Suzanne Robinson (5 page)

“He’ll get things done, Liza,” William had said. “You should have seen him in the Crimea. He was the best lieutenant colonel in all the regiments. He saved bloody Marshall’s life, and mine too. God, that idiot Raglan had us charging artillery.”

“But your letters,” Liza said. “You wrote that Marshall hated you.”

William Edward flushed. “He wanted us to dress like savages. We’re officers, her majesty’s own cavalry officers, not bloody Indians. He wanted us to wear muddy buckskin, I tell you, and crawl around on our bellies—spying! But …”

“You changed your mind?”

William Edward traced the pattern on a lace curtain in her parlor-office, then cleared his throat. “I was with him when he took a vedette out one day shortly before Balaklava, and we came on a Russian troop unexpectedly. We were cut off, ripped to pieces. That fool Cardigan hadn’t been where he was supposed to be with his men. Marshall and I and Sergeant Pawkins got away. But only because he made us take off our red coats and gold braid and roll in the mud. He’d spent too much time in Texas and California, and acquired a most ungentlemanly attitude toward war. You should have seen us, Liza. He made us cling
to our horses along their sides and ride through the Russians. You should have seen their faces.”

Walking over to sit on the edge of her desk, her brother looked down at her with haunted eyes. “That day I learned to ride bareback and crawl up to a Russian sentry on my belly and slit his throat from behind. He told me to do it or he’d kill me himself, since he wasn’t going to die simply because real fighting wasn’t ‘quite the thing’ among cavalry officers.”

“This man made you crawl in the mud with a knife in your teeth and … and—”

“And I’m alive. But he’s still a bastard, Liza. You don’t know what he’s like. Propriety forbids me to speak of his habits to you. When I think of a dukedom going to a murderous savage like him … Do you know that most of DeBrett’s is wiped out? I don’t think there are more than a handful of noble families with an heir left. And two weeks ago old Harry was killed.”

William Edward played with her ivory letter opener as his voice lowered. “Poor old Harold Airey. Harry Airey, we used to call him. Always falling off his horse in drill. Never on parade, but always in drill. He got through Balaklava and then got himself strangled, garroted, they said. In Whitechapel. I didn’t think old Harry Airey knew where Whitechapel was.”

“Some of my best maids were born in Whitechapel.”

William Edward waved a hand. “Well, maids, yes, but not Airey. He was a cavalry officer, Liza, a cavalry officer.”

He said the words as if they were only slightly less honorable and noble than “her majesty.” Liza had sympathized with William Edward, knowing that she could never make him understand the skin-and-bone
poverty of the London slums, the stench-ridden sewers and soot-laden air. The children who slept in doorways and ended their short lives in ditches.

She had read about them in
The Times
and in pamphlets she secreted in her bedroom where her father couldn’t find them. Papa didn’t approve of women reading about such things. He would hand her mother portions of the paper that dealt with society, and Mama would pass them to her. Liza got the day-old papers from the butler, who was susceptible to bribery. The papers had been one of her few releases from day after day of grinding boredom. She wasn’t bored anymore.

Liza shot to her feet. What was she doing, sitting here lost in the past? Choke would notice her absence if she didn’t hurry. She thrust her cap on her head and pushed her long curls up inside it.

The memory of her last conversation with William Edward still haunted her. If it hadn’t been for that chance remark about Harry Airey’s being garroted, she might never have suspected William Edward’s own death. But he’d gone from her house to a political meeting at the house of the viscount, whom he resented and with whom he’d quarreled, and never returned.

He’d died exactly the way the Honorable Harold Airey had died, and in the same nasty area of the city. William Edward was supposed to have been at a political meeting, not in Whitechapel. Two men from the same regiment, who attended the same political meetings, died the same way. The similarities were too great to be by chance. She was sure of it. And she was going to prove it.

William Edward had been the brightest and most loving of men. When Papa had raved at her for
speaking her mind to suitors instead of pretending to have dried flowers for brains, William Edward had distracted him with tales of cavalry drills. William Edward had loved her in spite of her being different from other girls.

