The Water Nymph: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book Two

by Michele Jaffe

  “Are you saying,” Sophie spoke slowly, “that my godfather was a counterfeiter?”

  “I am afraid that I am,” Crispin conceded. “Or at least that he was part of one of the largest counterfeiting operations ever undertaken in England.”

  “But that is impossible. He knew nothing about organization, about planning. About money.”

  “He did not seem to have any trouble amassing a sizable fortune in coal mines,” Crispin pointed out.

  Sophie waved his comment away. “I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that he was a counterfeiter.”

  “Actually, the operation I uncovered tonight is massive, and unless he was a criminal mastermind, there is no way he could have run it on his own. I suspect he was only in charge of one part. The chemical part, for example.”

  “But how did he—” Sophie started, then stopped, finding a far more interesting question. “How did you think to look in the warehouse?”

  “It was simple, really. The coins that I bought from the girl at Sweetson’s today were fakes. Good fakes. Fakes that only someone very adept at sublimating different metals could have made.”

  “Someone like an alchemist,” Sophie put in. “Is that why you thought of Lord Grosgrain?”

  “In part, but there was also the nagging question of what he was being blackmailed for.” He looked at her sharply, then looked away. “It was merely a hunch that took me to his laboratory tonight.” She did not need to know that he had recognized the coins instantly, as soon as he saw them in the girl’s hand that afternoon, recognized them not only as counterfeits, but very special counterfeits, counterfeits identical to those he had confiscated during his first operation as the Phoenix two and a half years earlier. That time he had foiled the counterfeiter’s ability to get the money into circulation, but he had been forced to leave the country before he could find the leaders of the organization and destroy it entirely. This time he intended to stop them for good.

  “So Lord Grosgrain was being blackmailed because he was a counterfeiter, and that is why that spy, that Phoenix, killed him?” Sophie asked.

  “The Phoenix did not kill him,” Crispin said positively, and was on the verge of saying more, but Sophie, lost in her own thoughts, interrupted him.

  “It does not make any sense,” she mused. “What would possess Lord Grosgrain to become a counterfeiter? Why would he do it?” She was speaking more to herself than to him, but Crispin answered.

  “Perhaps he needed the money. He was paying you a thousand pounds a month, after all.”

  Sophie shook her head. “No. He had access to plenty of money.”

  “Are you certain?” Crispin asked. “He may have owned coal mines, but the price of coal has slipped recently. Are you sure he was financially solvent?”

  “Quite, quite sure. I—” Sophie started to say something, changed her mind, then changed her mind again. She hesitated for a bit longer before demanding abruptly, “Are you sure you were not with Constantia tonight?”

  Crispin frowned at the change of topic. “I thought we were not going to mention her again,” he began, but was stopped by the expression on Sophie’s face. “Yes, I am quite, quite sure I was not at Constantia’s tonight.”

  “If it was not you, who was it?” she demanded.

  “How much of the man did you see?”

  “Just his back.” Sophie went rigid. “It was enough.”

  “Ah. That explains it then. For while I flatter myself that my good-looking face is unique, the fact is that there are hundreds of men in England who look like me from the back.”

  Sophie disagreed entirely, but did not say anything. Instead, she studied him in what was left of the moonlight. “Can I trust you, Crispin?”

  “Of course.”

  Sophie closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them slowly. “I have guarded what I am about to tell you as an inviolable secret for ten years. It is not my secret, not really, but it is mine to protect. If I share it with you, will you keep it?”

  The dreamy nymph of earlier had become a powerful, mesmerizing goddess. Crispin nodded reverently, completely awed by her solemnity.

  “I know exactly how much money Lord Grosgrain had,” Sophie began, “because I gave it to him.”

  Crispin snapped out of his trance. “What do you mean you ‘gave it to him’? I thought he owned coal mines all over the country.”

  “No.” Sophie shook her head. “He did not own coal mines. I did. I do.”

  “You own coal mines?”

