Silver Splendor (6 page)

Regarding the pair with fondness and frustration, Elizabeth stepped to an open door. The tiny room adjacent to her studio was scrupulously neat and frugally furnished with an iron cot and washstand. Sitting beside the single opened window, glasses perched on his nose and a Bible in his lap, was her father.

“Papa? As soon as I change clothes, Cicely and I are going out.”

Smiling, he removed the spectacles. “I’ll be right along, then.”

“You needn’t trouble yourself. I’ll be back before dark.”

“Regardless, I shan’t allow you to go out alone.”

“You never objected in New York.”

“
I won’t take any more chances with your life, Libby. First you nearly got run down by a hansom cab, then a criminal tried to choke you.” A stark expression on his whiskered face, he laid down the Bible. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, too. You’re all I have left.”

Elizabeth’s heart contracted. Her own grief at her mother’s death still ached like an unhealed wound. Sometimes she had the feeling that if she turned around, Lucy Templeton Hastings would be standing there, her eyes laughing, her smile tender. How much worse it must be for a husband to lose a beloved wife.

“You’ll not lose me, Papa,” she said, giving him a quick hug. “But I’d love for you to come with us.”

As she left the bedroom Elizabeth wondered if only sorrow had prompted her father’s mood. She adjusted the cheap lace fichu covering the fading bruises on her throat. Did he still think the episodes of the cab and the criminal might somehow be connected? Surely not; the notion was absurd.

Why would anyone want to kill her?

“Kill her,” whispered the shadowed figure. Though the afternoon was sunny, heavy curtains on the windows kept the barren room dim and stuffy. “Two weeks already and she’s still alive.”

“‘Tain’t my fault the bleedin’ gent come along to save ‘er,” whined the man in the porkpie hat. “‘E tried to kill me, that e did!”

“So you fled like a frightened rat. And in four days, you’ve not found another opportunity.”

“The trull ain’t left ‘er rooms. An’ that old man o’ ‘ers been stickin’ closer to ‘er than a flea to a mongrel. Wot d’you expect me —”

“Expect! I expect you to stop sniveling and earn your pay. You’ll not see a tuppence more until the bitch is lying in the morgue. Now get on with you!”

Glowering, the coarse faced man slunk out the door.

For a moment faint noises from the street mingled with the quiet sound of breathing. The room was empty of furnishings; this was not a place to live… it was a place to wait and watch.

Footsteps echoing on the filthy wood floor, the figure moved through the shadows. Well scrubbed fingers parted the tattered curtain; the heel of a hand rubbed a clean spot in the soot streaked windowpane. Three floors below, the narrow byway teemed with activity. Children played skittle, women gossiped on stoops, a costermonger bawled out his wares, selling vegetables from a barrow.

Disgusting. It was hard to imagine Lucy’s daughter living in such squalor.

A quartet of people emerged from the tenement directly opposite. A scruffy boy waved a farewell and darted into the crowd. The remaining three, two young women and a gray haired man, started down the street toward the Strand.

Fingers tensed around the ragged drapery. There was Lucy’s savior, Owen. And beside him…

The watcher’s eyes focused on the woman in the center of the trio. The cygnet had grown into a beautiful swan. She was petite and lithe and proud of bearing. In the sunlight her loosely gathered hair shone black as a raven’s wing.

She looked so like Lucy it was uncanny.

Lucy.

Long buried grief burned like a draught of bitter medicine. For too many years Lucy had been gone. It was hard to believe the contents of that letter. Lucy couldn’t be dead… it must be a trick! Yes, that was the answer. They were hiding her, protecting her. The proof that she lived must be in her daughter’s lodgings.

Elizabeth was the disease… Elizabeth must die.

Not Lucy.

Pausing in the open doorway of Elizabeth Hastings’s lodgings, Lord Nicholas stared in consternation. What had once been a charming hodgepodge of miscellany was now a chaos of clutter. The soft light of dusk drifted over scattered papers and plundered belongings. The drawers of the table had been pulled out and emptied. Feminine garments lay jumbled before an opened steamer trunk. Even the coverlet had been ripped from the ancient iron bedstead, and the bamboo screen tilted drunkenly against the wall.