Enough musing. Liza patted her cap, then stuffed her torn dress in her trunk and locked it. She sneaked back into the kitchen and through the scullery to the small room where the knife boy polished boots and did other messy chores. She had yet to clean the viscount’s boots. If she accomplished this task, she would have an excuse to go back to his rooms.

After what had just happened, she needed to search for clues to his guilt and escape the house quickly. Another encounter with him was not to be thought of. How she wished she’d been able to escape Choke’s sharp eyes before the viscount arrived. Without the master in residence, however, both Choke and the housekeeper had had time to watch all the servants closely.

Liza paused as she crumpled up the newspaper upon which she’d scraped the muddy boots. He’d come at her out of the dark, cornered her. But when she should have been frightened, she’d been something else as well—she’d been drawn to him.

He wasn’t what she’d anticipated. Despite his reputation for wildness and rapacity, she hadn’t expected him to possess great personal beauty. Seductive men often didn’t. Yet he could wear buckskin and cotton and turn a woman’s spine to treacle.

She should be ashamed of herself. What happened to her every time she was in his presence? At first she’d put down her flustered feelings to fear of being caught, but now, now she knew better. She had only to look at him, and her mind stopped functioning.
Several times she’d forgotten her role and nearly insulted him.

She had always prided herself on her good sense. Not for her the silliness and vapidity of other girls, the skittish niceness of other spinsters. Now look at her. She polished the boots quickly.

By the time she was ready to take them upstairs, Tessie came into the kitchen bearing a silver tea tray and sniffling. The teapot rattled against the tray when she set it on one of the big tables in the middle of the room.

“What are you blubbering for now, Tessie?” asked Cook as Liza passed by with the boots.

“H-he yelled at me.”

Cook raised her eyes to the roof and crossed her arms over her chest. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Tessie wailed. “He wanted lemon, and there was no lemon on the traaaaaaay!”

Liza hesitated, staring at Tessie as the woman bawled into her kerchief. A low, drawling voice whispered in her ear.
You smell like lemons. I want you too. You smell like lemons. I want you
.

Shivering, she put her hand on Tessie’s arm. “Has he gone?”

“Yes. He’d hurt his foot somehow. Loveday bandaged it, and he went away. Thank God. He’s never been like this. I shall speak to Mr. Choke. If his lordship’s to continue like this, I’ll look out for another place. Oh, are you going up, Miss Gamp? Would you take his shirts with you? I pressed them, but I just can’t go up there again.”

“I’d be might glad to do it. And I’ll tidy the room so you don’t got to do that either.”

She followed Tessie to the laundry room. The maid placed a pile of ironed and folded shirts in her
arms. She hooked her elbow around the handle of a coal scuttle filled with brushes, cloths, and a dustpan.

Loaded with the scuttle, silk, fine wool, and a pair of boots dangling from her fingertips, Liza marched upstairs. She passed Loveday on his way out, hat and gloves in hand. At last her luck was turning. She should have at least an hour to investigate the viscount’s rooms.

Laying aside her burdens, she closed the door to the hall. She didn’t dare lock it for fear of arousing suspicion should another servant have business in the suite. She glided quickly to the bathing and dressing rooms and searched them. Since she guessed they were the least likely places to hide anything, she wanted to deal with them first.

She found a battered trunk that had arrived with the viscount. She opened it and withdrew a brown horsehair rope, a strange, beaded bag containing eagle feathers on a thin, beaded band, and a pair of buckskin leggings. When she unfolded the leggings, an image came to her of Jocelin Marshall strapping them around his thighs.
Stop that
.

She set the leggings aside and dipped her hand into the trunk again. This time she retrieved the viscount’s belt, holster, and revolver. The smell of freshly cleaned leather and gunmetal reminded her of him. She traced the intricate engraving on the belt buckle, remembering where it had rested on his hips.
Elizabeth Maud Elliot, you stop this depravity at once
. She rapidly searched through the remaining clothing and refrained from touching a double-barreled shotgun and shells. Then her hand touched fur.

Peering inside the dark trunk, she grasped an animal skin with black hair. When she pulled it out, her gaze caught the glint of metal. A hinged box
reinforced with metal. And it was padlocked. Faded letters on its top spelled out “Wells Fargo.” Liza felt a burst of satisfaction as she hauled the box out and set it on the floor of the dressing room.

