The Missing Heir

by Ranstrom, Gail

  “Well,” Dianthe sniffed, “if he is the same man that Laura fawned over, it will never happen. Not even an unfeeling rake like Laura’s brother would approve that beau nasty!”

  “Dianthe!” Grace was appalled at the girl’s pronouncement.

  Sarah and Annica covered their laughs with coughing and Mr. Renquist turned away, as if studying the painting of a landscape hanging on the wall.

  “’Tis true. He was none too clean and had a manner about him that was almost obsequious.” She shivered. “I vow that, had I let him take my hand, his palms would have been clammy.”

  “Some day you will fall in love, Dianthe, and it will not be at all what you expect,” Sarah said.

  Dianthe shrugged. “When I fall in love, if I fall in love, it will be with someone eminently suitable. But that is for the future. I am having far too much fun to end it with marriage.”

  Grace merely smiled. None of the women in the room had made a match that would have been termed “suitable,” but all were quite content. “Then I do not regret urging Miss Talbot to consider marriage to Lord Geoffrey.”

  “What!” all the ladies said at once. Even Mr. Renquist raised his eyebrows.

  “I thought of my own marriage. It was made for financial reasons to a man I’d met but once, and yet he and I were able to forge a…comfortable relationship. And Mr. Forbush was kinder than my brother. I enjoyed freedom, of a sort, and a standing in the community. It was not a bad arrangement, by and large. I thought Miss Talbot could benefit from a similar arrangement. Lord Geoffrey would not be much at home and—” She stopped, remembering Lord Geoffrey’s unvarnished requirements of a wife from the night before. “Well, the subject is closed since she was not amenable to the suggestion.”

  “I should hope not!” Dianthe exclaimed.

  “But where does this leave us?” Annica asked.

  “With Miss Talbot holding me to my rash promise that I would do everything within my power to see that she would not have to marry Lord Geoffrey. The poor girl has very little common sense and no courage to defy her brother. Oh, if I could only take back my words! But I must go forward and I must conclude this quickly. Adam—Mr. Hawthorne is asking altogether too many questions about my gambling. Does anyone have an idea for an alternate solution?”

  Silence fell as they regarded one another with puzzlement.

  “We shall come by tomorrow afternoon and see if you have made any progress,” Sarah offered. “Meantime, ladies, shall we all think of possible alternatives?”

  “But why do you have to go out tonight, Aunt Grace? I’d feel much better if you would wait until Adam could escort you.”

  Grace secured the crystal-studded snood over her chignon and glanced at Dianthe in her mirror. “Dianthe, Adam is not likely to escort me to a hell ever again. We argued last night, and he…well, he is finished with escorting me anywhere.”

  “Why? He adores you. I see it in his eyes every time he looks at you.”

  Grace blinked away her threatening tears and took a deep breath. She assumed the woman-of-the-world role that had become so familiar in the last years. “Not any longer, Dianthe.”

  “What did you argue about?” Dianthe came to her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  She sighed as she fastened her amethyst pendant around her neck—the last of her good jewelry. “So many things I hardly know where to begin. I have not lied to him, but I have withheld certain…information. The worst of it was when he asked me to make a choice between him and gambling. ’Twas then he walked away and said he hoped I’d be happy with my decision.”

  “Why does he care if you gamble?”

  “He may think it is his money I’ve been gambling, depending upon the outcome of the court hearing, which, I might add, is not looking favorable for me at the moment.”

  “Why did you not choose him? There must be more than you are telling me,” Dianthe guessed.

  Grace shrugged, unwilling to go into the details of Adam’s late-night visit to her room or the fact that his love was still with an Indian maid named Nokomis. “We came to logger-heads over the gambling, though. I must forge ahead on this investigation, Dianthe, and as quickly as possible. Lord Geoffrey was nowhere to be found last night. What if he should disappear before the wedding? It is only days away. How would I find him out then? No. I must find him tonight and force an end to this, one way or the other. Whatever it takes, I shall do it.”

  “Surely not whatever?”

  Grace stood and smoothed the icy violet gown that she’d last worn when she’d given herself to Adam. “Yes,” she whispered. “Whatever. I just want this over with.” She could not lose anything more important than she’d already lost. Adam’s trust, because of her closely guarded secrets and lies, and probably his affection along with it. Adam, who would now think she was an unrepentant gambling addict.

  Dianthe gave her a quick hug. “Do not worry, Aunt Grace. If we become destitute, we shall simply move into the little fortune-telling salon above Madame Marie’s shop now that Afton is married and gone. I shall tell fortunes and you can…help Madame Marie.”

