Improper Gentlemen

by Diane Whiteside

  “In truth, I don’t know. Me da used to say the family could trace its blood back to the Old Ones, to the Tuatha de Danaan, back to a time when a simple man had more magic in his little finger than there is in the whole of the country now.” Aidan stopped and looked back toward the house, a frown creasing his brow. “I wish I hadn’t had to do it to your beau. My gift loses potency with repetition. I’ll not be able to knack him again for another day or so, I’d expect.”

  Rosalinde swallowed this new information. “So you . . . knack people with regularity, do you?”

  “Not as often as ye might think.”

  “Have you ever knacked me?”

  He stopped and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “No, but ye’ve tempted me sore once or twice.”

  The more she learned about Aidan, the more a stranger he seemed. They walked on in silence toward the growing sweetness that signaled the jasmine was near.

  “Why did you say Edwin had embarrassed himself before me?”

  “He asked ye to marry him, aye?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, did ye tell him yes?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d say he was properly shamed.”

  At least Edwin had troubled to ask her formally. Now that she thought back on the matter, Aidan hadn’t truly asked. He’d more or less informed her she’d be his wife after loving the will to resist right out of her.

  What was that, if not wickedly close to being knacked?

  “I didn’t have time to give Edwin an answer, if you must know.”

  Aidan chuckled. “Are ye after seeing if I’m the jealous type?”

  Rosalinde pulled her hand from the sheltered crook of his arm and stomped ahead of him on the path toward the four-foot clump of jasmine sprawling near a stone settee. The small waxy flowers were not much to see by moonlight, but their scent was so heady and sweet, it made her slightly dizzy.

  “Rose, don’t be like that.” He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist.

  “Or what?” She wiggled away from him. “You’ll knack me?”

  “No, lass. There’d be no point. If ye don’t love me willingly, ye don’t love me.”

  “And if you don’t trust me, how can you love me?”

  “I trust ye. Didn’t ye see how little I minded Edwin? I know you’re mine.”

  “No, I mean about your plans.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You won’t tell me how you intend to trap the real killer.”

  “For your own good. Ye’ve no need to know.”

  “I’m an adult. Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I need to know?”

  “Rose, now see—”

  “No, you see.” She raised her hand in a parody of his knack gesture. “Either you tell me what I want to know right now, or I’ll march right back into that house and tell Edwin I accept his suit in front of God and everybody.”

  “Ye wouldn’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  When he did nothing for a few heartbeats, she wheeled and set off.

  “It’s the match my family wants in any case,” she muttered. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Aidan grasped her shoulders and whipped her around to face him. “Because ye don’t love him.”

  “Love often has little to do with marriage on this most civilized of islands, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Rose—”

  “Now, Aidan. Tell me now or I’m gone.”

  “All right, but ye must keep clear of it.” He led her back to the settee beside the jasmine. “I won’t be coming to your chamber this night. Lily Wade is turning the beds down as we speak. And she’s leaving the same note on several of them.”

  “What sort of note?”

  “Read it for yourself.” He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

  The moonlight was bright enough to read the script scrawling across the page.

  She was my cousin. I know what you did and I can prove it. Meet me at midnight to discuss terms. You know where.

  It was signed Lily Wade.

  “ ’Tis vague enough I think only the killer will understand it.” Aidan took the note back, refolded it and shoved it in his pocket. “He’ll have to respond if only to discover what sort of proof she has and what she wants for her silence. Lily will wait before the grotto and I’ll wait hidden inside, and we’ll see who comes.”

  Rosalinde shivered. A cornered man could be driven to desperate acts. “It sounds dangerous.”

  “So was prison.” He shrugged. “But if I’m to remove the taint from my name and claim ye before all with our heads high, it’s a risk I must take.”

  It still wasn’t a proper proposal of marriage, but Aidan was willing to hazard far more than the knees of his trousers to have her. That counted for something.

  She still turned her face away when he tipped her chin up so he could kiss her.

