A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  “One doesn’t need to be a police inspector to do a little detective work,” she continued.

  He raised his chin, defiant. “If you are referring to the illegitimacy of my birth, it is hardly a detection to boast of. That I am a bastard is common knowledge. Even were it not, a simple examination of public records would reveal the truth. I mean no harm to yourself or to Mr. Bandon, but if you feel the need to counter an attack that hasn’t happened, you would do well to find a better weapon. That one has grown dull with overuse.”

  He could no more help being born a bastard than she could help being born a woman and had to be just as weary of having it used against him. She regretted having to use the blade of bastardry against him, regretted more that she was about to twist that blade a little more.

  But whether it was his intention or not—and she rather thought it was not, his inquiries had the power to destroy Richard’s life. Already Richard, dear, sweet Richard, was talking about ending their engagement rather than risk dragging her down with him. After years spent despairing of ever finding a man she could even tolerate, she had found one she loved beyond all reason. She would not allow him to be destroyed for something he could no more help than she could help her sex or Jones the circumstances of his birth.

  Richard’s parents had been in a unique position to hide their son’s condition from the world and had loved their son enough to do so. He would not be in danger of exposure now if not for that one night when he had risked revealing himself to save her from a horrible death.

  “Tell me, Mr. Royston Jones, why did your mother want you to carry the name of the man who had dishonored her?”

  “They were in love. They intended to marry as soon as he turned twenty-one and his inheritance was secured. It was only mischance that he was killed before that could happen.”

  “She loved him, of that I’ve no doubt. He was, by all accounts, a most charming rogue." She took a deep breath, a part of her hating herself for what she was about to do. "Your mother was not his first conquest. That she was his last had more to do with the strength of a bullet than the strength of their love.”

  His eyes narrowed, his brows furrowed. Anger, yes, but beneath that surprise and pain. This weapon was not so dull.

  She heard Richard’s voice in her head, admonishing her. Gently remonstrating with her about how often she didn’t fully grasp the impact of her own words on others’ feelings. But thoughts of Richard, his inherent, easy kindness, only strengthened her resolve to continue despite the cold, queasy feeling that warned her that what she was doing was wrong. She opened the drawer of the battered old desk. Withdrew a sheaf of papers and dropped it on the desk before him.

  “Lilly-Ann Martin was the first. A dairy maid on the summer estate. Jonathan Allen Royston was a bit of a prodigy. He couldn’t have been much more than fifteen at the time. Family paid her off, and she married a farmer willing to overlook the fact that his first-born wasn’t his, given the generous dowry. The next two ended up handing the child over to baby farms. The Royston family paid the fees, of course. Strangely, the children were never heard from again.”

  Royston shook his head slowly, but the thinning of his lips belied that denial. She had seen his work history during her investigations. Better than most, Jones would know the horror of the baby farms.

  “See for yourself,” Catherine said. “Odd that places like that keep records, but I suppose that they must be sure that those poor, desperate women are not falling behind in payments. And if anyone with the influence of, say, an alchemist known to work with the Yard, comes around demanding old records, why, easier to give them up than to risk more official scrutiny.”

  His face paled, and he swallowed hard, keeping his calm with an obvious effort. She hated doing this to him, hated destroying the romantic illusion his mother had obviously built up around his origin, hated threatening him with the taint of a sordid past that was none of his fault. Hated being that kind of gentry.

  For Richard. Only for Richard.

  She could not let the Inspector see how much it cost her to do this. He must believe her without conscience and entirely capable of carrying out her threats. “The last woman he got pregnant was the governess to his much younger sister. But I’m sure you know all about that. No doubt the family made her the same offer, but she refused to put the child away, though it meant no respectable family would ever employ her again.”

  Jones tilted his chin up, resolve hardening his eyes. “This is not such a great surprise as you might think. I researched my father, you see, after my mother died.” He had wanted to know more about the man his mother had loved, the man who gave him half of who he was. “I learned about his reputation. I knew that my mother hadn’t been the first.” Though he hadn’t known about the baby farms. “I know how he died.” Not killed by a highwayman, as his mother had told him, as the papers had said, but in another woman’s bed, killed by a jealous husband who had then taken his own life.

  “I fail to see how any of this is relevant,” he continued. “I find it hard to believe you went to such trouble out of casual cruelty, but what other possible reason might you have?”

  “Let me lay out your two options for you then. You can continue to pursue your odd theory that Mr. Bandon is a werewolf. I assure you that you will never prove as much, and will only cause yourself trouble for slandering a member of one of the oldest and most respected families.” God, forgive me for what I must do. She kept her expression cold. “Furthermore, I can ensure that very influential members of society will start asking why such a loose cannon of such questionable background is being allowed to represent London’s finest. The Commissioner will start feeling pressure to rectify the situation. You know how much he respects the opinions of his betters.”

  Jones knew, of course he did. The tension in his jaw as he ground his back teeth betrayed as much.

