Cold Comfort (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite Book 5)

by Rebecca King

  Oliver stared at his boss in horror. “I get to babysit, is that it?”

  “No, you get to keep our only advantage safe, Oliver. I wouldn’t task just anybody with this. I know Rhys is a ladies’ man, which is why I cannot put him with the woman. I know you are going to be professional and keep your hands to yourself. If I go to any more weddings, I am going to start to get a reputation for being a match-maker,” Sir Hugo teased.

  “Or a curse,” Oliver snorted.

  “Look on the bright side, this young woman might have warts or something.”

  “Have you seen her twin?” Rhys burst out. “I doubt it. That woman, although dead, was undoubtably very pretty in her prime. In a way, it is easy to understand why she was chosen by the kidnappers because she fits the profile of the rest of the victims to perfection.”

  “Those clothes of hers spoke of hard times, though,” Will interjected. “Her complexion was a little pock-marked, so her life wasn’t easy.”

  “Maybe that is why she had to be killed? Maybe she wasn’t as healthy as they had hoped?” Rhys suggested.

  “Which is why we need to find out why the victims were taken,” Harry warned.

  “It is of little consequence really. We will find out in good time I am sure, but for now, what is important is capturing the Smidgley brothers. Get them behind bars where I can interrogate them. They will tell us what we need to know, but I cannot do a damned thing while they are squirrelled away in that blasted mansion of theirs. I need to lure them out. She might not know it yet, but that is where Caroline Elkins’ sister comes in, and you, Oliver. Whatever you do, do not allow anything to happen to that woman.”

  Oliver dropped his forehead onto the table and slammed it down a couple of times.

  “Can’t I escort the body to the coroner and stay for the examination? I would rather that than nurse a young woman through this. There is going to be wailing and weeping, the whole damned works,” Oliver groaned.

  “You will survive,” Wills grinned but with little sympathy.

  Oliver lifted his head and squinted spitefully at him. “I wasn’t talking about the damned woman. She can screech as much as she likes, but she is going to do what she is told when she is told whether she likes it or not. If she doesn’t, things are going to get really nasty really quickly.”

  He slammed his gun onto the table and sat back to fold his arms and stare down at it.

  Sir Hugo lifted his brows but knew then that the had made the right decision in selecting Oliver for nursing their charge on this particular part of their mission. Oliver was a solid man; very dependable, logical, careful, yet tough when he needed to be. He was also as averse to matrimony as anybody could be. His devout reluctance to undertake his task said more than enough. Besides, the dire warnings Oliver had just given assured Sir Hugo that Oliver wasn’t going to follow the rest of the men up the aisle anytime soon, no matter how pretty this young woman might be. Sir Hugo hoped not in any case because everyone needed to concentrate on their allotted tasks if the Star Elite had any hope of surviving this investigation. Failure was not an option.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Yes?” Emmeline yanked the door open and gasped when the tall, well-dressed gentleman on her doorstep turned around to look at her.

  At first, the expression on his face wasn’t friendly. There was a glint of hardness in his amber eyes that warned her he could be fierce when he wanted to be. After a moment or two, there was something else hidden in those gorgeous depths; something less harsh but wary.

  He is handsome. In fact, he is incredibly handsome.

  Oliver turned to look at the young woman who had just answered the door, and opened his mouth to speak only for his mind to go blank. All the things he had rehearsed on his way over to the young woman’s house suddenly flew out of his mind and left him standing on her doorstep, staring agape at her. While he knew what Caroline Elkins might have once looked like, he hadn’t truly expected just how stunning her twin sister would be. It was while he was trying to think of something to say that Oliver realised that he was staring.

  “Can I help you?” Emmeline prompted when the man on her doorstep continued to stare at her as if he had expected someone else.

  Oliver coughed. “Miss Elkins?”