  “Someone might look out and see,” she said. “And a kiss in the garden is as good as a betrothal when the world catches you at it. Then you’d have to marry me, regardless of how we might have to hold our heads.”

  “I’m not worried about that.” He stroked her cheek with his fingertips, feather-light. “But I greatly fear if I once start kissing ye, I won’t be able to stop. Wonder what your great-aunt would say if she found us stretched out on this settee with your skirts hiked up around your waist.”

  Her belly warmed at the thought. “She wouldn’t say a thing. She’d have an apoplectic fit on the spot.”

  “We can’t have that,” Aidan said as he rose and offered his arm. “A dead houseguest will ruin a host’s reputation for years.”

  She chuckled at his nonsense as he led her back toward the main house.

  “But once ye’re well and truly mine, I give ye fair warning, Rose. I intend to have ye in every chamber of the house and behind every bush in the garden if I have to fit the staff with blindfolds to do it!”

  Her body throbbed at the thought of a good bone-jarring swive with Aidan by the jasmine some night. “That’s a bold ambition, my lord,” she teased.

  “Nay, lass.” His eyes glinted with lust as they rejoined the others in the house. “A promise.”

  Chapter 11

  I am a tainted wether of the flock,

  Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit

  Drops earliest to the ground.

  —SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice

  Aidan retired early and as good guests should, everyone else followed his lead. Rosalinde was a bit surprised not to find Katie waiting for her in her chamber. She tugged the bellpull by her bedside and started taking down her hair herself.

  Her window had been left open, so she wandered toward it. She noted for the first time that there was a grape arbor at the far end of the garden. If Aidan lifted her hem there beneath the fat leaves and curling vines, would anyone be able to see from the house? Or if he slipped completely under her broad skirt, would anyone even be the wiser if they stumbled upon them?

  The memory of his mouth on her sex made her belly clench.

  Lord, she was becoming such a wanton. Now that her thoughts were bent in that direction, every place she looked presented unique sensual opportunities. She imagined coupling with Aidan under every shade tree, on the library’s venerable desk, in the cramped butler’s pantry, a hand clamped over her mouth to stifle her moans of pleasure. The cascading sensual images that scrolled across her mind’s eye distracted her almost completely from the risky scheme Aidan was about to embark upon.

  Probably why the man brought it up, she thought with a grimace.

  A lamp winked on in the distant grotto. Liam had made his ghoulish rounds. Then Rosalinde saw someone tramping through the garden toward the maze, a long cape wrapped about his form.

  Aidan. She’d know his determined stride anywhere. Of course, he’d want to be in place long before the killer crept out to meet the upstairs maid.

  Katie still hadn’t come, so she tugged the bellpull again. It
was a good quarter-hour before her maid arrived, breathless and frazzled.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, miss,” Katie said. “But I couldn’t get here a pinch faster what with us being so shorthanded and all.”

  “Shorthanded? How can that be?” Rosalinde gave Katie her back and the maid made short work of helping her out of her gown. “His lordship has an abundance of servants.”

  “Yes, but not an abundance of upstairs maids. Well, he wouldn’t have need of any, would he, him not havin’ a wife and all? That’s why he hired one special for his guests, Mrs. F. says. But now that Lily Wade is long gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Sure as I’m standing here. Right after she came back from turning down the beds, she gave Mrs. Fitzgerald her notice with immediate effect. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she says, all hoity-toity-like. ‘No amount of money is worth this.’ ” Katie lifted a pinkie and sashayed a few steps. “As if she already didn’t do the least amount of work for the best of pay. I ask ye, did ye ever?”

  Was this part of Aidan’s plan as well?

  “And she’s gone, you say?”

