Romance: Detective Romance: A Vicious Affair (Victorian Regency Intrigue 19th England Romance) (Historical Mystery Detective Romance) (4 page)

She moaned as he undressed her.

*****

Afterwards, they lay half-clothed in silence for a time. Then their eyes met, and they began to giggle. Lucia hadn’t known what to expect. The pleasure of the body had always been oblique to her. What she had experienced had been painful at first, and then slowly, slowly, pleasurable. They would do it again. Of that Lucia was sure. But now that case was on, and they had to focus. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon. The Viking would be here soon.

“That was—unexpected,” Wilbert breathed, as he pulled his shirt on.

“I know,” Lucia smiled, pulling her boots on. “We’ll do it again, when this Viking fellow is caught.”

“Yes?”

Lucia touched his nose. “Yes.”

“Let’s hope he hasn’t sneaked by whilst we were—busy.”

“He hasn’t,” Lucia said. “I would’ve sensed it.”

Wilbert didn’t dispute her. He had done, when they first started working together, all those years ago. But she had proven herself to him time and time again. It had gotten to the point where her self-regard was contingent upon his absolute confidence in her abilities. And he rarely doubted her, which meant she rarely doubted herself. If Wilbert would
gone
, she would be extremely sad indeed.

“Wilbert, my love,” he said.

“Hmm?”

She swallowed. She was not, she reflect, a lady at all. “What would you say if I suggested we become husband and wife? Oh, let us push away all sentimental considerations for a moment. We would be quite the team, I think. Mr. and Mrs. Underwood, crime-fighters extraordinaire!”

Wilbert smiled and squeezed her hand. “That would make me the happiest man alive.”

“Good,” Lucia said, sitting up. “We’ll do that, then.”

“I love you, Lucia,” Wilbert said.

“I know you do, Wilbert dear,” she replied, smiling warmly. “I know you do.”

That was as far as she could go. Her mind
was not yield
so easily to her body, to her heart. But perhaps the two could co-exist. Whatever the case, it would be night soon. Wilbert unpacked a lunch of bread, meat, cheese, and ale. They ate and drank whilst watching the house, and when they were done they resumed their positions and waited.

Lucia did not once get bored. Lying about in the leaves and mud waiting for a killer was infinitely more enjoyable and interesting that lying about on a divan waiting for a suitor. When she thought about the thousands of women whose sole occupation was to
be
ladies, she almost laughed. What they were missing!

Soon, the sun began to set and a round, bright, full moon dominated the sky. Lucia and Wilbert looked up at it together. “He’ll be here soon,” Lucia said.

“Yes,” Wilbert said. “Let’s hope we’re fast enough.”

Lucia nodded. But she knew the truth. Their speed had nothing to do with it. It was all up to Lady Lavery now. Lucia
hope
the lady had it in her to do the right thing. Poor Malcom, it would be a shame—but it had to be done. His life did not justify his actions.

Lady Lavery must see that, or she would’ve live to see the morn.

*****

The Viking had somehow sneaked
to
the house without them seeing. There came a loud bang from the house. Wilbert jumped to his feet and sprinted across the field with Lucia panting at his side. “Damnable dresses,” she breathed. “What monstrous man invented these intolerable things! How is one supposed to run in them!”

“Stop complaining,” Wilbert retorted. “Keep running.”

They crashed through the front door and made their way to the drawing-room, from whence the sound had come. Wilbert swung the door open and then stopped, looking down at the huge mass of killer they lay motionless
upon
the carpet. Lady Lavery looked down at her hands, her whole body shaking. “What happened?” Wilbert said, crouching beside the Viking. With an effort, he managed to turn the killer over. Drool fell from the side of his mouth, and his eyes were half-closed. Wilbert placed a hand on his chest: no breath, no heartbeat. “Dead,” Wilbert said, and felt a profound relief. At least he could soothe the landlady’s heart, if only a little. “But how?”

“Sorry, Wilbert, dear,” Lucia said, sitting casually in an armchair and crossing her legs. “I didn’t think you’d agree. You remember when I wanted to talk to Lady Lavery about ‘lady’s business’? Ha, men, mention lady’s business and they ask no questions! And you remember I hugged you beforehand? Well, I may have lifted that poison-filled pipe and given it to the sweet lady. You
never would
have agreed, would you, my love?”

Wilbert shook his head. “It would have been too risky.”

