Sari Robins - [Andersen Hall Orphanage 01] (11 page)

Lady Janus bit her lip. “Given that we are speaking plainly, Mr. Redford, there is another point I wish to settle.” She swallowed. “Since we are going to be working together…I must make it perfectly clear…that well, there will be nothing untoward between us.”

What? Did she think that he was going to jump her bones at the first opportunity? That he was a beast in heat, slobbering for a taste of her wiles? He was not nearly that desperate.

“I do not mix business with pleasure, my lady,” he bit out. “
I
have no problem containing myself.”

Her peaches-and-cream cheeks flamed red as she obviously recalled her passionate cries of the night before. It was answer enough.

He laid his hand over his heart. “Rest assured I would not touch you if King George himself ordered me to. If Napoleon’s army—”

“Your assurance is most reassuring,” she interrupted, pique making her eyes flash.

“Excellent. Now that that’s settled, perhaps we can eat? I really am quite famished.”

Her mouth worked as if she wanted to say something more but could not find the words. Finally, she spun on her heel and marched toward the house.

Nick smiled. No doubt about it; something about Lady Janus definitely pricked at his senses. And he got a kick out of watching her struggle with her fiery nature. He usually had a rule about mixing
business with pleasure, but in this case the two seemed in each other’s pocket. Oh, yes, he had the feeling that this investigation was going to be
really
interesting.

L
illian could hardly eat a bite for the butterflies swarming in her middle. She was mystified by Nicholas Redford’s unenthusiastic offer of marriage and appalled by the fact that she had to actually sit across the table from the man who had had her begging for him just a few hours before. Gallingly, the source of her discomfiture did not seem affected in the least by her presence. He sat at the table—broad, dark and stunning—wolfing down his food as if this were his last meal.

“Slow down, Mr. Redford. Cook usually prepares more than enough to feed a horse.”

“Headmaster Dunn always said that I ate like one,” he remarked, stopping his fork in mid-thrust. Slowly setting the utensil onto the table, he lifted his goblet and gulped his wine.

“It was ill-mannered of me to comment so,” she
spoke quietly. “In fact, my servants would be well satisfied if I followed your example. Quite inappropriately, they say that I eat like a bird.” She knew that it was only because they cared, and she was glad for it, to be sure.

“You’ve been a bit preoccupied, I suppose.” Lifting his fork, he dug into his ham once more.

“Frazzled, more like it. Ever since Dillon’s arrest my life has been…” Her cheeks heated. “Chaotic.”

“Growing up in an orphanage, we learned to eat when we had the chance. Nothing—not nerves, disasters or bloodshed—could keep us from a hot meal.”

As she was reminded of his origins, another twinge of guilt nagged at her for her comment. Not even bothering to pretend any longer, she pushed away her plate. “You seem so self-reliant. It’s hard to imagine you as a needy child.”

“Every child is needy in one way or another. That’s why I’ll never have any.”

She leaned forward. “Really?”

“Well, I certainly don’t need to produce the heirs.”

“But don’t you want to perpetuate your name?”

“My given name represents nothing beyond the place where I was abandoned as a babe.” At the questioning look on her face, he added, “Redford is a distortion of ‘reed ford.’ A river crossing.”

“And you do not wish to have children because they are helpless?” It seemed the antithesis to his code of honor.

“Children need a good father, and I don’t know how to be one.” It sounded like a frail excuse, but then again, she had never been an orphan in a
foundling home. She had no idea what he had been through.

Redford tossed down his napkin and pushed away his plate, obviously wanting to end the topic. Nodding to the footman, he sipped his wine. “I think that it is time for us to discuss the Beaumont matter, my lady. If you are finished with your repast, that is?”

“Of course.” She wondered how he could be so cool about something so awful. Perhaps that was how he dealt with it.

She nodded dismissal to the footmen. “Thank you, Gillman, Jones. Some privacy, please.”

The footmen nodded and left, Gillman closing the door softly behind him.

“In my office you mentioned that you believed you were the cause of Beaumont’s predicament,” he stated, shifting sideways in his seat to face her fully. “Tell me who you believe murdered Baroness Langham and why.”

She took a deep breath and dove in. “Lord Cornelius Kane is my father by name—”

“Not naturally?”

She shook her head. “My mother was forced to marry him when the man who seduced her took off.” The words came out more easily than she would have supposed for such a well-kept secret.

He motioned for her to go on.