  Catherine steeled her heart and continued. “In addition, all the circumstances of your birth will make it through the rumor mills, and the remains of your mother’s reputation will be ground deeper into the mud. Instead of a tragic figure, ruined by a hopeless, secret love, the world will know her as a poor fool, only one of a string of lovers. Or worse, a loose and shameless woman who didn’t care if the man she lay with had other interests.”

  “You mentioned two options,” he said.

  “Your other option is to forget this silly notion of yours. We will forget you ever brought it up, and you get to continue in the field to which you are best suited—catching criminals. London needs you, Inspector Jones. Those poor girls need you. Don’t let them down over a battle you cannot win.”

  “So it is true, what they say about well-bred gentlemen being like well-bred dogs," he said coldly. "They lack the vigor to defend themselves in a fair fight.”

  She stopped herself from slapping him with an effort. Richard was ignorant of her efforts on his behalf and would be furious if he ever found out, but the detective had no way of knowing that.

  “Believe what you will of us, Inspector Jones. I care not. The only thing that matters is how you conduct yourself. Have you come to a decision?”

  ***

  Jones would not permit himself the luxury of rage. He had had practice at running a race at an unfair handicap. Sometimes he came in a nose ahead anyway. He considered his odds. A further tarnish on his name he could bear if he must. Though the deepening stain on his mother’s reputation would be harder, the lives of future victims weighed more heavily. But he could not allow himself to be removed from the case and from his office, removed entirely from any opportunity to protect those who had neither money nor power nor status to protect themselves.

  She could do it. He had won his position through the superior education his mother had given him and through his obsessive hard work, but there were still many who would welcome any excuse to be rid of him. And that would be the ultimate defeat. This, this was just another of the obstacles life placed in his way. He’d overcome all the other challeng
es, he’d overcome this one as well.

  “You’ve won,” he said. “As you knew you would.” At least, you’ve won this battle. We’ll see about the war. He almost wished he believed in the God the vicar was always prattling on about. Then he could believe that somewhere in the afterlife there would be justice against these wealthy bastards who ground the rest of the world beneath their heels.

  She smiled, a cold, calculating smile that reminded him of a killer he’d interrogated. “You have made the right decision.” Her face softened. “Please believe I would rather not have had it come to this. I’m sorry for any pain I may have caused you.”

  She almost sounded like she meant it. But then she was a good actor, to carry the Foster subterfuge as far as she had.

  The glamour was good, good enough that it was hard to think of her in the feminine even though he knew the truth. The voice, though a tenor, was sufficiently masculine not to give her away, and neither the face nor form had that odd sense of not-rightness that betrayed a cheaper glamour. But then, she had the money to pay for the very best.

  Royston stepped out into the bright spring afternoon to a world forever darkened by the reminder of knowledge he wished he could unlearn.

  His mother had told him a tale to rival Shakespeare—young lovers kept apart by the hatred of one family, a handsome young man, noble in all senses of the word, tragically cut down by random violence before he could fulfill his vow. She had believed the tales. Could his intelligent, practical mother have been so deluded?

  He would never know how much of the truth she had known, either at the time of her relationship with his father or later. He had clung to the idea that if a woman as intelligent and perceptive as his mother had loved the man, surely he'd had more to him than the record would indicate.

  In his line of work, he’d seen even shrewder women—and men—transformed into utter fools by love. Foster, Miss Fairchild, had the confidence of one who had built a case on the most solid evidence.

  Two young boys, brothers by the looks of them, raced each other recklessly down the sidewalk. Royston stepped aside to let them pass. He’d always wondered what it would have been like to have a brother in blood—Willie Godwin was close, but it wasn’t the same. Now, if Miss Fairchild was to be believed, he had half-siblings that had been left to die in infancy of neglect and starvation. Maybe his father hadn’t known. Did that make it any better, that he hadn’t even bothered to find out the fate of the children he'd sired? A crying child behind him made him spin, half-worrying that he’d lost his mind to delusions of past horrors. But no, it was a child in a pram, well-fed, round-cheeked, healthy and strong if the power of its voice was anything to go by. A nurse in a white-aproned domestic’s uniform paused their stroll to coo and fuss over the child, soothing its discontent.

  And still, the child called up the memory of emaciated infants whose cries went unheard, of babies too weak to cry. Royston shuddered.

  It had been years ago, and still he could recall the stench of urine and excrement and festering sores on babies left to lie in their own filth. The police had been in luck, if anything about the situation could be called lucky. The proprietress had been mixing arsenic into the watered-down milk to hasten the demise of the infants rather than waiting for the slower death of starvation. They found the chemical in the kitchens, and doctors who examined the few surviving infants found symptoms of its effects. The proprietress could not claim their condition as ‘wasting disease’, which was the usual explanation for such deaths—when they were investigated at all.

  Royston was among the constables left with the sad task of carrying out the tiny bodies. He remembered picking up one of the pitiful things, nothing but a stretch of translucent bluish skin over a frame of bird-delicate bones. The little girl had been lying on a soiled mattress without so much as a nappy. He lifted her, intending to wrap the body, for decency’s sake, in a ragged scrap of blanket before carrying her out to the coroner’s wagon. When she moved feebly and gave a weak cry he yelped and nearly dropped her.