“Yes, I knew it!” Lucia cried. “I told Lady Lavery to throw the poison into the man’s mouth, and—” She waved a hand over the corpse. “Here he is.”

Lady Lavery looked down at the corpse. “Poor boy!” she wept. “Poor, poor boy!”

“Lucia,” Wilbert said, rising to his feet. He tried to scorn her, but he could not. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Her plans rarely failed, and this had been a success. The child-killer was dead; that was all that mattered. “You are impossible!” he exclaimed, unable to hide his mirth.

Then he remembered Lady Lavery. He knelt before her. “I will send a telegram to Scotland Yard immediately, my lady. You will have all the assistance you require. You need not fear. This was self-defense. I will make sure – personally – that there is no fuss about this. Nobody will know Malcolm’s connection to you. You have my word.”

“Thank. You,” Lady Lavery sniffled.

“Is there a footman about I could borrow, my lady?” Wilbert said.

There was, the telegram was sent, and soon the estate was swarming with Scotland Yarders.

Wilbert and Lucia left them to their work and sat on the balcony, looking out upon the night.

*****

Lucia cast a look into the house. Nobody was watching. She walked across to Wilbert and kissed him on the lips. “Are you angry with me?” she said.

He laughed. “Angry? How could I be angry? It was brilliant!”

“When will we marry?”

“On the morrow, you mad, brilliant woman! On the morrow!”

“And we’ll have many more adventures, as husband and wife? We won’t grow stale?”

“I do not believe you, my sweet Lucia, could ever grow stale.”

They kissed again, and then the Scotland Yarders commanded their attention.
Great work. What an investigation. Something to reassure the public. Jack the Ripper is still out there, but the Viking is finally caught! A very good team, the two of you make. Yes, yes, a very good team.

Miss Eve Somerset was a wallflower. She knew this, and yet it didn’t make it any easier. She was constantly referred to as a wallflower by her mother, Mrs. Mary Somerset, and her aunt, Miss Alice Wilton. Both women were desperate for Eve to marry and yet were constantly and consistently terrible about the whole affair. On her first season, Auntie Alice had trundled over like a four-horse carriage – she was a momentous woman, with huge hands and a thick neck – and proceeded to talk at length about the relevance of revolution.
Revolution! At a social gathering! Revolution at a social gathering where the main topic of conversation was tulips over roses, and all that sort of thing!
Auntie Alice was also keen on evaluating men, which would have been fine if this wasn’t
in front
of the men. She would stomp over, look at the man down her pudgy nose, and then sneer with barely constrained distaste and say something like, “So, sir, how does a man of business make a living these days, anyhow?”
This interpolated into a conversation about poetry.

Of course, Mother was always at Eve’s side at any social function. Mother wouldn’t dream of allowing Eve to talk to a man alone, but she always did her best to give Eve and a possible suitor as much room as possible, mainly by turning and pretending to inspect the wallpaper. But invariably Mother would grow tired with this distraction, and then she too, would pile into the conversation.

“Oh, to be young!” she would exclaim. “Oh, to be young again! The love and the life and the smell of youth! Oh, how I wish Harold were here!”

Father had died of consumption – it was a family disgrace – and its chief result was that Eve had no dowry to speak of.

Wallflower: the girl who nobody wants to dance with at the party; three seasons and no husband; three-and-twenty and not even engaged. Mother grew less and less optimistic each year, and started to talk about how Eve could
help her in her old age.
Eve had seen women like this before, women of three-and-five who had never found a husband, and so whose sole purpose in life had been the care of their elder relatives. They walk about with a sort of despondent regret, as though they’d finally realized that they would never attain anything they truly ever wanted. They would look at Eve with wide, jealous eyes. Eve could almost hear them:
You must make something of yourself child, before it is too late. Before you become like us!

The problem was, Eve was not the most sociable person. Oh, she had tried. She sometimes even tried hard. But she would get talking with a man, and minutes later she would become unaccountably and rudely bored. She would look at the gentleman, and think about what he had done and who he was, and find nothing at all to interest her. It was almost impudent of her. Here was a girl of three-and-twenty with a dowry that consisted of some hidden jewelry Mother had spirited away from Father, and she was allowing herself to become bored with potential suitors!

