A Mortal Likeness

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “It couldn’t have been self-defense when he shot you.”

  Hugh sighs. “All right, I’ll tell you what happened. You and Olivia rode off and left us alone. The attraction between us was so strong, I felt as if my blood was on fire. When we reached that grove of trees, we jumped off our horses, and suddenly we were kissing. I don’t know who made the first move. God, I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  The awe in his voice brings back my memory of the first time Barrett and I kissed. My body goes warm and liquid at the mere thought.

  “Then he pushed me away. He was furious. He called me a sinner and a perversion of nature. I said, ‘If I’m a sinner and a pervert, then so are you, because you want it as much as I do.’ I moved toward him, and he aimed his rifle at me and said, ‘Don’t come near me!’ He was shaking so badly, his finger nudged the trigger.”

  Now I see two reasons why Tristan might have deliberately shot Hugh—to eliminate the object of his forbidden desire and prevent Hugh from exposing him as Robin’s kidnapper. “So then you fell in love.”

  “Not then. I fell in love the minute we first met. I just didn’t realize it until he came to my room this morning.”

  I didn’t realize until many weeks later that I’d fallen in love with Barrett at first sight. The initial antagonism between us had been just a smokescreen created by fear and denial. “I warned you not to be alone with Tristan.”

  “He apologized for shooting me,” Hugh says, defiant. “He explained that it was the first time he’d ever been intimate with a man, and he was upset. And when we kissed again, he didn’t resist.”

  Hugh’s smile, lit with an inner radiance, is dazzling. I realize that I’ve never seen him truly happy until now. My heart is heavy because I feel obligated to deliver unwelcome news for his own good. “You have to break it off with Tristan.”

  “I knew you were going to say that. But I can’t. Don’t you see I’ve been waiting for this all my life?”

  “How does Tristan feel about you?”

  “The same.”

  “Did he say so?”

  “Not in so many words. We didn’t have time for many words.” Hugh smiles, reminiscent and secretive.

  It feels cruel, but I have to say, “He could be using you.”

  A sardonic laugh bursts from Hugh. “You sound like a granny warning a farmer’s daughter about the lecherous carnival barker.”

  “You sound like you’re so blinded by love that you haven’t bothered to examine Tristan’s motives,” I retort.

  “He sinned against his church and God just to have it off with me?” Hugh’s bluntness makes me cringe. “It’s not like that.” Afire with his need to convince, he leans toward me. “Sarah, I swear. This is real.”

  “No, not just to . . .” I balk at repeating it. “He might have been trying to distract you from finding out that he kidnapped Robin.”

  “He wouldn’t. He didn’t. Look, Sarah, I know you mean well, but if you can’t accept—”

  Fear is an icy, bone-deep pain, like the moment before my hands go numb from the cold on a winter day. Have I pushed Hugh into choosing between me and Tristan, the man he thinks is the love of his life?

  “Hugh! Miss Sarah!” Mick bursts into the room, panting with excitement. “Robin’s been found!”

  17

  “Where is he?” I ask as I limp on my crutch down the passage with Hugh and Mick.

  “On Hampstead Heath,” Mick says.

  After the eighteen-day search for Robin, and the sightings reported all over London, he’s been located so close to home.

  Hugh claps his hat on his head and shoves his arms into his coat sleeves. “Who found him?”

  “Don’t know,” Mick says. “I was eatin’ lunch in the servant’s hall, and the butler came in with the news. I didn’t wait to hear anymore. I ran straight up to tell you.”

  Hurrying down the grand staircase, I ask, “Is Robin alive?” That’s all I care about; never mind that we won’t earn the reward or that our employment with Sir Gerald is over.

  “Was the kidnapper caught?” Hugh asks.

  “Beats me,” Mick says.

  “Exactly where is he?” I ask.

  “Don’t know, but everybody’s goin’. We’ll just follow the crowd.”

