The Water Nymph: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book Two

by Michele Jaffe

  Sophie was growing more confused with every word, and in particular, Lady Artly’s final words. Could Lady Artly be proposing that they have an affair to get back at her husband? Sophie hesitated for a moment before asking, as neutrally as possible, “Is there a service I can render you?”

  Lady Artly pulled a kerchief from her waist and dabbed at her eyes. “I want you to find Harry’s mistress and lure her away from him. You can do it, Lord Sandal. No woman can resist you.” She put the kerchief away and turned her eyes back to Sophie. “Even I, a married woman, am not immune to charms such as yours. I must admit, your portrait in the broadside never moved me, but now that I see you in person, and see your mustache…” She lowered and then raised her eyes slowly.

  “You do me too much honor.” Sophie spoke as formally as she could, sitting up rigidly in her seat.

  “Lord Sandal, you need not be modest.” Lady Artly leaned close to Sophie. “You are worthy of far more than mere praise from me. I am a woman who could really cherish your finer points.” A finger crept across the arm of the chair and drew a long, suggestive line up Sophie’s thigh.

  Sophie suffered a second coughing fit then, which caused her face to turn red and again nearly resulted in her having her head cradled on Lady Artly’s bosom. But she could not keep coughing forever, and she was at a loss as to how to end the bizarre interview, when the great clock in the downstairs hall began to chime.

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Artly said with alarm, “I must be going. I hate to leave you in the throes of such a bad cold, all alone, with no one to look after you, no one to comfort you.”

  “I shall be fine,” Sophie assured her, with a few precautionary coughs just to keep Lady Artly’s hands at bay. “It is better if you go. We would not want anyone to suspect us.”

  “Of course. You are right, Harry should not know I have been here. He is such a jealous tyrant, and I should hate for you to have to fight a duel on my behalf.”

  Sophie’s recovery was almost complete now. “I certainly would not shrink from it,” she answered, not hesitating to risk Crispin’s neck, then stood quickly and strode toward the bell rope in the corner of the room. “But, just to be cautious, I shall have Thurston show you out.”

  Lady Artly rose majestically, gathering her green silk swathing about her. “I know we shall meet again soon,” she told Sophie. “You will do what I asked, won’t you? You will do that for me, for your sweet Dolores?” Sophie, who had been rendered rather short of breath by the coughing fit, did not have time to respond before Lady Artly rushed on. “Thank you, Lord Sandal. I knew I could count on you.”

  Lady Artly edged toward Sophie, apparently expecting something in the way of an embrace, but Sophie bent down to avoid the red-tinted lips and instead, taking the lady’s hand, gave it a chaste kiss.

  “So gallant,” Lady Artly sighed. “So divine.” And with that, and the appearance of Thurston, she disappeared in a swirl of green silk.

  Lady Ardy passed Crispin at the bottom of the stairs as she went out. “Good day, Don Alfonso,” she told him. “Be sure to assist your master well in his undertaking for me. He is such a wonderful man.”

  Crispin, nodded, rendered mute as much by the sheer quantity of green silk as by the fact that Sophie had apparently agreed to do something for the creature wearing it, then returned his attention to the task at hand. He did not want to lose any time giving Sophie hell. He set his jaw slightly more with each step he climbed toward his apartment, concentrating on the lecture he was going to inflict on her for her behavior. She had violated their agreement entirely, had done nothing like sit meekly in the corner, and she was going to be sorry for it. First, he was going to lock her in his bedchamber. And then, he resolved, she would answer his questions. All of them. Truthfully. He had only five days to save his neck, and he was going to start by making her talk. Today he would find out what she had been doing at the Unicorn, what had passed between her and Tottle, and what exactly was her interest in the Phoenix. And, he added, what exactly was the nature of her relationship with her godfather. His spine began to tingle ever so moderately with this thought, but he ignored it. As he reentered the library and saw her sitting at his desk, kicking it with her foot and twirling one end of her mustache around her finger, his resolve jiggled but the words “five days” soon restored it.