  “Yes. And waterworks. And windmills. And four shipping canals. And half a dozen sheep farms. I started buying them just before I turned sixteen, but I needed a man to act as the titular head. That was why I hired Lord Grosgrain.”

  “You hired him? Your godfather?”

  Sophie realized she had misspoken, had almost revealed too much. “Sort of. No one would deal with a sixteen-year-old girl, you see,” she explained, rushing past her mistake, “but they were more than happy to work with Lord Grosgrain, even though he did not have a single notion of how to run a business.”

  What she had said was completely incredible, Crispin thought. And yet, given what he knew of Sophie Champion, entirely possible. “The thousand pounds a month Lord Grosgrain paid you,” Crispin interjected. “You said it was an allowance, but clearly, if you held all his money, you did not need one. Why was he paying you?”

  “He claimed he was trying to reimburse me.” Sophie looked wistful as she remembered. “When we bought our first coal mine, he was destitute. He had spent his entire fortune on his alchemical experiments until there was literally nothing left. He was so poor that he had been forced to send Basil to live with relatives just to make sure the boy got enough to eat. I knew a bit about alchemy, enough to enable him to make a name for himself at it and earn some of his money back, and I had some money of my own. We pooled what we had and invested it, and later, when our enterprises were doing well and Lord Grosgrain was rich again, he wanted to pay me back for the prosperity I brought him. But I never accepted it. I always found a way to return it to him without his knowing.”

  “Of course.” Crispin nodded as if this were all perfectly normal, as if sixteen-year-old girls with the price of a coal mine in their purse and a little knowledge of alchemy joined forces with penniless elderly noblemen to orchestrate large-scale business transactions every day of the week. He went on slowly, as though he was explaining something to himself. “Then Lord Grosgrain left you the business and all his property in his will not because you were blackmailing him but because you actually owned it already.”

  “Yes,” Sophie confirmed. “We never wanted it to get out that he was not the real owner, it would have been a crushing blow to his reputation. That was why we kept it a secret. Indeed, I purposely circulated rumors suggesting I might be blackmailing him whenever anyone started asking us about our relationship. As a result, Lord Grosgrain was always afraid that if he died without directly addressing the question of ownership in his will, someone would challenge me, challenge my authority over the business.”

  “Your authority,” Crispin went on. “So you made the business decisions behind the scenes and then he executed them up front?”

  “Something like that,” Sophie agreed. “Of course, now everything has changed.”

  “I can imagine,” Crispin said positively. He could guess just how she felt, because everything had changed for him as well. He had, at long last, gotten all his questions answered. He did not have to wonder what Sophie’s relationship with her godfather was. Nor whether she was a blackmailer. Nor where she got the piles of money she gave away.

  Nor whether he was harboring any feelings for her. He reached out his hand to catch her cheek.

  “You will not tell anyone, will you, my lord?” She asked nervously, rubbing her face against his palm. “His
reputation was the most important thing to Lord Grosgrain, and if anyone ever found out that he had accepted money from me, if Constantia ever found out—” Sophie just shook her head.

  “I won’t tell anyone.” Crispin moved forward, cupping her cheek in his hand, and bent to kiss her.

  “Good,” Sophie whispered just before their lips touched, “because if you do, I shall have to disembowel you.”

  “I believe,” Crispin said as he kissed her mouth, “you threatened me”—he kissed her chin—“the same way”—he kissed the line of her jaw—“once before.” His lips trailed along her neck until he reached her ear. “I would not want to call you a braggart, but…” He left the sentence unfinished, using his tongue rather than words to make his point.

  “You will not be so lucky twice,” Sophie assured him breathlessly. “This time—oh, my lord—I—oh, Crispin—will not be—” The sentence ended in a series of moans.