  The foyer is empty, the door ajar. We race outside, down the steps. Mist hangs heavily in the air. By the time we’ve traversed the grounds, my shoes are soaked from puddles left by yesterday’s rain, and my armpit hurts from the crutch digging into it. The only people at the gates are two guards. On the narrow, zigzagging road that descends the hill, we join the mass exodus from Mariner House. Older servants plod breathlessly at the tail end. We pass these and, farther down the slope, the younger servants, grounds keepers, guards, and folks whose roles I can’t identify; there must be over a hundred. Now we come upon reporters armed with notebooks and pencils and photographers lugging cameras and flash lamps. They chatter excitedly; their long vigil outside Mariner House is about to pay off.

  “You go on ahead,” I tell Hugh and Mick. My ankle throbs; I’m winded.

  “Look!” Mick points down the road at a horse-drawn wagon that contains a tour guide lecturing through a megaphone to a group of customers. Mick and Hugh support me while I limp toward the wagon.

  “It’s our lucky day. We’re about to see history being made,” the guide tells his customers.

  “We’re joining your tour,” Hugh says, boosting me aboard. He and Mick scramble up after me.

  “Hey! You didn’t pay!” the guide says.

  Hugh tosses coins to him, and we sit on the hard wooden floor. Two carriages ahead of us turn onto the main road. The wagon follows, and we emerge into open moor. Fog obscures the terrain beyond the hedgerows. The parade soon veers down a different road that curves around the hill. Woods surround the road. The carriages stop on the verge, and Sir Gerald helps Lady Alexandra and Tabitha from the first one; the second disgorges Raphael DeQuincey, Sir Ogden, Dame Judith, and others. The tour guide and his customers jump from the wagon while Hugh and Mick help me climb out.

  Sir Gerald leads the rush through the woods along a gravel road that’s too narrow to walk more than three abreast. The road descends as it snakes between trees. Water drips from the foliage. Lady Alexandra leans on Sir Gerald’s arm. Her anxious murmur and his soothing voice drift back to us. Her friends, close behind her, whisper among themselves. I hobble between Mick and Hugh. I hear other footsteps crunching the gravel behind us and agitated conversation. Everyone spills out of the dim woods onto a grassy bank that fronts a large, irregularly shaped pond edged with reeds. The water is flat and dull, like tarnished silver. On the right stands an old wooden boathouse. On the left, a rowboat is pulled up onto a stone ramp that slopes down to the water. Near the ramp, a man holding a fishing rod stands apart from a small crowd of people who are gathered in a circle, staring down at something on the ground.

  The scene is as grim as a funeral. It tells the terrible story.

  “Oh, no,” Hugh says.

  “My baby!” Lady Alexandra cries.

  She runs toward the crowd, which parts to let her through. Now I see the small shape lying on the grass, covered with a drenched pale-blue blanket. Fist-sized stones, scattered around the body, must have been wrapped in the blanket and tumbled out when the fisherman brought it ashore. Lady Alexandra moans while Tabitha and Dame Judith restrain her. Sir Gerald strides toward the body, kneels, and draws back the blanket. His back is to me; I can’t see his expression, and he’s blocking my view of the body, but his posture sags.

  “It’s Robin.” His voice sounds older, tired, and drained of strength.

  With all his wealth and power, he couldn’t rescue Robin, can’t bring him back to life. Sorrow for him swells in me, washing away my previous suspicions in a flood of salty tears. I wish I could console him, but he doesn’t even know I’m here.

  The crowd exclaims. Lady Alexandra bursts into agonized sobs that echo across the water. As
Tabitha and Dame Judith try to soothe her, she collapses on the ground.

  Hugh sighs; Mick curses under his breath. Guilt torments me. I’ve failed Sir Gerald. I should have worked harder, should have been a better detective; I should have found Robin before this happened.

  Explosions suddenly erupt amid blazes of white light. The photographers are aiming their cameras at Robin’s body, setting off their flash lamps, taking pictures. Sir Gerald staggers to his feet. In the moment before he pulls the blanket over Robin, I glimpse the wet, darkened blond curls, the small, gray, waxen face. I think of the photograph of Robin and Lady Alexandra. When it was taken, he wasn’t dead; it was the last mortal likeness of him.

  Sir Gerald turns on the photographers and shouts, “Get the hell out of here!”