But Eve didn’t simply want to fall into a life of emotional numbness. If that was what she longed for, she could simply stay with Auntie and Mother. No, Eve wanted something more. She wanted, for once in her life, to
feel
something.

It was at a ball hosted by the Duke of Somerset – a man whom Mother would insist time and time again she was related to by third or fourth cousins – that Eve first saw Captain Charles Appleyard.

*****

Eve entered the ballroom with Auntie and Mother. The girls of eighteen were twirling and prancing in graceful circles, causing the lords to tilt their heads and admire them with warm smiles. Nobody noticed Eve’s entrance. She had entered society three seasons ago and she was not yet married. She was, for all intents and purposes, a wallflower, to be glanced at and quickly dismissed. There were three other wallflowers at the party. They were all nearing five-and-twenty, and were dressed in exceptionally fine dresses, having taken extra care to hide their position. It was hard to say what was wrong with these women – or Eve herself – without looking returning again and again to money. This wallflower’s Father had lost his mind, that wallflower’s Father had taken to gambling, this one’s Father was a poor businessman, that wallflower’s Father lived beyond his means. Few men were willing to marry for love alone, and a woman without a dowry was a poor prospect indeed.

Mother took Eve’s arm and escorted her to the circle of wallflowers, all of whom sat with stern-faced older women who gazed around the party like hungry wolves waiting for scraps. All of them were waiting for some dashing lord to ask their daughter to dance, and then the epic romance between their daughter and the lord would commence, wherein their daughter would be  proved to be lovely enough to redeem the family, both financially and socially. But reality was nothing like French novels, and the wallflowers sat largely ignored.

Eve seated herself, tucked her ankles under her seat and placed her gloved hands upon her lap. She was the perfect picture of beauty and femininity. Her hair was jet-black and bound up in tight ringlets. Her eyes were blue and sparked with life and intellect. Her skin was cloud-white, and her mouth was small and
pursed
. She would have looked cynical and supercilious, had her eyes not been kind as well as intellectual.

Mother and Auntie sat either side of her, looking around the party like the other hungry, older women. Eve conversed with the other wallflowers about topics appropriate to a ballroom setting for young ladies looking for husbands, but not wishing to appear too eager. They talked of garb, flowers, housekeeping, children - all topics that bored Eve greatly. She had been taken in by this fellow Napoleon, and the war that had been spreading across Europe. She thought him awfully dreadful and was glad he had finally been beaten and Britain’s men restored to her. But though it was dreadful, it was also wonderfully fascinating. But she knew so little of it; she only knew about it at all by eavesdropping when the vicar visited Mother at home, something he had done twice a week since Father’s death. “Waterloo… Awful business… So many of God’s children taken…”

But Eve was not supposed to be interested in topics of that sort, and she tried her best not to be. She had been at the party for around forty-five minutes when a man entered wearing knee-high black boots, tight white breeches, a long-tailed, black jacket and a shirt whose frills tickled his chin. Though he was dressed in a similar style to the other men at the party, this man had something that made him stand out from the others. An enormous and visible scar ran down his face, starting at the very top of his forehead, moving down his face and across a ruined eye, and ending just shy of his chin. The ruined eye was white and milky, but he did not have it uncovered. Indeed, he seemed confrontational about the lack of eyepatch or some other eye-covering garb. When a lady looked at him, and then involuntarily and instinctively
stared
, he simply bared his shoulders and stared at her.

The man entered alone, but presently His Grace, the Duke of Somerset, emerged from a small huddle of men and women and strutted to where the scarred man stood.

“Ladies and gentleman,” His Grace said loudly,
quieting
the party for a moment. He pointed to the scared man. “This is Brigadier Charles Appleyard,
veteran
of Waterloo. He is the reason we can stand here and talk in English today (but let us not discard the French tongue entirely!). Brigadier Appleyard, you have our thanks, and I am greatly moved that you accepted my invitation. Please, treat this home as your own, and make yourself comfortable.”

Brigadier Appleyard regarded His Grace for a moment, and then inclined his head awkwardly, with the lilt of a man who had long been out of polite society.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Brigadier Appleyard said.

His Grace beamed and then returned to his group, leaving Brigadier Appleyard stranded in the middle of the ballroom, as though afloat in a sea of social niceties that were utterly perplexing to him. He looked around for a moment, and then his eye settled on the small group of wallflowers. He seemed to shrug to himself, and then he walked toward them. Auntie Alice and Mother sat up straighter, and Eve felt her heart pounding in her chest. But outwardly she was calm and composed.