From the pocket of her apron she drew a slim metal tool acquired from Toby Inch. Inch was the retired-thief-turned-butler she’d hired to pose as the respectable Mr. Pennant when she’d first opened her agency for domestic servants. Up to now she hadn’t required his criminal expertise.

She slipped the tool into the opening of the lock and worked it slowly. After a few agonizing minutes, the lock clicked. Liza opened the box—and groaned. It was filled with dark, slim cigars.

Frustrated, she replaced the contents of the trunk and rapidly searched through armoires and chests filled with male clothing. She found neckties and stocks, shirts and collars, morning coats, frock coats, dress coats, and overcoats. She riffled through dozens of half boots, military boots, unused slippers. She opened drawers full of watches and chains, tie pins, studs, and rings. And found nothing.

Next she tried the bedchamber itself, even searching between the mattresses and bed frame. Nothing. Liza ground her teeth together in frustration, then glanced at the desk in the sitting room. Surely he wouldn’t hide anything in that ornate freight car. Still, she had to search. Poking through every drawer and slot took time, and glancing at all the letters took even longer.

Once she heard footsteps on the landing, but they faded. The bulk of his correspondence concerned his estates, business interests, and political dealings with men in government. For a man reputed to be so dissolute, he was surprisingly concerned with
reform of the army and the controversy stirred up when the queen tried to bestow upon the foreign-born Prince Albert the title of king. Liza folded a letter and replaced it in a slot. She had poked and prodded for secret compartments to no avail.

Reluctantly she closed the desk, rose, and straightened the chair in front of it. Slowly she turned in a circle, inspecting the sitting room. She noted the eighteenth-century armchairs, the curio cabinets that had yielded nothing more sinister than Ming china, the white mantel over the fireplace, an old secretary too small to be of use except for decoration.

To expect a murderer to keep about him anything that would indict him in his crimes had been foolish. She realized this now, after all her elaborate schemes had failed. Dejected, Liza gathered her coal scuttle, brushes, and cloths, and walked to the door. She turned and gave the sitting room one last look. Cool elegance, silver-gray, classical, sparsely decorated except for a few ornaments like that blue thing on the mantel.

Liza’s hand was on the door. She paused in mid-twist of the knob, cocked her head to the side, and fixed her gaze on the blue vessel above the fireplace. She set her coal scuttle on the floor, plucked a clean dust rag from it, and darted to the mantel. She wiped the rag along it until she came to a nautilus shell contraption. Humming to herself, she poked her nose into its interior. Empty. She gave the surface a swipe with the rag and put it back.

The rag slid along the mantel to a Wedgwood piece. She tipped it and stuck three fingers inside. They swirled around in empty space. Muttering, Liza pulled her hand free and dabbed along the mantel again. She paused to consider the next vessel. The
blue thing looked like a flask. It had a small base. She would have to hold it with both hands to keep it from tipping over. The rag patted nearer and nearer the blue thing. She lifted both hands.

“Loveday said I should discharge you.”

Liza jumped and shrieked. Whirling around, she beheld the viscount standing on the threshold. He was leaning on one shoulder and had his frock coat slung over the other and hooked over a finger. At her yelp, he grinned, came inside, and shoved the door closed while she gaped at him.

“He’s right,” the viscount continued. “I’ve never preyed upon my servants. Bad form.” The frock coat sailed in the air and landed on an armchair as he stalked over to her. “Odd how I never noticed maids before you came. Loveday says you’re new.”

Liza scuttled sideways as he prowled toward her, but he changed direction as she did. She wrung the dust rag in both hands, backing up as he approached her. Her legs hit something solid, and she fell into one of the chairs near the fireplace. The viscount chuckled and swiftly bent to place his hands on the arms of the chair.

His body loomed over her. She could feel the heat from it. His head angled down so that he could meet her gaze. Brown, his skin was brown, not pale like that of most Englishmen, who spent their days indoors. Did all gunfighters have brown skin? Heavens, she was all atwitter again. He’d caught her snooping, and all she could think of was his skin.

“You needn’t squirm so. I’m not going to hurt you.”