  “Saw her head down the drive with my own eyes, fast as shank’s mare would carry her. Wouldn’t wait till his lordship could be notified. Had to start walkin’ and wouldn’t nothing turn her.” Katie shook her head as she helped Rosalinde into her nightshift. “Even with her leaving like that, I expect the baron woulda seen she had a ride to town to speed her on her way. He seems the kindly sort, don’t he? Lily Wade’s got herself a ten-mile walk in the dark or I’m mistook. But in the meantime, who’s stuck with helping the viscountess and her daughter on top of me own work? Though it do seem strange the viscountess wouldn’t bring her own lady’s maid, don’t it? Thought them titled folk all had the chinks. Well, mayhap not.” Katie grasped Rosalinde’s hair and started plaiting it for sleep, none too gently. “I hope that Lily Wade steps in some horse apples along the road and ruins her fancy little slippers, so I do.”

  Rosalinde extricated herself from Katie’s heavy-handedness. “I’ll take care of my own hair.”

  “Aren’t y’ kind?” Katie cast her a broad smile. “That’s all to the good because I expect Lady Chudderley is ringing me bell off. If there’s nothing else then, miss?”

  “No. Good night, Katie.”

  As soon as the door latched behind her, Rosalinde turned down the gas lamp and scurried back to the window. In a few hours it would be midnight. What would happen when the killer arrived at the grotto and there was no Lily waiting outside to lure him in?

  Her decision made, she went to the wardrobe and pulled out her simplest gown, one she could don by herself. Then she lugged a chair over to the window so she could watch the moon slip behind scudding clouds and mark anyone else who made a trek from the house to the grotto.

  When midnight drew near, ‘Lily Wade’ would arrive before the grotto. As planned.

  Aidan positioned himself in the deep shadows of the grotto, out of the yellowish circle of Liam’s lamplight, so he could see the spot where the secret back exit was located. Thanks to one of the many airshafts bored through the sloping walls, he also had a decent view to the place where the maze emptied into the grotto. Whichever way the killer came, he’d be ready.

  He wasn’t keen on firearms, but he and Liam had supplemented the family stewpot often enough as children using bows and arrows. A man with an arrow notched on the string would stop an unarmed one. He didn’t think the killer would trouble to bear a pistol.

  After all, he hadn’t used anything but his bare hands to dispatch poor Peg Bass. Why would he try anything else now?

  The rustle of footsteps on pea gravel raised his head. A small cloaked figure emerged from the maze.

  Lily, as expected. He’d have to give her a substantial bonus for this night’s work. Maybe even finance that play she was hoping to land the lead in. Her acting had been flawless so far. Now if she could only exact a confession from whoever came to meet her as Aidan had coached her.

  She peered toward the grotto, as if trying to see where he was hidden, her hood clutched close to her face. Then she turned back and faced the gap in the hedges of the maze, her weight shifting from one foot to the other.

  That nervous sway was a little out of character. Lily was a cool one, the sister of one of his cellmates in Bermuda. She was getting a bit long in the tooth to continue lifting her skirts for a living and hoped to make a splash on the stage before her looks deserted her completely. She didn’t seem the type to be so antsy now.

  Didn’t she realize he wouldn’t let anything happen to her?

  Aidan cocked his ear for approaching footsteps, but only heard the scritching of insects, small nocturnal claws seeking their burrows and an occasional owl.

  Then he heard something else. A muffled curse. Someone was working their way through the maze, but had taken a wrong turn and run into a dead end. Lily must have heard it too, for she stopped swaying and stood dead still.

  A man came out of the maze and walked toward her. Moonlight struck his face brightly enough for Aidan to recognize him.

  “Hello, cousin,” he whispered and drew an arrow from his quiver.

  “All right,” George said. “Your note got me here. I assume it’s something to do with that Peg Bass. What do you know about it?”

  Rosalinde swallowed hard. The way they were positioned, she was reasonably sure her face was in shadow. Now if she could only imitate Lily Wade as well as Katie did.

  “I know me cousin Peg was far gone with your child,” she said, altering her voice to match Katie’s version of the uppity maid.

  “Not mine,” George said. “She wasn’t my type. Not that I haven’t tumbled my share of lady’s maids, you understand, but I never touched your cousin.”