  Crispin had turned her around and was kissing her back, his hands resting lightly on her breasts, his thumbs on her nipples. His lips coasted over each of her vertebrae, then skimmed along the sides of the delicious valley between the globes of her bottom. When she began moaning, he had just coaxed her legs apart and settled himself between them. He moved his hands down from her breasts, and all at once Sophie felt his cheek on her thigh from below and his hands on her now tingling nub, from above. Crispin used his fingers to caress her as his tongue slipped between her wet folds, plunging into her passage. When Sophie’s legs began to tremble, he slowed his fingers and pulled slightly away. He held his mouth under her, letting the liquor of her arousal drip onto his lips, then used the flat of his tongue to lick her full length, lapping from underneath up to where his fingers were teasing her.

  “Oh, Crispin,” she moaned and sighed simultaneously. She gripped his shoulders to support herself as the pressure built within her until, with a seemingly endless kiss on her tender bud, Crispin sent her over the edge. Wave after wave of intoxicating pleasure flooded Sophie’s body, crashing over her, leaving her gasping, panting, and moaning, “Crispin, I love you.”

  It took them both a moment to realize what she had said.

  “I mean,” she rushed to correct as Crispin pulled himself up between her legs. “I mean, I love being uncomfortable with you.”

  Crispin stood before her looking serious. “I love being uncomfortable with you too.”

  “You do?” Sophie was genuinely surprised. “You, you love it?”

  “Well, I find I am quite partial to it, yes.”

  “Crispin?”

  “Yes, Sophie.”

  “Crispin, there is something I must tell you.”

  “First there is something I must tell—What is it, Thurston?”

  “Good morning, my lord,” Thurston said, as if there were nothing the least bit unusual about finding his master and a naked goddess chatting intimately on the river steps at dawn. “I did not like to interrupt, my lord, but there are men here.”

  “Men?”

  “Men with a warrant, my lord. To search Sandal Hall and all properties pertaining thereunto.”

  “A warrant to search Sandal Hall?” Crispin glared at him in disbelief. “What the devil are they looking for?”

  “I believe, my lord, that their object is Miss Champion.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Crispin strode into the main reception hall, glared at the men assembled there, and demanded, “What do you think you are doing?”

  In his outrage, Crispin did not notice Basil Grosgrain standing behind two of the others, but his blond head came into view now.

  “As justice of the peace for this parish, it is my regrettable duty to serve this to you.” Basil held a piece of paper toward Crispin, but kept his distance. The expression on his face made clear what he thought of Crispin’s rumpled and dirty clothes. As Crispin looked over the warrant, Basil went on smarmily, “I apologize for the early hour, Lord Sandal. I hope we have not taken you from any important labors.”

  Crispin tilted his head up, briefly, to glare at Basil with one eye. “I was working in my garden,” he said, then returned to the paper. It was a warrant, a completely legitimate looking warrant, authorized by the Queen’s secretary, for Lord Basil Grosgrain, Justice of the Peace and Knight of the Garter, to search the premises of Sandal Hall, including all corridors, storehouses, outbuildings, secret passages, priest holes, and byways, for the person or effects of one Sophie Champion, wanted for the murder of Richard Tottle and a notoriously dangerous criminal destined for the gallows. During the search, no one would be allowed to enter or leave the building without permission, and the grounds would be encircled with guards.

  “On what basis was this issued?” Crispin asked when he finally looked up.

  “Anonymous tip. Several of them.” Basil got a gleam in his eye. “Sorry to do this to you, Lord Sandal, but I could not shirk my duty.”

  “Duty, the finest alibi of all,” Crispin agreed, laying particular emphasis on the word “alibi.” He did not allow himself time to grin over the way Basil flinched, but went on. “I cannot imagine why you think this”—Crispin looked down at the paper—“this ‘Sophie Champion’ woman is hiding here. Why would she take refuge in my house?”

  “You can’t guess, can you?” Basil asked, smiling sickly.

  “No,” Crispin confirmed. “I imagine you have a better idea. After all, I learned most of what I know about her from you the day the constable came to question you about your—I mean Miss Champion’s—whereabouts at the time of the murder. By the way, what was the name of that painter whose picture you helped your stepmother select the night Richard Tottle was killed? Liar? Lies?”