  “Yes.” Emmeline felt her stomach drop. She dragged her gaze away from his handsome good looks and raked him with a studying glance. His clothing, while expensive, was well worn and carried a faint layer of dust. She had no idea, yet, who he was and where he came from, but Emmeline knew immediately that he had ridden a long way to get to her door. What she had to find out now was what he wanted. Her stomach flipped nervously at the thought that he might want her for some reason. She swallowed and eyed him warily.

  Dread flowed through Oliver with as much determination as the blood in his veins. He realised, in that instant, just how much trouble he was in. The urge to turn around, ride back to the safe house, and enlist one of the others to undertake this task was strong, even though Oliver knew he didn’t have the authority to usurp Sir Hugo’s command.

  I have been tasked with this part of the mission and this part of the mission I shall do. Somehow.

  “Might I come in and have a private word with you, miss?”

  That’s it. I will be professional and strict; very, very strict.

  Emmeline was already shaking her head, immediately refuting the idea of allowing this man into her tiny cottage, not least because he was huge. He was so tall, she had to tip her head back to look up into his deep amber eyes, which were almost hypnotically engaging, or would have been had it not been for the faint hint of displeasure she saw in them. She had no idea why he should be so displeased to see her, but he was and that rankled her. A lot. So much so, Emmeline almost coldly arched one brow at him and stood her ground.

  Handsome or not, he is so large I doubt he will fit into my sitting room even if I did let him in.

  Strangely, she suspected that someone of such presence would leave a lingering essence behind long after he had left. He was that much of a personable character. He positively vibrated menace, while at the same time appeared handsomely charming and he had hardly spoken. There was something about the tall, strong, silently powerful man before her that left Emmeline with the impression that he was dangerous to her personally although she had no idea why.

  “Oh? What about?” Emmeline felt bold enough to ask.

  “Your sister, Caroline.” Oliver’s words fell between them like stones rippling across a calm pond. In the wake of each word, which shivered through the air between them, a tension began to develop. It made Emmeline instinctively step back. Oliver eyed her carefully as he followed her into the house, but he could ascertain nothing from her face, which had almost instantly turned into an implacable mask of polite disinterest.

  As her unexpected guest stepped into her home, Emmeline hastened a glance outside. She mentally groaned when she saw several curtains twitch up and down the street. She knew this man’s presence in her house was going to cause a stir, and cause many to enquire about her connection to him should she show her face in the village for the next week or so.

  “God, my life is not going to be worth living,” she whispered miserably.

  “What was that?” Oliver had heard her mumbled breath but couldn’t understand what had made her life so bad that she deemed it not worth living.

  “Come on through,” Emmeline said by way of reply. She led the way into the small sitting room to the left of the front door and took a seat in one of the two high-backed chairs positioned next to the unlit fire. “Do you have news of my sister?”

  Oliver planted his feet on the floor and rested his elbows on his knees once he had taken the pro-offered seat. He stared down at his hands for a moment while he tried to find the right words to say.

  “She is dead, isn’t she?” Emmeline prompted when the man didn’t seem inclined to want to tell her. “Who are you by the way?”

  Emmeline winced because she kn
ew she should have asked him that before she had allowed him into her home.

  I would have done if I hadn’t been so enraptured by how handsome he is. You were foolish, Emmeline. Really foolish.

  “My name is Oliver. I work with the War Office,” Oliver replied. He hadn’t been told to lie to the chit, but she didn’t need to know the finer details pertaining to the Star Elite. Not yet, in any case.

  “Just what has she been up to now?” Emmeline gasped. It was such an instinctive question that she immediately regretted it and looked contritely at the man seated opposite while she waited for him to tell her what had happened. He looked so surprised by her outburst that he remained quiet and considered it for a moment before he spoke again.

  “I take it that your sister was a little wayward.” It wasn’t a question.