  “I’ve me doubts, gov.”

  “Oh, Peg Bass was pretty enough, but a bit too fleshy for my taste.” He smiled and cocked a brow at her. “I like my women more on the willowy side. Like you, Lily.”

  She stepped backward toward the grotto. “Ye didn’t have to kill her. All ye had to do was give her money. She knew ye wouldn’t marry her.”

  “Again. You have the wrong fellow,” George said. “Besides, you and I both know once the blunt starts flowing in cases like that, it never stops.”

  “I know ye stood by and let yer cousin take the blame for her murder.”

  “Aidan confessed. I saw no reason to doubt him.”

  “Even when you knew the truth.”

  George propped his fists at his waist. “The truth is, I’m here to find out what the hell did happen. If it wasn’t Aidan, then who was it? Don’t tell me he played the martyr to protect his chuckle-headed brother.”

  George’s face scrunched in a frown that gave his words the ring of truth. He hadn’t killed the upstairs maid and he was upset to learn his cousin Aidan might actually be innocent.

  The wind kicked up and threw her hood back, baring her dark hair. Lily’s blonde was so pale, it would appear white by moonlight.

  “Wait a moment. You aren’t Lily.” As he started toward her, she turned and fled toward the grotto.

  “The wee fool,” Aidan murmured. What on earth had possessed Rose to masquerade as the upstairs maid? But he didn’t have time to puzzle over it. A long, hollow keening started behind him and he heard the rasp of stone on stone.

  Viscount Musgrave stepped through the secret back door to the grotto as Rose skidded in through the front.

  “Rosalinde, what are you doing here?” Edwin asked, aghast.

  Her jaw dropped and Aidan could almost see the connections forming in her head. Only the killer would know about the back door and think to surprise Lily Wade by using it.

  “It was you, Edwin,” she said as George jogged up behind her. “You killed that poor girl.”

  “Nonsense.” Edwin stepped toward her. “My dear, you’re overwrought with the moonlight and that beastly howling wind. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I say, what’s all
this?” George peered around her, eyeing the yawning opening in the grotto’s seemingly solid back wall. “Where’s that tunnel lead?”

  “It connects to the old tower,” Aidan said, stepping out of the shadows with his bow raised. “Rosalinde and I discovered it while we were riding last week. But you knew it was there years ago, didn’t you, Edwin? And you used the back way out the night Peg Bass died to avoid being caught in the maze.”

  “You can’t prove it.”

  “Only the killer would have used it this night.”

  Edwin glared at him for a moment, then in a movement so quick Aidan wouldn’t have thought him capable of it, he lunged for Rosalinde and pulled her in front of him. She screamed and struggled to free herself, but he held her fast.

  “Let her go!” Aidan bellowed.

  “No.” Edwin pinned her arms to her sides and grasped her chin. “Drop your bow. Or I’ll break her neck, Aidan, so help me God, I will.”

  The whites showed all the way around Rose’s eyes. Aidan dropped the bow and arrow, sending them clattering to the cobbles.

  “Why, Edwin?” Rose managed to croak.

  “Because Peg Bass wasn’t just a light-skirt chambermaid. She was a grasping, scheming bitch,” he snarled. “And I was supposed to marry Lady Ellen Banbury.”

  Aidan recognized the name as one of the greatest heiresses in the country. There’d been rumors of an impending betrothal before he and Edwin prepared to leave for Oxford but nothing had ever come of it.

  “My father was drawing up the final agreement, but the little bitch ruined the match for me.” He spat out the words. “When Peg Bass turned up round-bellied, I broke it off with her and wouldn’t pay a farthing for her little bastard. I ask you. How could I know it was even mine with a girl like that?”

  “You still didn’t have to kill her,” George said.

  “Yes, I did. She stole my signet ring, the filthy little thief, and she sent it to Lady Ellen by post with all the details of my . . . preferences.” He shook with rage. “As if I’d have treated Lady Ellen like some worthless dollymop.”