“Kane was deep in dunn territory, and the creditors were knocking. My mother was in a fix. My well-heeled grandparents arranged the marriage, thinking it would solve all of their problems. Kane was a baron, for heaven’s sake, they thought. They did not suspect that he was such a cancer to those around him.”

“How so?”

Lifting a shoulder, the familiar numbness that came when she talked about her childhood swept over her. “With Kane one is usually either worthy or unworthy. My mother and I were special cases—worthless. My mother suffered the yoke of marriage like a personal cage, with Kane as its jailer. She was too delicate to suffer his fits of anger, so she crawled into a shell. One that eventually cracked.”

“And how did he treat you?”

“Let us just say that if it were not for my grandparents taking me to live with them, I don’t know how long I would have outlasted my mother.”

Nick crossed his arms, and she could not help but notice the muscular bulges in his brown wool coat.

“So we have established that Kane is a fiend and can be violent. True?”

“Yes,” she replied, tearing her mind back to more important matters. “But it is not an animalistic aggression.”

“Because he is an aristocrat?” His tone was cynical.

“No,” she replied, wondering why he even bothered making a distinction. “Because his violence is not for violence’s sake but when he feels that it is justified.”

“He thought it was justified to raise a hand to you as a child?”

“Yes. In his mind, it was perfectly reasonable.”

“Why do you believe that he killed Lady Langham?”

“I have wracked my brain for an answer, but I have no idea. Her husband is an acquaintance of Kane’s and apparently doted on his wife. Still, I hardly knew the lady; we traveled in different circles.”

“But Kane did.”

“Yes.”

He scratched his chin. “So what does he gain from targeting Beaumont? The satisfaction of hurting you?”

“My grandparents came to regret joining their only daughter with Kane. They changed their wills, placing everything in trust for me. Kane views the fortune as his, stolen from him, by me.”

“It could not have been his if your grandparents could pass it on to you.”

“That small fact escapes him.”

“But how does he profit by targeting Beaumont? He still does not gain access to the funds.”

“I lose my protector and dear friend, something that Kane has wanted for a long time. Thus, I am susceptible to his devices.”

“Which are?”

“He has threatened to lock me in a mental institution…. As a woman I have little recourse under the law. As my father, he maintains all rights if I am unmarried.” She shrugged. “He has intimated that he would marry me off to a patsy who would sign over my funds in exchange for arranging the match…. It’s all about power over me and my inheritance.”

“I apologize for asking such personal questions.”

She waved a hand. “How else are you to understand this devil’s labyrinth?”

“Many of my clients are not as cognizant of that fact, making my job all the more difficult.”

“We have less than two weeks. I cannot afford to be reticent.”

“Still, I thank you for being so forthcoming.” He shifted his long legs beneath the table. “The scandal-broth was that Beaumont had offered for
your hand. It would seem a simple solution to your quandary.”

“As I told you outside, I have no intention of ever marrying.”

“I thought that you were simply trying to soften the blow. You actually meant it?”

Crossing her arms, she scowled. “Leg-
shackle,
marriage
bond,
parson’s mouse
trap,
wed
lock
…after enduring Kane’s domination as a helpless child, am I to sign up for the same treatment my mother suffered?”

“I am not following your reasoning. At least in marriage, the man has a legal responsibility toward the woman. Being a kept woman—”

“I agreed to this arrangement to keep me protected until my four-and-twentieth birthday, when the trust will distribute the funds to me outright.” She scowled. “Thankfully, my grandparents had the forethought to make it so that if anything happens to me before my four-and-twentieth birthday, then everything goes to charitable causes.”

“So Kane gets nothing if you predecease your claim.”

“Exactly. And I have already drafted an ironclad will that if I should die after collecting my inheritance, then it all goes to charity as well.”

“But you still might be susceptible to Kane’s machinations even once you get your inheritance.”

“I intend to be out of the country, with my funds secured out of his reach.”

Scratching his head, Nick recapped, “So Beaumont agrees to help you because…?”

“He is my dear friend.”

“Why did he not simply set you up outside the country at a hidden location?”

“Because he has no funds. His father holds the purse strings.”

“Ahh. So the duke knows of his son’s predilections?”

“Greayston does not wish to face it. He simply hoped that by financing this arrangement, it would calm some whispers and likewise might influence Dillon to become interested in the fairer sex. At a minimum, Dillon gets a great reputation as a lady-killer without actually having to do anything he does not wish to.”

Nodding slowly, Redford clearly understood the logic.

She crossed her arms. “I have a question for you, Mr. Redford.”

“Certainly.”

“If you never intended to have children, how does that correlate to your asking for my hand in marriage?”

