The Water Nymph: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book Two

by Michele Jaffe

  As he staggered toward the door of the workshop, clumsily retracing the steps he had used to enter minutes earlier, the blindfolded man heard the scratching of the pen resume where he had interrupted it.

  The pathway to Beauty is through gold, it wrote.

  The man was nearly unaware of the hand Kit placed on his elbow to guide him, nearly unaware of the steps he descended, nearly unaware of anything but the echo of the soft words he had just heard. “My sources within Sandal Hall tell me that the earl and your Sophie Champion are quite intimate,” the whispered voice repeated, over and over again in his head, always in the same half-amused, half-menacing tone.

  The path to gold is through blood, the pen inscribed.

  The man could barely contain his rage. Crossing the threshold of the workshop, he pulled off his blindfold so forcefully that it almost ripped the fake scar from his forehead, but he noticed this as little as he had noticed Kit’s assistance.

  Gold must be paid for with blood

  The man’s eyes were glued to the formidable walls of Sandal Hall, staring at them defiantly, as if straining to see through them. As he stared, his hands curled into two powerful and menacing fists.

  Gold must be paid for with death.

  Sophie Champion was within those walls. The woman he had spent his whole adult life looking for.

  Gold must be paid for with sacrifice.

  The woman he had to have, no matter the cost.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The streets of London had turned to rivers of mud by the time Crispin tried to negotiate his way homeward. The thunderstorm that began in the afternoon had covered the city in sheet after sheet of rain, immense, swollen drops that fell in torrents from the sky.

  He was soaking wet when he entered Sandal Hall from the stable yard. Before he had time to track mud through the main hall, Thurston appeared to take his wet cloak and boots.

  “Good evening, Your Lordship,” he said as Crispin stripped off his sodden cape. “I trust you had a pleasant afternoon.”

  “Dreadful,” Crispin growled at him. Which was not strictly true. For while the weather had been abominable, and his mood worse, he had, in fact, learned something very important.

  Following the instructions he had received that afternoon by messenger while Sophie was engaged with Lady Artly, he had gone to a house in the suburbs of London and been greeted at the back door by a young, frightened woman, who thanked him profusely for coming.

  “I am sorry to make you go so far out of your way,” she had apologized, “but I could not come myself to the interview you proposed and I did not dare entrust this information to someone else.”

  Leading him down a narrow corridor, she explained that the house belonged to her uncle, Matthew Grey, once a well-to-do merchant, but now an invalid, who might ring for her at any time and to whom her absence was inexcusable. She had asked Crispin to come in the afternoon, she went on, because it was when their housemaid did the shopping and therefore no one would know he was there.

  She said all this in whispers as they wound around the lowest level of the house, until they arrived in the kitchen. There was an air of lost grandeur about everything Crispin saw, particularly about the large, jeweled box in the middle of the planked table.

  “I keep them in here,” the young woman explained, opening the box with a small key and taking out a collection of papers. She flipped through them, then chose one and handed it to Crispin. “This is what most of them are like.”

  “ ‘How well does Matthew Grey know his niece? Some say too well’ ” Crispin read aloud, then looked up at the girl. “Where did you get this?”

  “It was sent to my uncle, inside this cover,” she handed Crispin another piece of paper.

  “ ‘If you do not want Sir Edgar to see this, accept the subscription that will be offered to you within a fortnight,’ ” Crispin read this time. “Who is Sir Edgar?”

  “My betrothed,” the young woman answered, blushing. “Sir Edgar Wellit. His family is very proper, and if he or they ever saw anything like that note, the betrothal would be over in a flash. I do not know what I would do.”

  Crispin looked sympathetic. “What happened next? Did you subscribe to Richard Tottle’s paper?”

  “No, that was second. First my uncle took a subscription to The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion, for six months, at one hundred pounds a month, and we heard nothing. But then, more letters came, just like those, and that was when Richard Tottle’s paper began to arrive.”

  Blackmail. A very sophisticated, even ingenious, form of blackmail, Crispin thought to himself. The content of the letters need not even be true, and he hoped in this case was not, but the threat of disclosure was enough to make people empty their purses. And by doing it through the subscription service, the identity of the blackmailer remained unknown, and therefore untouchable. The publishers had only to forward a lump sum each month to the benefactor who brought them so many new subscriptions. Crispin wondered if Richard Tottle or the publisher of The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion even knew that they were part of a blackmail scheme.

  “Do you know who printed The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion?” Crispin asked.

  The girl shook her head. “I destroyed the papers without even reading them, lest someone see and somehow know. But yesterday a man from a bakery came and told us that, instead of Richard Tottle, we should pay our hundred pound a month to his master.”

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “Sweetson, in Milk Street,” the young woman said unhappily. “I decided to tell you this, Lord Sandal, because Edgar, that is my betrothed, he reads all about your adventures and thinks very highly of you. My uncle cannot afford to pay the hundred pounds a month much longer, and I am afraid that when he stops, if he stops before the wedding, well…” She shuddered. “Yesterday, Uncle Matthew was asleep when your message arrived, so I read it first, and when I saw it, I knew, I knew then that it was the answer I had been praying for. I was, well, hoping that if I explained it to you, and then, if later they do send a letter to Edgar, you could talk to him and make him understand, so he won’t throw me over. He will believe anything you say. I know this is an enormous favor to ask of a stranger, but I have nowhere else to turn.”