  “Lyle.” Basil’s lips, indeed his whole face, had gone very white. “Why?”

  “I just thought I would ask him a few questions,” Crispin replied idly. “About paintings, of course. What do you think of his work? Is he any good at trompe l’oeil? You know, those paintings that present a false picture?”

  “I would not know, Lord Sandal. I have only seen his figurative compositions.”

  “Ah, well. All painting is a deceit, an illusion really, if you think about it. Painters are our best dissemblers. Lucky for you, isn’t it?” Crispin’s expression was open, candid, even friendly as he regarded Basil.

  “I do not understand your meaning, my lord.”

  “I did not mean anything, really. Just that there is so much ugliness in the world and if you really are a connoisseur of beauty, you must be grateful for the deceitful hand of the painter. At any rate, I am sure this Liar of yours will be able to give me just what I am looking for.” Crispin patted his companion’s back amiably.

  Basil disentangled himself from Crispin’s friendly embrace. “I believe, my lord, that we should begin our search.”

  “Of course. I nearly forgot what you were here for. You’ll want to get it done quickly, I imagine, so you can be in time to take breakfast with your stepmother. You do that most every day, do you not?”

  “Yes, but I hardly—”

  Crispin put up a hand. “There is no need to explain. I apologize. I should have been more sensitive to the pain it must cause you to hear it mentioned. After all, that is where you were, breakfasting with Constantia in her dressing room, the morning your father was killed, isn’t it? I apologize for being so unfeeling.”

  “You have nothing to reproach yourself for, Lord Sandal,” Basil said through clenched teeth.

  “Very kind of you,” Crispin lauded. “But you do.”

  “I do what?”

  “Have something to reproach yourself, or rather”—Crispin smiled at his mistake—“have something to reproach me, for. I should not have taken up so much of your time with my banter. But it is so important to get to know one’s neighbors.”

  Basil was glaring at Crispin, a vei
n in his throat vibrating, when The Aunts swept into the room.

  “Lord Grosgrain the younger, how delightful of you to call,” Lady Priscilla said with a noticeable edge in her voice.

  “And to bring all these men with you,” Lady Eleanor added. “We were wondering when you would present yourself to us.”

  “Yes, I was just telling Basil about the importance of getting to know his neighbors,” Crispin put in.

  “Do not judge us all by our nephew’s standard,” Lady Priscilla begged Basil, having cast a cold eye on Crispin’s attire. “As my dear brother, Hugo, always said, ‘When the fruit falls far from the tree, it gets badly bruised.’”

  “No, sister,” Lady Eleanor objected. “ ‘When a foal has legs like a V, it is destined to lose.’ That is what Hugo said, I am sure of it.”

  “Quite sure?” was on the tip of Lady Priscilla’s tongue when she was rudely interrupted by Basil.

  “I beg your pardon, ladies, but I am afraid I must get my search under way.”

  Basil had made a mistake of the first water. Two sets of Aunt eyes, finely tuned to rebuke any sort of social breach, bored into him.

  “Do you really mean to search this house, young man?” Lady Eleanor asked in a tone that had sent at least two husbands to the grave.

  Basil hesitated for a moment, giving Lady Priscilla a chance to address Crispin. “Nephew, what is all this drivel I hear? Have you got a woman hidden in the house?”

  “Of course not.” Crispin was astonished by the suggestion. “I cannot imagine what makes Basil think that I would harbor fugitive criminals on my premises. Indeed I, my name, my house, the memory of my father, and the spirit of neighborliness are insulted. Gravely insulted.”

  The Aunts, having found a new enemy in Basil, nodded at Crispin in commendation for his fine performance. “You see, Lord Grosgrain the younger,” Lady Priscilla spoke to Basil, “our nephew may not be the gentleman his father was, but he is not so uncultivated as to offer his home as a sanctuary for the criminal classes. Criminals are flouters of the standards of Proper Behavior and destroyers of the English Nation.”