  The reporters swarm around him, yelling questions. I belatedly notice uniformed policemen among the crowd. Even as instinctive fear of the law shoots through me, my eyes follow the sparks that spew skyward from the flash lamps. It’s something I do automatically when I take pictures—I watch the sparks to make sure they don’t land on me and set my hair and clothes on fire. The sparks divert my attention to the landscape. In the distance, I see a dock that extends into the pond and three conical pine trees on the opposite bank. Recognition stuns me.

  At the same moment, I see Tristan Mariner standing not twenty feet away. Olivia clings to his arm. Tristan is staring at Hugh, who starts toward him as if drawn by the pull of gravity.

  I clutch Hugh’s arm and whisper, “This is the pond where I followed Tristan that night!” We took a different route, and in the darkness, I didn’t see the boathouse or the ramp.

  Hugh pauses, turning to me in confusion. Tristan averts his gaze as coldly as if he and Hugh were strangers. I say, “He knew Robin was in the pond. That’s why he came here!”

  “No.” Hugh stares at me in shock and disbelief. “It can’t be.”

  “He must have put Robin in the pond himself; that’s how he knew. He wanted to see if the body had resurfaced.”

  Hugh’s aghast face is as white as after Tristan shot him. He grabs my arm and says in a fierce whisper, “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I’m not going to protect Tristan!” I think he’s not only the kidnapper but a murderer.

  “Sarah, please,” Hugh says urgently. “If you care about me, keep quiet.”

  Mick tugs my sleeve. “Miss Sarah!” He points at the police, who are tussling with the photographers.

  I know Barrett is here the moment before I see him. Now Barrett sees me, and his expression fills with shocked bewilderment. I’m horrified, for more reasons than I can name, to have him find me here.

  “Stand back!” another police officer yells at the crowd, which is growing as more reporters and gawkers arrive. “This is a crime scene.”

  It’s Inspector Reid.

  My first instinct is to protect Mick. I whisper to him, “Run!”

  “I’m not leaving you and Hugh.” His eyes betray his fears of losing us and of the law.

  Steeling myself, I push him so hard that he stumbles. “Go! Before Reid sees you!”

  The moment before Reid’s glance swivels in our direction, Mick bolts into the woods. He’s adept at hiding and the heath is big, so I’m fairly confident that the police won’t find him.

  Reid’s jaw drops. “Sarah Bain? Lord Hugh Staunton?”

  Barrett exclaims, “What are you doing here?”

  I could say I happened to be in the area, heard that Robin had been found, and came to see. It’s not actually a lie. But Barrett frowns; he knows me too well. He can tell I’m thinking about how to skirt the truth.

  “We’re on a case,” Hugh says.

  “What case?” Barrett asks, incredulous.

  Remembering the confidentiality agreement, I look around for Sir Gerald. He’s within earshot, talking to a man who carries a black medical bag—the police surgeon.

  Doubt vies with suspicion on Barrett’s face. “Are you investigating the kidnapping?”

  My guilty silence is my answer.

  “Them and every other two-bit private detective in London,” Reid says with a sneer at Hugh and me. “Where the hell have you two been? Half the police force is looking for you.”

  Puzzled, I look to Barrett. “Why?”

  Barrett seems too outraged to speak. Reid says, “You may recall that a man and woman were murdered in the dinosaur park at the Crystal Palace.”

  The image of the victims resurfaces from the depths of my memory, where the events since I moved to Mariner House had pushed it. I see Ethel Norris’s bruised neck and her tongue caught between her teeth, and Noel Vaughn’s bloody, caved-in head. I swallow, fighting nausea.

  “What about it?” Hugh asks.

  Reid grins with ugly triumph. “You two are the prime suspects.”

  Hugh and I look at each other, shocked to learn that our unfinished business has been following us like an invisible bloodhound and has finally bitten us. “We didn’t even know the victims. We weren’t there when they were killed,” I protest.

  “That’s not quite true, is it?” Reid’s nasty grin broadens. “Witnesses at the Crystal Palace saw a devilishly handsome blond swell and a thin, plain woman with a camera follow the victims outside. When I heard that description, I said, ‘I’ll bet my mother’s life I know who that is.’”

  I’m alarmed to realize that while we were watching Vaughn and his lady, other people were noticing us. “We didn’t kill them!”