  Crispin had agreed to talk to Edgar, should it come to that, and had left, brooding over the scheme he had just unearthed. Instead of making his investigation easier, however, it made it suddenly harder or at least less likely to yield a useful result. It increased the number of possible suspects in the murder of Richard Tottle, for any one of the people who were forced to subscribe under this system might have thought that killing him would end their vexation. This larger pool of potential murderers dimmed the likelihood that Tottle’s death had any direct tie to the people trying to destroy the Phoenix, in search of whom Crispin had undertaken the investigation into the printer’s demise.

  And yet, Crispin did not feel overly bothered by this apparent hiccup in his inquiry. That rainy afternoon, as he remounted Fortuna and steered her toward home, his mind was occupied once more with Sophie Champion. This preoccupation, not any concern over finding Tottle’s murderer or the Phoenix’s enemy, was what led him to describe his day as dreadful, particularly his reflection on his own behavior toward Sophie earlier that afternoon.

  He had to admit that he had behaved badly and unfairly, not to mention clumsily. True, she was hiding something from him, hiding something about her relationship with her godfather, but that was no excuse for him to speak to her so harshly. Besides, deep down he knew that he had lied to her himself. He had said that he did not give a damn about her.

  Thousands of people had lied to him as the Phoenix, and he had never lost his temper with them, in fact, had done just the opposite. Lies, he had learned, were most easily unraveled when the liar thought they were being believed. Throwing Sophie’s words back in her face was perhap
s the least effective way to learn the truth. But he had not been thinking rationally that afternoon, and that was what disturbed him most. His upset about Sophie’s relationship with her godfather, about the care with which she protected it, about his own inability to either confirm or debunk the rumors he had been hearing about them, had impeded his judgment. But Sophie was right; none of that had any bearing on his investigation. Nothing could be less important to the interests of the Phoenix than knowing the exact nature of Sophie Champion’s relationship to Milton Grosgrain. Nothing could be less important to the Phoenix, Crispin repeated, and the Phoenix’s concerns—not the Earl of Sandal’s—were what mattered.

  Crispin had just set out toward Sweetson the baker’s to continue his inquiry—reminding himself forcefully that it was the Phoenix that mattered right now and not himself—when he hit upon the happy thought that it would be in the best interest of both himself and the Phoenix to apologize to Sophie. That way he could re-earn her trust and get her to answer the rest of their collective questions. And it would make him feel less like a cad. It was this sole interest and not any desire just to hear Sophie’s voice that had led him to redirect Fortuna’s steps and spur her into a record-setting gallop, and this plan of action that he was determined to undertake immediately when he ran into Thurston in his own entrance hall.

  Thurston cleared his throat as Crispin leaned over to strip off his soggy boots. “I have a message for Your Lordship from Their Ladyships, your aunts.”

  “Are The Aunts now sending you to give their lectures?” Crispin asked morosely.

  “No, my lord, they merely asked me to inquire about the nature of the laughter they heard last night. They thought it sounded rather maniacal, and they wanted to be sure you were not keeping a madman, or madwoman, anywhere on the premises. Your father, the late lamented Hugo, would never have kept a mad person in the house, they asked me to inform you.”

  The reminder of Sophie’s ecstatic laugher the night before, coupled with the idea that The Aunts mistook it for that of a bedlamite, brought a smile to Crispin’s lips despite himself. “I hope you told them that I am keeping a madwoman in my apartments.”

  “I did, my lord, but they did not seem to believe me.”

  “Too bad.” Crispin shrugged. “By the way, how is the madwoman?”

  “I cannot say, my lord, I have not seen her these several hours. She did not touch her supper, or her dinner.”

  “She did not eat? Strange.” She must have been quite upset, Crispin realized with a pang.

  Thurston cleared his throat again. “She did ask me to have a message delivered to Hen House for her. I have prepared a copy of it, as well as a transcript of the discussion she held with Lady Artly.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “I do not believe so, my lord. Nor was there a reply. But Mister Pickering passed to give Miss Champion his regards.”

  “Sly, Lawrence, very sly.” Crispin shook his head. “How did she receive him?”

  “He did not come in, my lord. I had the impression that he was not eager to see Their Ladyships. Perhaps you can tell Miss Champion that he called? She was not in the library when I looked in.”

  “Of course.” Crispin started up the stairs, then turned back to his steward. “Are you wearing cologne, Thurston?” he asked, sniffing.

  “Oil of clove, sir,” Thurston replied, and for the first time in their history together Crispin could have sworn he saw his steward blush. “The scent is said to be pleasing and inspiring, sir.”

  “Of course. Well, good night, Thurston.”