“Ladies,” Brigadier Appleyard said, bowing stiffly. “May I sit?”

All of them – around ten ladies in all – stood up and curtseyed. A murmur of
Brigadier Appleyard
arose from the group of wallflowers. Mother shuffled aside, ostentatiously offering up the chair closest to Eve. Brigadier Appleyard regarded the chair for a moment, and then slid into it. He turned and faced Eve. “So, Miss Somerset,” he said, speaking in short syllables, as though speaking was difficult or painful to him. She noticed that each time he spoke, his scar tugged at his lip.

“So, Miss Somerset,” he went on. “How are you finding the party?”

*****

It was difficult to discern his age due to the scar. He could have been anywhere between eight-and-twenty and eight-and-thirty as far as Eve could tell. He was a well-built man, and he held himself as though he had seen much of the world.

“It must have been awfully exciting,” Eve said.

“Daughter!” Mother exclaimed reproachfully. “I do not think Brigadier Appleyard wishes to speak of such things in such a setting as this, and I do think it is very inappropriate for you to ask.”

“Excuse me, Mother,” Eve said coldly. “I just inferred that Brigadier Appleyard may have wanted to converse on topics not directly related to plumage, but of course I could have been mistaken.”

Eve felt the small rebellion within her, the small pushing back against her mother’s propriety. She felt guilty, dangerous and excited at the same time. It was not a direct scandal, but it was most certainly inappropriate behavior.

“It is quite alright,” Brigadier Appleyard said at length. He looked at Eve as though he had just seen her for the first time. The other wallflowers had talked long and sincerely on the topic of flowers and the beauty of life and hyperbolic topics of that kind. This was the sort of thing, they had been taught,
that men
liked in a woman. For the most part they were right. But Brigadier Appleyard had not seemed interested at all.

“Miss Somerset, the war was not what would traditionally be called exciting. It was rather fearful,
violent and
jarring. It threw men about and made children of them. If I were to divulge the details, I am afraid His Grace would banish me from the premises. It was a nasty and brutal business.”

He looked around. Eve was open-eyed and eager. This was the most interesting thing a man had ever said to her. It had nothing at all to do with lovemaking and the faux-insight that that entails. This was true and
more
real
that all of that. But Mother and Auntie and the other older women were staring at him sternly.

“This is not the topic for a ball, perhaps,” Brigadier Appleyard said. “In fact-”He abruptly he rose to his feet. “I must—apologize,” he said, tripping over his words. “I must—go. I am ever so sorry.” He was about to simply walk away, and then he remembered himself. He turned and bowed, and then walked briskly from the room.

What a fascinating man!
Eve thought, smiling.

Auntie Alice whispered, “What a strange man!”

Mother whispered, “What a dangerous man!”

*****

Two months passed in the way it always did. Eve, Auntie and Mother attended social functions, and when they were not at some party or other, they were at home, in their small homestead on the outskirts of Wells, in Somerset. Father had only left them an income sufficient for one maidservant and so Auntie Alice also “pitched in” with the housework, something she was always bitter about. But being an unmarried and poor sister, she did not have much
say
in the matter.

Eve felt stifled by the smallness of their lives. Some days she found it difficult to fix her small smile to her face and converse with Auntie and Mother. Her mind was starved for excitement or enjoyment of some kind. She knew some women became used to and accepted their situation over time; and Eve was terrified that she would become one of those women. There was nothing she feared more than being so numbed to the beauty and terror of life that she did not care that she was missing out on it.

It was thus manna from heaven when the letter arrived. It was written in the short, blunt hand of a man used to writing military reports and not poetry and love letters. It was addressed to Mother, but Eve was so curious that she could not stop herself from playing the child and leaning over her whilst she opened it.

“Evie!” Mother cried, a nickname she only used when Eve was being particularly improper. “I shall never open the letter if you continue this nonsense!”

“I am sorry, Mother,” Eve said. “It is only that we so rarely get letters. I sometimes feel like there is a
fairy
of some kind that intercepts our post before it gets here, and that is why we get so little.”

“You are a woman now, and not a child,” Auntie Alice said from the corner, looking up for a moment from her knitting, the needles looking tiny in her humongous hands. “You should not talk
of
faeries and topics of that sort.”