Standing amidst the mess, their backs to the door, were Elizabeth and Owen Hastings. The stout, gray haired man held an arm around his daughter’s slim waist. Her head was bowed, her shoulders slumped.

Alarm pulled at Nicholas’s heart. Stepping through the debris, he removed his silk top hat and asked, “Are you all right, Elizabeth? What’s happened here?”

The pair swung around in unison and stared in surprise. Then Owen’s face darkened; Elizabeth’s lightened.

“We’re fine, thank you,” she said. “We came home a few minutes ago to find the place looking like this.”

She waved despondently at the turmoil. Nicholas felt the violent urge to throttle the criminal who had ransacked her rooms. Elizabeth Hastings was a proud woman, an independent woman. She had little in the way of material goods, but he could understand her sense of violation.

“We must report this to the police,” he said. “They’ll question your neighbors, find out if anyone was seen entering or leaving the place.”

“Humph,” Owen growled. “You’ll get little help from that lot of lazy actors and shiftless drunks.”

Seemingly oblivious to her father’s words, Elizabeth bent to caress the splintered mandolin at her feet. Only then did Nicholas spy the woman perched on an overturned crate beyond.

“Cicely!”

Her blue eyes huge, his sister sprang to her feet. She looked bravely defiant, though her twining fingers betrayed nervousness. “Nicholas,” she squeaked, “whatever are you doing here?”

He leveled a stern look at her. “I should ask
you
that.”

“I… I left my reticule. Last week, I mean… before you ordered me not to come here, of course.”

“You couldn’t have sent a footman?”

She shrugged prettily. “I was out anyway, so I thought I’d fetch it myself.”

“I see,” he said, his voice heavy with irony. Not for a moment did his sister fool him with those soulful eyes and that blithe smile. “Then you can, of course, explain why your cuffs are smeared with clay?”

“My cuffs?” Guilt stole over Cicely’s face as she examined the stains at her wrists. “Oh, pooh. I don’t suppose you’d believe I fell into the mud?”

“Hardly. Tell me, how did you manage to escape Miss Eversham’s watchful eyes?”

“I slipped out the back door of the milliner’s shop.” For a moment Cicely looked as proud as a naughty child, then her fair face tightened into familiar rebellious lines. “It serves you right for having her spy on me, Nicholas. I don’t need a governess anymore. I’m old enough to know my own mind.”

“On the contrary, Cicely, you’ve yet to prove your maturity. You had express orders not to come here.”

Owen bristled like an angry boar. “So, we’re not good enough for the likes of you, are we, your lordship? You can’t abide knowing your own sister prefers the company of commoners.”

Nicholas focused his most icy glare on the older man. “What I can’t abide is allowing Cicely to ruin her reputation. Not, of course, that her welfare is any concern of yours.”

“You bloody pharisee!” Owen shook his fist. “How dare you imply that associating with my daughter will corrupt Lady Cicely? Libby’s a good girl and a fine artist! You ought to be grateful she’s willing to teach your sister.”

Nicholas controlled a rising resentment. “I mean no insult to your daughter. Nevertheless, I cannot encourage Cicely to consort with bohemians.”

“You’re just jealous,” Cicely burst out.
“You
may have gotten the looks in the family, but
I
was born with the artistic talent.”

“Enough, all of you.” Elizabeth dropped the broken mandolin and stood, sending Nicholas an unhappy look that sliced straight to his heart. She turned those stunning violet eyes to her father and Cicely. “Can’t we discuss this later? So much has happened today; so much has been lost.” She gestured at the untidy room.

Owen gathered her into his arms. “I’m sorry, Libby,” he said in an abashed tone. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll find the scoundrel who did this.”

“I just don’t understand,” she murmured. “Why would anyone be so destructive?”

“The Proverbs say, ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,’” said Owen, brushing a hand over the loose cascade of her black hair. “Whoever did this possesses no human compassion. There are many people in this world like that, Libby. Far, far too many.”