  Crispin spoke his last words over his shoulder as he began to ascend the stairs to his apartment. It had never once crossed his mind that Sophie would leave—she had no place to go and could not possibly get by Thurston unnoticed—but now, taking the steps two at a time, he wondered if he had been too sanguine.

  He had been. Not only had Sophie found a way to get out of Sandal Hall unobserved, she had used it several hours earlier. Indeed, she had slipped out of it and had already reached the outer wall of the house before she stopped and retraced her steps back to Crispin’s apartment.

  It was Grip the raven who had roused her from her corpselike state, when, hours before, he suddenly sprang to life and, hopping up and down, begun squawking, “meringues, meringues, meringues,” over and over. Initially, Sophie had assumed he was just hungry, but when he refused any part of her untouched supper, she realized that he was repeating a word he had heard during her discussion with Lady Artly. And not merely a word, but the word Sophie had been looking for. Meringues.

  She had wasted no time composing a note to Octavia and dispatching it via Thurston to Hen House. It was a nuisance not being able to go herself, but the cordon of constables around her former home made that impossible. Even Don Alfonso could not be sure of passing by them. Her plan had therefore been to await Octavia’s answer in Crispin’s apartment and then leave before he returned.

  But when the answer had not arrived after the first hour, or the second, she realized she would have to go without it. Making sure that her mustache was still in place, she had stuffed several candles and a tinderbox into the doublet she was wearing and lowered herself down into the secret passage from the library she had discovered earlier that day. The passage, while not well maintained, was ample, and within minutes she found herself standing within hailing distance of the Strand.

  That was where she had made her decision. Crispin’s words from the afternoon, not the horrible words but those spoken just before, came back to her. I am the only person who can help you, the only one who can solve the murder, she heard him saying in her head, and she knew he was partially right. She was not, by any means, willing to cede the entire investigation to him, as he seemed to desire. But she could use his help, or better, his knowledge, to find her godfather’s killer on her own. For all his hateful dung-beetle-like qualities, there was no denying that Crispin had information she could use. She would wait for him, she decided, coolly force him to disclose what he knew, and then leave.

  The decision to return was a logical decision, based purely on the need to ensure that justice was served. It had nothing at all to do with a desire to see the Earl of Sandal again. Why would she want to see a man who was so beastly to her? Certainly he had the power to make her feel the most extraordinary things, to make her feel wonderful about herself, desirable, good, but then the next minute he made her feel wretched. She was still confused about what had happened between them the previous night, confused by her feelings and her willingness and his openness and kindness, confused even more by the cruel coldness of his words that afternoon. I do not give a damn what becomes of you echoed again in her head, and she had realized then why the words stung so much. It was because she could not say them back.

  The Earl of Sandal would be fine, probably better, without her. She would not burden him with the fact that she did give a damn, several damns. She would not explain to him that she had never felt so free, so alive, as she did with him, even more that morning when they were just quietly having breakfast together than the night before. She would not admit that she felt exalted when she was in his arms, like a princess when he responded to her, like something precious and worthy, worthy of affection, worthy of respect. He had made her feel strong during the few hours they had shared and made her feel, for the first time in her life, glad to be a woman. To be Sophie Champion. She would not tell him that it had been eleven years since she cried as she had that afternoon. She would not share any of that with him, would stay only long enough to find out what she needed to know, and then go. That was her decision, the decision that turned her steps back to Sandal Hall, the decision that she reaffirmed as she climbed out of the hidden passageway and back into the library, the decision that had left her playing with Don Alfonso’s dice on a bench shaded from the rain next to the pond where they had first made love, the decisi
on that she now repeated to herself as Crispin, wet clothes clinging to every sinew of his body and making him look like a soaked mythic god, stood staring at her from the threshold of his chamber.

  “I am glad you are still here,” he said, his heart racing faster than he would have liked at the sight of her.

  Sophie’s hand stopped mid-roll. “What?”

  “I said, I am glad you stayed.” Crispin crossed the lawn of his private garden and seated himself on the bench opposite her. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior this afternoon.”

  This was not going at all as Sophie had planned. She was expecting cold hostility, glares, perhaps a sarcastic smirk. These she was prepared for. But there was nothing in her emotional arsenal to prepare her for an apology. “You can’t do that,” she announced, furiously tossing her dice at him.

  “Can’t do what?”

  Sophie glowered at him. “You cannot treat someone cruelly and then march back and apologize without any warning.”

  This was not going at all as Crispin had planned. “I am sorry. I am not accustomed to working with other people.” To needing other people, a voice in his head amplified. “What I did was wrong.”

  “You are damn right it was wrong.” Sophie’s eyes were flaming now. “Is this how you treat everyone? You seduce them by bringing them here”—she gestured harshly toward the pond and the statue of Venus—“and then you tell them you don’t give a damn about them?”

  It took Crispin a moment to reply, and when he did, his voice was low. “I have never brought anyone here before.”

  Sophie gulped. “Good. You shouldn’t. Not if you are going to treat them that way.” She became very interested in the dice cradled in the palm of her hand. “You can’t just boss people around and expect them to obey, treat them like they are your prisoner and be mean to them and—”

  “I only did it because I was afraid you would leave.”