  It was no hardship to sit and study the woman while she tried to decide what to tell him. Emmeline Elkins was stunning; it was that simple. With blond hair, and deep blue eyes, the pale oval of her porcelain beauty was perfection personified. He had never seen anybody like her at all in all of his years touring the country and living in London. Hers was a classical beauty combined with an almost regal elegance that was at odds with her somewhat impoverished circumstance.

  “Do you live here alone? Are you parents here?” Oliver asked a little desperately.

  Emmeline opened her mouth to tell him that she lived alone but then questioned the wisdom of it.

  “I am sorry, how do you know my sister?” she countered.

  Oliver sighed ruefully. “Like I have said, I work with the War Office.”

  “In London,” Emmeline said dully.

  “Yes. We have been investigating the disappearances of several women believed to have been kidnapped around these parts,” he continued.

  “Yes, I know,” Emmeline nodded. “Caroline being one of them.”

  “Was it you who reported her missing?”

  “Yes. Her landlady warned me that she hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. I naturally went to all of Caroline’s old haunts to try to find her, but nobody had seen her. Then, a villager told me that they had seen her late one evening in town. She had been all alone. It was the last anyone saw of her. The magistrate said it looked like she had been kidnapped by the same gang who had snatched those other poor women. He thought she had been taken because of how she looked.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me.”

  Oliver looked around the neat yet sparse room. “Why is your sister not sharing this house with you? Are your parents here?”

  “My parents are dead, sir,” Emmeline informed him pertly.

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  Emmeline nodded her appreciation but didn’t expand. It wasn’t pertinent given it happened a few years ago now. Besides, she had enough to contend with right now without opening up a Pandora’s box of memories as well.

  “Caroline left here a few months before my parents died in a carriage accident, sir.”

  “Please don’t call me ‘sir’. Oliver will do,” he ordered quietly.

  “Emmeline,” she offered.

  Oliver nodded.

  “Caroline was always a little wayward. Growing up, she was always the twin who got into mischief. It used to drive our parents wild because she refused to do as my father asked. He threatened to throw her out every time she got into trouble. One day, he followed through with his threat. Well, really, Caroline took him up on his threat and left before he could order her to go. She refused to come back, even when he commanded her to. She – Caroline - took up lodgings in town but soon deteriorated.”

  “Deteriorated?” Oliver’s brows rose.

  Emmeline’s voice lowered. “She spent most of her life drinking. It shamed my parents. They were horrified, humiliated, and tried desperately to persuade her to come back, but Caroline refused.”

  “Why didn’t she come back when your parents passed? Were you at odds with her?”

  “My cousin, who owns the house now, didn’t want her living here. He said I could stay but Caroline was on her own because of her behaviour,” Emmeline explained. She had no idea why she was telling this man so much, but suspected it was because she was trying to stave off the news that he had to tell her. Deep inside, though, she knew what he was here for.

  “Did your cousin give her an allowance?” Oliver eyed the basket of sewing behind her chair.

  “No. She told him where he could put it during an argument when she said she wanted a portion of my father’s estate. My cousin, Charles, inherited it all, you see?” Emmeline fell quiet for a moment and worked hard not to cry. It happened every time she was faced with just how tenuous her life had become. If anything happened to Charles as well, she would be out on her ear just like Caroline and everybody knew it.

  God knows what would happen to me then.

  The only way she had been able to survive had been not to think about it.

  “Where is she?” she asked quietly.

  “Dead, I am afraid,” Oliver murmured gently. His tone was so quiet, so tender, that it seemed to come from a completely different person to the man he had been on her doorstep just now. The man before her was dark, dangerous and huge in her tiny, somewhat humble home, yet he had spoken with such compassion that all she could do was stare at him.

  “You have found her then?”

  Silly question, Emmeline. If he knows she is dead. Of course he has found her.

  “Where?” she asked before he could answer her previous question.

  “She was strangled. We think by the people who kidnapped her. We don’t know why she had to die and wasn’t just released to find her way home. We think it was because she would have been able to identify who snatched her. She was found near here yesterday.”