  Grace smiled. Dianthe’s enthusiasm was contagious. “That would be an excellent solution. But let us hope it will not come to that.”

  “Will you be safe tonight, Aunt Grace?”

  How could she define “safe”? Safe from outside danger? “Yes,” she said. “Hells are well attended and, as long as I keep to the main salon, I shall be safe enough.”

  Safe from Geoffrey Morgan? That remained to be seen. But safe from herself? No. She had nothing more to lose now that she’d thrown her chance for happiness with Adam away. And nothing, it would seem, could protect her from her own unbending integrity once her word was given.

  Chapter Twenty

  Adam stared at the arsenic bottle in the distant glow of the lamplight. The sounds of the waterfront—raucous voices, drinking and fighting, whistles in the distance—all faded when he realized what this could mean. “Where did you find it?”

  “In your stable,” Freddie Carter said. “As you can see, there’s only a small amount left.”

  “And my uncle’s symptoms…” Adam trailed off, trying to comprehend the meaning.

  “Are consistent with arsenic poisoning,” Carter finished. “Of course, she may have acquired it for rats or other vermin, but the coincidence is enough to make one wonder, is it not?”

  Adam slipped the arsenic bottle inside his leather tunic. Arsenic, a fraudulent will, an unconsummated marriage, a gambling addiction, a fear of being at her brother’s mercy. To the authorities, each of these things alone would be motive for murder, but together? After their conversation last night, he’d left her to her own devices. Was she home? Was she safe? Would she be there if the authorities came for her?

  “Hawthorne?” Carter asked. “Did you hear me?”

  “I can’t accept this,” he said. Grace had already told him all this. All but the arsenic.

  “Do you doubt me?” Carter asked, stark disbelief written on his face.

  “Just your conclusion.”

  “For God’s sake! It’s enough to go to the police!”

  Adam spun on him. “Say you haven’t done that.”

  “Not yet. But I will in the morning.”

  “No…no.” Was he a fool? He’d known her only two weeks. How could he be so sure? “Damn! If she just wasn’t keeping secrets from me! If I knew what her motives were—”

  “She’s keeping secrets? She looks suspicious? Hawthorne, what about you? You’re living in her house under false pretenses, you’ve been trying to make a case against her for murder, and who has greater motive to want to see her disinherited? And, if I know you, you’ve already seduced her. I’d say she has rather more cause for complaint than you. Objectively speaking, you have wronged the little pigeon vastly more than she has wronged you. Unless, of course, she used that arsenic.”

  Adam felt the bottle against his ribs. “Just say you won’t go to the police,” he
repeated.

  Carter backed away from him, his expression taking a dark turn. “I don’t need your permission. If it’s true, I have an obligation. We don’t let murderers walk away from their crimes, Hawthorne, no matter who they’re sleeping with. The man was your uncle!”

  “You will go through me,” he heard himself say for the second time in as many days.

  “That would be a mistake.”

  “Yours.” A deep feeling of relief spread through him. Until that moment he hadn’t realized he would never accept that Grace was a murderess. Not Grace, and not Ellie.

  “Damn,” Carter muttered, and gestured to the door of the tavern they’d been watching.

  The black-coated figure pulled his hat down to obscure his face and turned his collar up. Glancing right, then left, he headed down a narrow lane in the direction of Covent Garden.

  With a nod, Adam and Carter put their plan into action, Carter following their quarry, and Adam up another street and circling to intercept the man’s path. He sprinted down the dark lane, his moccasins silent on the cobblestones. The London streets were easier to traverse than a wooded mountain or deep forest and by the time he rounded the corner and headed back, he was a full one hundred feet in front of their target.

  The instant the man noticed Adam, he turned to head back down the lane, but Carter blocked his path. Another glance over his shoulder convinced him that his easiest route lay through Carter, and he charged the Bow Street runner.

  Prepared this time, Carter raised his pistol, primed and ready to fire. The man skidded to a halt and tuned sideways, glancing one way and then the other. His muscles bunched and one knee flexed for a lunge but Adam launched himself before the man could act. They rolled across the cobblestones several times before slamming against the bricks of a building. Mindful of his opponent’s skill with a stiletto, Adam drew his own knife as he stood.

  Carter appeared and pressed the barrel of his pistol against the man’s head. “Hands where I can see them,” he ordered.

  Slowly the man raised his hands in front of him, his gaze trained on Carter. Adam searched him, finding and removing the stiletto, a smaller dagger and a pistol. “Recognize me?” he asked.