  “We were on a job, photographing an adulterous husband with his mistress,” Hugh says.

  Now Barrett looks angry because when I told him about the murder scene I’d happened upon, I neglected to reveal my connection with the victims.

  “I don’t believe it.” Reid glances toward Robin’s corpse, which is hidden by the police guarding it. “Well, this day isn’t a complete disaster—I’ve found you, and I’m going to get the truth about the Ripper murders as well as the dinosaur park murders if I have to dig it out of you with my own shovel. You’re under arrest.”

  My heart sinks. Our time for reckoning with the past is finally here.

  “Arrest them,” Reid orders Barrett. “Take them to Newgate.”

  I’m terrified because I was locked inside the notorious prison when Reid had me arrested last fall. I don’t want to go back. Hugh looks terrified too—he knows what men of his kind suffer at the hands of the wardens and other inmates. I turn a pleading gaze on Barrett.

  He’s not so angry that he would throw me in jail. He says to Reid, “There’s no evidence that Miss Bain and Lord Hugh committed the murders.”

  Reid grimaces in disgust. “Are you sticking up for them? Don’t tell me you’re still sweet on Miss Bain.” The glance Barrett involuntarily casts at me is anything but sweet, yet intense with personal feeling. Enlightenment flashes in Reid’s eyes. “You’ve been seeing her all this time. She’s your girl.”

  Barrett looks just as alarmed as I am to have our relationship exposed at the worst moment. He flushes and says, “They don’t have to go to jail. We can question them at the station.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Exasperated, Reid calls to three other constables, points at Hugh and me and orders, “Take them to Newgate.”

  My temper suddenly explodes. Last autumn, Reid terrified me, tormented me, threatened my friends, and delivered us into the hands of Jack the Ripper. I’m not going to cooperate meekly now. When a constable reaches for me, I hit his knee with my crutch. He yells in pain. Hugh punches the constable who’s tried to seize him. Reporters flock to us.

  “Inspector Reid, who are these people?”

  “Why are you arresting them?”

  “Are they connected to the kidnapping?”

  A constable grabs me from behind, tears the crutch from my hand. I scream, stomp on his feet, and kick my heels against his shins. Hugh yells as more constables beat him with their nightsticks. He falls. A photographer thrusts his camera at my face. Exploding flash powder blind
s me. The constable wrestles me to the ground, pulls my arms behind my back, and locks handcuffs around my wrists.

  “Break it up!” shouts Sir Gerald’s angry voice.

  As my vision returns, I see his guards wade into the fray and shove reporters and photographers aside. I’m lying on my stomach on damp, muddy grass with a constable kneeling on my back. The guards pull him off. I didn’t expect Sir Gerald to protect me, and I’m fervently grateful.

  More constables are heaped on top of one another. The guards haul them away to reveal Hugh lying curled up, motionless, handcuffed. I roll over and kneel beside him. “Hugh!”

  He sits up and says, “I’m all right,” but his nose is bleeding.

  We stagger to our feet and find ourselves with Sir Gerald and Inspector Reid at the center of a circle of spectators who include John Pierce, Tristan, Olivia, Raphael DeQuincey, reporters, police, guards, photographers, and servants. I hear Lady Alexandra sobbing over Robin while Tabitha, Sir Ogden, and Dame Judith try to comfort her. Tristan stares at Hugh. Everyone else is watching the drama between Sir Gerald and Inspector Reid.

  His face dark with fury, Sir Gerald grabs Reid by the lapels. “My son’s just been found dead, and you start a riot? What the hell?”

  Reid wrenches himself free, angry to be put in the wrong. “My apologies, Sir Gerald. I didn’t mean any disrespect.” He glares at Hugh and me. “They resisted arrest.”

  “Why are you trying to arrest my detectives?” Sir Gerald demands.

  Astonished, Reid says, “Your detectives? They’re working for you?”

  “Yes. I hired them to find Robin.”

  Reid laughs. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

  I steal a glance at Barrett. He looks wounded and betrayed as well as furious. I feel so guilty, I can’t meet his eyes. I should have told him despite the confidentiality agreement.