  Something about her interview with Lady Artly was nagging at Sophie, something about what the fashionable woman had said, and she was momentarily too distracted trying to figure out what it was to note Crispin’s return. “Oh, there you are,” she said, coming out of her reverie. “I am starving. What are we having for supper? And who was waiting for you downstairs?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Crispin replied coldly, then demanded, “What the devil were you thinking, impersonating me to that woman like that?”

  “Did you say we were having roasted loin of pork sautéed with apples?” Sophie went on, heedless of his displeasure. “And spinach soufflé? Oh, there is no spinach? Yes, then Lisbon sprouts will do fine.”

  “Answer my question. Why did you impersonate me, against my direct orders?”

  Seeing she was not going to get anywhere on their menu until this was dealt with, Sophie sighed. “You never told me I could not impersonate you. Besides, I did nothing of the kind. She mistook me for you. I merely failed to correct her. You will be interested to know that she thinks I, or rather, the Earl of Sandal, is handsomer in person than in your engraved portraits. And she liked my mustache.”

  “I can’t begin to tell you how you arouse my jealousy. What service did you promise to do for her, Your Lordship?”

  Sophie began to look a bit grim. “She wants me, or actually you, to find out if her husband is having an affair and, if he is, to seduce his mistress. Easy stuff for you apparently. She made it sound like the Earl of Sandal did such things every day, before breakfast.” Sophie wanted to kick herself for the petulant note she heard in her voice, so she kicked the desk instead.

  “Before breakfast?” Crispin replied with mock alarm, forgetting for a moment that he was very angry at her in his pleasure at her obvious jealousy. “Never. Before supper perhaps.”

  “Supper?” Sophie brightened considerably. “Squabs stuffed with spinach, onions, raisins, and breadcrumbs, and basted every twenty minutes with a mixture of white wine and butter?”

  Crispin ignored her. “What else did you learn from her?”

  The brightness dimmed. “Nothing. That was all, just a request. I hope she is pretty.”

  “Who?”

  “The mistress.” Sophie was impatient. “The mistress you are supposed to seduce.”

  “Unfortunately, I am trying to limit myself to one seduction a week, and I do not think yours is finished.” When he found himself on the way toward the desk to expand on that theme, Crispin stopped himself. “Nor is our work. There is still one person who was a subscriber that we have not consulted.”

  Sophie, wondering if perhaps they could not do it after they made love, or after they had supper, or both, asked distractedly, “Who?”

  “You.”

  Sophie’s distraction evaporated. “But I did not subscribe.”

  “Your name was in his ledger for the precise amount of the subscription.”

  “Perhaps,” Sophie said, shaking her head in a futile effort to make sense of what was happening. “But that does not mean I subscribed. I never met Richard Tottle. Or gave him any money.”

  “Really?” Crispin asked with undisguised incredulity.

  “Yes.” Sophie paused for a moment, trying to decide, then blurted, “I admit I went to the Unicorn to meet Tottle, and I received word that he was in the smoking room, but when I got there…” Her words dried up abruptly.

  “What happened?” Crispin coaxed. “Was he already dead?”

  Sophie shook her head slowly, lookin
g miserable. “I do not know if he was alive. It was dark in the smoking room. Very dark. Completely dark.” She shuddered. “I was… I did not go in. I just left.”

  As she spoke Crispin remembered, remembered having to light the tapers when he entered, and realized that he should have understood immediately, as soon as he saw her reaction to the dark in Pickering’s Highway. She had been afraid to enter, and too embarrassed to admit it.

  “I see,” Crispin said finally, kicking himself for not having caught on sooner. “But your bill of credit was found on Tottle’s dead body. If you did not give it to him, who did?”

  “I do not know,” Sophie said with such clear relief that Crispin was immediately put on his guard.

  “Let me ask the question another way,” he said carefully, circling around the desk toward her. “To whom did you give that bill of credit?”