His eyes held a distant look that struck Nicholas as
odd: Something had soured Owen on life, something
that colored his views on aristocrats.

His gaze moving to Elizabeth, Nicholas forgot all but the sharp longing to be the one comforting her, kissing away her sadness, fulfilling her every need until she felt no melancholy. But that was impossible.

“Come along, Cicely,” he said brusquely. “You’ll wait in the carriage.”

“But I —”

“This is not a topic for debate.”

At that quiet, chilling tone his sister meekly said her goodbyes and collected a clay soiled reticule from the floor. Silently Nicholas offered her his arm. Taking one last glance at Elizabeth Hastings’s forlorn face, he escorted Cicely down the narrow flight of stairs filled with the smells of food and rubbish.

A small crowd gathered around the closed landau with its crest on the polished black door. A cluster of slatternly housewives gossiped behind their hands, several unkempt urchins played tag on the littered sidewalk, a pieman stopped and gawked at the sight of a lord’s fine carriage gracing this tumbledown neighborhood. Sitting stiff and regal in the coachman’s seat, Greaves held his whip at an angle that clearly discouraged anyone from so much as touching the vehicle.

Pickering leapt from his rear perch, his face impassive as he opened the door. Nicholas gave his sister a hand inside.

“Wait here,” he ordered, tossing his top hat beside her as she settled her skirts.

Cicely looked startled. “We’re not going home?”

“I’ll just be a few moments. And, by God, you’d best stay put until I return.”

Leaving her pouting inside the landau, he gave explicit directions to Greaves regarding Cicely; then Nicholas again mounted the five flights of stairs to the Hastings flat.

He found both Owen and Elizabeth digging through the rubble.

“Was anything stolen?”

Owen glowered. Elizabeth looked up, her brow furrowed. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “I can’t seem to find the sketchbook with all the drawings of my mother —”

“I meant money,” Nicholas said. “Or something of monetary value that would interest a common thief.”

“Oh.” She waved a hand toward the overturned washstand as she continued to search. “The ginger jar was broken, but our money’s still there.”

Frowning, he stepped carefully through the clutter to see the appallingly small amount of silver scattered amidst the broken bits of blue and white porcelain.

“Perhaps we frightened the culprit away before he could steal the coins,” Owen suggested.

“You would have seen him coming down the staircase, then,” Nicholas said. Hands on his hips, he studied the high norm windows; one stood open, the cool breeze of dusk stirring the papers on the floor. Outlined against the rose streaked sky was the flat roof of the next tenement, easily reached by an agile burglar. “Unless, of course, he exited through that window.”

Owen followed the earl’s gaze. “Bless my soul… Libby, we didn’t leave that window ajar, did we?”

Elizabeth glanced up, a sheaf of drawings in her hand, a distracted expression on her face. “I don’t remember. All I want is to find that sketchbook. You know the one I mean, Papa. You and Mama gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday — the cover is royal blue with gold embossing.”

Owen sifted through the papers, his whiskered face oddly frantic. “It must be here somewhere,” he muttered. “It
must!”

A peculiar intensity underscored his words, an intensity Nicholas might have ascribed to fear had that not been absurd. Surely losing a few drawings of Elizabeth’s late mother would be cause for sadness, not alarm. Unless Owen was hiding something? Could he have known what the thief was really after?

Nicholas pushed away the unlikely idea. Owen Hastings’s mood was probably based on worry for his daughter’s safety. After all, had they surprised the burglar, the episode might have ended in tragedy…

The thought made Nicholas’s blood run cold. Not only would Cicely’s life have been endangered, but Elizabeth’s as well. He wondered suddenly if her neck were still bruised beneath that lace fichu.

“Miss Hastings.”

She glanced up. “Yes?”

In the fading light her eyes were the deep, distinctive hue of damson plums. Her quaint mulberry gown and the flowing hair caught back at her temples lent her an aura of unadorned sensuality. Desire flared in him. Had she any notion of how seductive she looked?