discuss your behavior today.”

“I have nothing to discuss, my lord,” Clio said, tilting her head back to look at him defiantly.

He reached out and rested his fingers lightly under her chin. “That is good, because I plan on doing all the talking.” Then, as if to make his point early and often, he turned on his heel before she could respond and strode out the door.

Clio stood in the middle of the room staring at the place he had just vacated.