  A doctor had moved in and took the child. Later he had heard that she only lived a few more hours.

  If his mother hadn’t been so resourceful and so determined to keep her child, he very well could have ended up one of those babies.

  He shuddered deeply.

  Dwelling on the past wasn’t going to do anything to save Doctor Death’s next victim. He still had a few leads to follow up on tomorrow. So far, he had lost count of the eccentrics who had come forward with wild, useless theories regarding the killer’s identity and absolutely no solid evidence. He had theories of his own—he was keeping a close eye on two of Blackpoole’s former associates—but no proof to support any of it.

  “Fish and chips, fresh and hot!”

  Had he really made it all the way to the stand where Molly worked? Hopefully he hadn’t bumped into anyone in his daze.

  “Good day, Inspector. The cod’s just out of the fryer, hot enough to burn your fingers, but I’ll wrap it well in paper.”

  He forced a smile, no point in ruining the girl’s day. “Always looking out for me, my lovely Molly-o.” He’d picked up the line from something a traveling singer from Ireland had sung in a music hall he’d gone to with Willie, and it always made Molly blush. She blushed prettily, a flush of roses blooming in her rounded cheeks.

  “Fish and chips today for one of London’s gallant protectors?”

  He wasn’t hungry, but the idea of the warm, familiar comfort of the greasy offering appealed. “Put that way, how could I refuse?”

  He dug out the requisite coins, and Molly handed him the steaming cone of newsprint already translucent with grease. As always, she snuck in an extra piece of fish and a few more chips than went into the usual order.

  He ate as he walked and felt a little better by the time he reached his flat. He read a little of Othello by gaslight—oh wondrous modern luxury for a book lover—and was contemplating an early night when Parker arrived to summon him to one of the rougher bars in Camden-town to collect Willie Godwin and soothe the angry proprietor.

  That Willie had once been one of their own had carried weight for a while in his encounters with the law. That he was Jacob Godwin’s son won him a little more grace. Not that Godwin would have wanted anyone to show favoritism to his estranged son. But no constable and no inspector wanted to be the one to break the old man’s heart just a little more.

  If the bar in question had a name, it was not painted on the door or hung on a sign. No matter, Royston knew exactly where it was. He’d been called there enough times as a constable to break up fights, and more recently, to take Willie home. It stood half-way down an alley that stank of urine. The darkness and narrowness made the hair on the back of his neck rise. Locals did not particularly care for law enforcement, and occasionally constables ended up beaten to death or had their throats slit. Nobody ever saw anything. His Webley British Bulldog, loaded and ready, made a comfortable weight beneath his jacket. Parker, he noted, kept one hand on the billy club at his belt. Good man.

  He pushed the rough-hewn door to the bar open and strode with deliberate confidence across a floor sticky with layers of spilled beer. The loud, raucous laughter and conversation stopped as soon as the patrons saw Parker’s uniform. The day laborers and layabouts that clustered around the bar and the two small tables glared. One of them spat on the floor.

  The proprietor came out drying his hands on his filthy bar towel. “Ah, there you are, lads. I was just about to send for constables by more official channels. Next time I will, see if I won’t.”

  “I’m grateful for your discretion,” Royston said. “I’ll make sure that the tab gets paid as well as any damages.” Even if it had to come out of his own pocket, which doubtless at least some of it would.

  He found Willie slumped at a table in the corner, a bruise already starting on his cheek. His bloodied knuckles had doubtless been cut on some brawler’s teeth. “Come on, Willie, home you go,” Royston said with false
cheer. “Still living in the same place?”

  His childhood friend reeked of alcohol and poor hygiene.

  “Yer a good friend, Royston-lad,” Willie slurred. “And a good man. ‘S why m’Da always liked you better.”

  Royston stayed in Willie’s flat long enough to ensure that his friend wasn’t going to choke on his own vomit and die. By the time he got home, he had less than six hours before he had to be back at the Yard, and he really, really needed a bath.

  Before he could finish stripping, a constable was pounding on his door, telling him that another dead girl had been found.

  Five

  Catherine sat at her easel, oils drying on her palette. The scent of turpentine mingling with the scent of roses usually put her into a pleasant painter’s trance. Today all she could think of was the headlines of the day’s paper and the grainy photograph of the coroner’s wagon.

  Once it might have been her in that wagon.

  A hand fell on her shoulder. She shrieked.

  “Catherine, love…” Her dear Richard’s voice.

  She turned to him, and the love and concern in his eyes was almost more than she could bear. She felt uncharacteristic tears burning in her eyes. Richard knelt to be on her level, careless of what the damp soil would do to his trousers. George, his manservant, would be most put out.

  He put a hand on her knee. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment then took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Damn Blackpoole,” she said at last. “Ever since Pemberton’s ball, I can’t be in a garden alone at night. I can’t even be in my own garden alone unless I am within sight from the house. Damn it, my own beloved touches me unexpectedly, and I scream. Why am I so weak? Nothing happened, you got there in time. Nothing happened.”

  He took her hand. “He grabbed you. He would have killed you. You went through a terrible fright. It’s understandable that certain things remind you of that.”