  The relief drained from her expression. “I don’t remember,” she replied, more a question than a statement.

  Crispin was leaning over her now, his hands on either arm of her chair, his eyes looking into hers. “Do not lie to me, Sophie. I want to help you, but I can do that only if you are honest with me.”

  Under other circumstances, circumstances that had his lips hovering something more than two inches from hers, Sophie would have told him that she did not need his help, did not even want it, but now she could not form the words, let alone think them. It was as if his very proximity hypnotized her. Before she realized what was happening, she heard a voice, her voice, answering his questions.

  “The bill of credit that they found on Tottle’s body was mine,” the voice explained. “I mean, I wrote it. But I did not give it to Richard Tottle. I gave it to my godfather, Lord Grosgrain, the morning he died, just before he left his house. He told me he was going to see Richard Tottle that morning, but there is no way he could have given it to Tottle because he was killed only minutes later at the end of the street—more than a mile from Tottle’s print shop. Whoever killed him must have found the bill of credit on his body and kept it, then planted it on Tottle to implicate me. Just like they did with my pistol.”

  Crispin did not move. “Your pistol?”

  “Yes, the one that was used to kill Richard Tottle. According to Octavia, Lord Grosgrain borrowed it the day before he was killed. He hated firearms, hated violence of any kind, so he must have been terrified for his life when he took it.” She looked at him intently. “Don’t you see? Lord Grosgrain must have suspected someone was going to try to kill him and took my pistol to defend himself.”

  “From whom?” Crispin queried.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie said, but so oddly that Crispin eyed her sharply. She melted under his scrutiny. “I do not know, but I have a suspicion. I think it was someone called the Phoenix.”

  Crispin abruptly removed his hands from the arms of her chair and began to pace the library, trying to ignore the prickly sensation at the base of his spine. “Why?”

  Sophie told herself she was not disappointed that he had not kissed her. “Because Lord Grosgrain said he would pay me back ‘unless the Phoenix gets me first.’ Those were his exact words.” Crispin stopped pacing and looked steadfastly at the wall. “Does that mean anything to you, my lord?”

  “I am not sure,” Crispin said aloud, more to the wall than to her. Realizing he had spoken, he turned toward her and watched her closely as he went on. “The other day, Lawrence mentioned that there was a reward out for someone named Phoenix. He is supposed to be some sort of secret spy of Queen Elizabeth’s.” Noting that Sophie’s face showed only confusion and that, given the way her lips had just opened, she was preparing to ask him about nine hundred Phoenix-oriented questions, he decided to change the subject. “Let’s return to what you were saying earlier. It sounds like you surmise that your godfather did not die in an accident, but was murdered?”

  “Yes,” Sophie confirmed “I am sure of it. But about—”

  Crispin put up a hand to stop her from interrupting. “And that whoever killed Lord Grosgrain found the pistol and your bill of credit on his body and then planted them both on Richard Tottle to implicate you?”

  “Exactly. But the Phoen—”

  “Which means,” Crispin went on, resuming his pacing, “that whoever killed Lord Grosgrain also killed Richard Tottle. And has it in for you.” He was explicating this as much for her as for himself, testing it for strength, probing it for weak spots. It all seemed to make sense, but none of it explained her initial unwillingness to admit to him that she had written the bill of credit for Lord Grosgrain.

  “Tell me,” he said finally in a deceptively light tone, stopping directly in front of the desk and leaning toward her. “Why did Lord Grosgrain ask you for twelve hundred pounds?”

  Sophie spread her hands. “He said he needed to give that sum to Richard Tottle and he did not want his name to appear on a bill of credit and he did not have that amount in gold.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that he would ask you, of all people, for money?”

  Sophie tilted her head back. “Why strange? He was my godfather. My very good friend. Why wouldn’t he ask me, of all people?”

  Crispin felt a spark of something it took him a moment to identify as disappointment. Why couldn’t she just tell him the truth? Why couldn’t she just trust him? “Because he was paying you a thousand pounds a month,” he said finally.