  Oliver closed his eyes as the haunting memory of Caroline’s corpse flitted about in the back of his mind. To think of that being Emmeline was enough to make him want to draw his gun and keep guard over her, and do everything possible to avoid it ever happening.

  God, what is happening to me?

  Oliver had no idea. He wanted to think it was because he was now looking at a living version of the newly deceased woman that he had spent yesterday morning trying to forget. After their meeting with Sir Hugo, the men had discussed who was going to locate a new safe house before Oliver had packed his things and set off to find Miss Emmeline Elkins. Now he had found her, he wasn’t at all sure the next phase of his plan was going to work. He couldn’t just ride off to the safe house and come back to find her when they had their plan set up to use her to lure out the kidnappers.

  “What I want you to tell me, Emmeline, is what Caroline was like when she was alive. What did she do with her day? Who were her friends? Did she have anything to do with anybody who worked at Smidgley Hall?” Oliver kept his gaze trained on the delightful woman opposite while he spoke, searching for any sign that she was going to cry. It was a little disconcerting to note that she merely looked perplexed, as if facing a new puzzle that she didn’t know how to solve yet.

  “Caroline’s friends were some questionable characters, if you get my meaning? They were all known to the magistrate, which is why he didn’t seem inclined to want to find her when she first disappeared. Oddly, it was only when her friends, those questionable characters, all said she had been kidnapped that he paid me any attention.”

  Oliver nodded. “Those questionable characters are usually good judges of character. If they say someone has been kidnapped, and are upset over it, then that person has invariably been kidnapped. They wouldn’t cause a rumpus with the magistrate if they suspected they were wrong.”

  “They didn’t cause a rumpus. They just told everyone in town that Caroline had been kidnapped. The magistrate was obliged to investigate it,” Emmeline sighed. “Otherwise, I doubt he would have bothered. His previous altercations with her, of which there were many, had given him cause to cast her into the questionable character realm and she was therefore unworthy of his
time.”

  “Well, he did investigate it. She was kidnapped but unfortunately has been murdered. It is murder because she was strangled, we suspect by the kidnappers,” Oliver murmured sadly.

  Emmeline sighed. “I suppose you think me quite callous for not grieving for her.”

  “It isn’t for me to judge you.” Oliver leaned back in his seat, a little surprised but greatly relieved.

  “I tried everything to help my sister when she was alive,” Emmeline began in defence of herself. Even though she had no reason to need to explain herself, she felt it important that he fully understand her connection with her sister. “Caroline always saw everything in life as a competition. She always wanted to be the one to go somewhere first, and see something first, or try something new first. She wanted to be in the finest clothing, and attend the best balls in the area, no matter what she had to do to get inside. It led to many problems, especially when she took it upon herself to creep into Viscount Elder’s ball. She wasn’t just thrown out. Caroline was delivered back home, and my father was sharply reminded of his place. It caused an awful time for the family. It wasn’t the only scrape that Caroline got into either. As she got older, she tried more and more daring things. Nothing seemed to mean anything to her. She had no qualms about breaking the law or flouting something in someone’s face. She goaded and taunted and didn’t seem to care who she upset along the way. So long as she had everyone looking at her, Caroline didn’t care what anybody thought, said, or felt.”

  “Did she see you as competition?” Oliver lifted a brow when she looked at him. He was unsurprised when she nodded.

  “I tried to help her, especially when Charles took over and made it clear she wasn’t welcome to stay here, and that she wasn’t going to receive an allowance for bringing the family name into disrepute. Caroline refused to accept any help from then on.”

  “So, you didn’t get on,” Oliver said.

  “We rubbed along, put it that way, but were happier if we didn’t have much to do with each other,” Emmeline smiled.

  “Sibling’s are not under any expectation to get along, you know, even twins. I know I have fought with my brother quite physically a time or two.” He rubbed his chin and threw her a rueful look. “He won most of the time, but I refuse to tell him that.”