Setting his large palms on the tablecloth, he shrugged. “I did not actually ask for your hand, my lady. I simply inquired if you anticipated an offer of marriage.”

“And if I had said yes?”

“The chances were slim.”

“Because of how I lost my innocence?”

“Because you are a highborn lady accustomed to a certain lifestyle that I cannot, at the moment, provide. I did not expect you to give up that life for a man you considered so beneath you as to drug and truss him to get your way.”

Shame washed over her, but she ignored it, instead asking, “So you did not actually mean it?”

“Oh, I did. I took your innocence, quite willingly at that point.”

Her cheeks heated and she looked away.

“And,” he continued, “I was honor bound to at least inquire about expectations of marriage. But I had the feeling what your answer would be.”

“An easy way to fulfill your code of honor,” she muttered, surprised by the disappointment filtering through her.

Leaning forward, he lifted her chin with his finger. “Do you wish to change your mind?”

She met his cocoa brown eyes. Amusement filled them, and they creased at the corners—understandable, given her protestations moments before about never marrying.

“I suppose my questions smack of injured pride,” she confessed sheepishly. “Oh, and for the record, I would have drugged and trussed an earl or duke just as easily. I do not discriminate when it comes to convoluted schemes to prove a point to help my friends in need.”

His lips widened into a white smile that she felt down to her toes. A man really had no right to be that attractive. She returned his smile, feeling like a truce of sorts had settled between them.

Releasing her chin, he stood. “I am off to the Bow Street office. I need to unruffle a few feathers before they get tied in a knot.”

She was saddened that the interview was over. The man was surprisingly easy to talk to.

She rose, and he quickly pulled back her chair. He was over a head taller than she, so she tilted her head up and remarked, “That is very politic of you.”

“Not politics, my lady, survival. An enquiry agency will not last long in London if it doesn’t get along with the Bow Street office.”

Her guilt haunted her. “I-I had not realized that
taking this case might put your business in a bad spot.”

“Nothing I haven’t been in before, I assure you. Just this time I’m going to do a better job of getting out of it before I’m stuck. There’s nothing worse than having your supposed friends be the ones gunning for you.”

She bit her lip. “That brings me to something that has been bothering me, Mr. Redford.”

“Yes?”

“The evidence against Dillon. The bloodied handkerchief…his love letters…”

“Those were truly his letters?”

“Foolishness, he told me. A prank from when he was away at school.” She grimaced. “He seemed reticent to discuss it and I did not press him. The question is: Who took them from Dillon’s possession and left them with Lady Langham’s corpse?”

“For the first query, to be frank, if I did not know better, I would say that they came from you.”

“Me?”

“You have every access to Beaumont’s personal items. But, seeing as you went beyond the pale to have me retained, I would be hard-pressed to believe it so.” He scratched his chin.

“My guess,” he went on, “is that someone close to Beaumont, possibly in his home or in his service, planted the articles.”

“I had feared that answer.” Clutching her hands before her, she shuddered. “It is awful to think that an enemy swims about like a shark pretending to be a guppy. With Kane, at least I always know where I stand.”

Reaching forward, he clasped her bare hand. “For all of your legal protections, you might very well be
in danger, my lady. You need to be vigilant. Have the servants be on their guard. Take an extra footman with you when you go out.”

His warm grasp reassured her. “Thank you, Mr. Redford, for taking my concerns seriously. Many of the gentlemen that I know would not necessarily have accepted my beliefs as valid.” Grimacing, she added ruefully, “Too frequently women, especially ones who have taken my route, are discounted as less than bright.”

“Only a fool would dismiss such grave concerns.”

Tilting her head up, she smiled warmly at him. “Then it is very well that you are not a fool.”

“Lillian!”

Russell stood in the doorway, a look of horror on his youthful features.

Lillian self-consciously released Redford’s hand and stepped back. She did not need Russell getting the wrong idea about them. “Russell. Your timing is good. Mr. Redford here probably has some questions for you.”

“Who the hell is he to question me?” he shrieked.

“Calm down, Russell, it is not what you suppose. Mr. Redford is an investigator hired to exculpate Dillon.”

“What was he doing taking liberties with you?”

“He was not taking liberties, Russell. You know as well as any what a difficult time this is. He was simply—”

Russell advanced into the room, his lips bowed downward and his blond brow wedded in a disapproving scowl. He pushed himself between them and glared up into Redford’s face. “Lillian is too kindhearted to see you as you are. But I will not al
low you to take advantage of this situation to your own despicable ends.”