  Blood stopped circulating in Sophie’s body, or so she felt. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let me rephrase that.” The tingling in Crispin’s spine was unignorable now. “Why would Lord Grosgrain ask you for twelve hundred pounds when he was the one supplying you with money to begin with? Or do you deny that?”

  “No. It was my allowance,” Sophie said, giving the excuse she and her godfather had made up years earlier. “Only—” She stopped, struggling to master the quaver in her voice. Her secret, Lord Grosgrain’s secret, the secret they had together protected for so long, was in jeopardy. When she resumed, her tone was cold and distant. “Only I do not see how this could possibly have any bearing on your investigation of his death. My money and its source are none of your business.”

  Crispin’s spine was on fire. Damn her and her lies. Disappointment veered dangerously into anger, and he moved with an eerie calmness around the desk. He again leaned over her chair, but this time his tone was not seductive. “I do not think you understand, Miss Champion. You are not safe from the law until the real murderer of Richard Tottle is found, and, since everyone thinks it is you, no one but me is seeking him. I am the only person who can help you, the only one who can solve the murder, and you would do well to give me any assistance you can.”

  Sophie sought desperately for some way to change the topic, and finally hit upon it. “This is a rather elaborate ruse to win a bet, my lord,” she countered hoping her tone was as chilling as his. “What makes you think I cannot solve the murder myself?”

  “Many things. Principally the fact that I am locking you in this room when I leave this afternoon, and you will not be able to get out of it until you answer all my questions truthfully,” Crispin explained with icy precision.

  Sophie rose abruptly from her seat, pulling away from him, outraged. “You would not dare.”

  “That is where you are wrong, Miss Champion. I would, and I shall.”

  Sophie’s outrage turned to burning scorn. “I thought you were a man of your word, a man of honor, Lord Sandal, but I see I was mistaken. You are a cringing coward. You think nothing of cheating on our bet in the lowest, most craven way imaginable.” As she spoke, she watched Crispin’s eyes turn dark, his face leaden, but she plunged ahead anyway, astonished by the words she heard herself speaking and by their frightening ring of truth. “You would do anything to win our wager. Indeed, I am willing to bet that everything that happened last night between us, everything you did and sa
id, was only done to make me trust you, so you could learn what I know and win more easily.”

  “Anything is fair in sport,” Crispin said condescendingly, his tone borrowed from a Nordic wind.

  “Not locking me up.” Sophie found that she was almost trembling, trembling with rage and something else. She did not speak but rather hurled her words at him, wanting to hurt him badly. “Not treating me like a prisoner. Not acting like a spineless coward who will stoop to anything—even trapping an innocent woman and holding her captive—to get his way.”

  “Very true, Miss Champion.” Crispin’s eyes were the color of iron, and his voice was completely devoid of anything human. “I thought I was helping you, but you show me that I was wrong. Do whatever you please. For my part, I do not give a damn what becomes of you.”

  The final, killing words hung in the air of the library even after he stalked out of it, slamming the door behind him. They bounced around, repeating themselves in Sophie’s head, reminding her, berating her. I do not give a damn what becomes of you, the voice in her head chorused gleefully over and over again. I do not give a damn what becomes of you.

  Day turned to night, and Sophie sat completely still, completely silent, completely numb. She neither blinked nor breathed, did not flinch or tremble, but simply sat, a stone-cold statue.

  The tears that streamed down her cheeks unchecked, unstoppable, were the only sign of life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Poverty kills Beauty, and wealth exalts it. The pursuit of Beauty, therefore, is the pursuit of wealth, of gold, which is the highest pursuit. Gold, the rarest and most splendid of the metals, is the symbol of Beauty.

  Gold is the way to Beauty.

  Gold is the road to Beauty.

  The road of Beauty is paved in gold.

  Gold. Gold gold gold. I must have gold.

  Beauty must have gold. More gold, more, more, more.