  “Aye,” the man said in a thick Irish brogue. “You be the man with the devil’s own luck. I don’t miss.”

  “Outside the Two Sevens?”

  “Aye.”

  “And Eddy Clark? Did you hire him and then kill him?”

  “Ye’re half right,” the man laughed defiantly.

  “You killed him,” Adam guessed.

  “Aye.”

  “And Major Taylor?”

  “Him, too.”

  From the corner of his eye, Adam noticed that Carter’s finger was tightening on the trigger. “What about Shelton? Taylor’s guard.”

  “Aye, him, too. And ye’re ladybird would be gone if I didn’t have to make that look like an accident. I’m better at a straightforward killing than arranging accidents.”

  A snarl distorted Carter’s features and his finger tightened on the trigger. Adam gave a quick shake of his head, warning him to ease off. He still had questions.

  “Why Taylor’s heart?”

  “A lesson to him. And to ye. Ye were supposed to realize we were on to ye and back off. None too bright, are ye?”

  “Where’s Shelton?” Carter asked.

  “In the Thames. He’s halfway to the Channel by now.”

  Adam held his breath and took a tight rein on his fury. The man was a stone cold killer, but he was merely a hireling. “Who hired you?”

  The assassin laughed. “Ye think I’m as addlepated as ye? I cross him and I’m dead.”

  “You’re dead, anyway,” Carter sneered. “You’re not walking away tonight.”

  “I’m not hearin’ any reason to help ye.” The man laughed.

  The sound turned to a gasp when Adam pressed the tip of his knife to the hollow of his throat. “You want a reason to tell us what we want to know? How’s this—you can die fast and painless, or slow and in excruciating pain. The choice is yours. The last choice you’ll ever make.”

  That sobered the assassin. He looked from Adam to Freddie Carter as if trying to measure their determination. “Don’t know the name. I’ve done work for him before. Political or government types.”

  Adam believed him. Clandestine business in the upper circles was done without names or rank. And he knew who it was anyway—the only man who had the resources to find and hire a professional assassin and who would have reason to want him out of the way. Everything—from the arsenic and the attack on the Indian village to the attempts on Grace’s life—fell into place. He’d known most of it since Grace had told him about the will and his uncle’s last days. But it wasn’t one man. It was two. That’s what had confused him and kept him from guessing the truth sooner. That, and a clear motive.

  He turned to Carter. “It’s Barrington and York. Barrington ordered the attack on the Indian village to kill me, not the Indians, and when I turned up, he hired this man—” he nodded toward the assassin “—to finish the job.”

  Carter frowned. “Why?”

  “That’s where I got stumped. I knew Grace was somehow a part of this, but I couldn’t believe she would murder anyone. Barrington wanted Grace to have clear, sole claim to my uncle’s fortune. He and York must have planned to control the money through her, but she would not commit to Barrington, and their plan was stalled. When I returned, they needed to move fast before they lost it all. I had to be gotten rid of and Grace either had to marry Barrington or die. Because—”

  “Because if you and she were both dead, York would inherit from Grace,” Carter finished. “The son of a bitch tried to kill his own sister.”

  Adam backed away from the assassin, sheathed his hunting knife in his moccasin and rewound the leather strap tightly around his calf.

  “Where are you going?” Carter asked.

  “Hunting. Barrington’s house, his office, his club, drawing rooms or state dinners. I’ll find that son of a bitch and skin him alive before he can hurt anyone else. And I’ll handle York, too. I’ll meet you later at the Eagle. Can you take care of him?” He tilted his head toward the assassin.

  “Glad to.”

  Anxiety burned a hole in Grace’s stomach. She’d been to Belmonde’s, Fabrey’s, Rupert House, Tremont Place, the Two Sevens and the Pigeon Hole, and could find no trace of Lord Geoffrey. That only left Thackery’s and the Blue Moon in Covent Garden. What if Lord Geoffrey retired to the country for the remainder of the summer or until his wedding? What if the preparations for his wedding were keeping him so occupied that he had no time to gamble in the meantime? What if their last conversation had warned him what her intentions were?

  The time had unfortunately come for her to lay all her cards on the table, as it were. One way or the other, she must bring the matter to a conclusion at the first opportunity since she might not get another chance.

  She braced herself as she handed her cloak to a footman at Thackery’s and kept walking deeper into the bowels of the infamous hell, not giving the host time to question her. If she appeared to have every right to enter, or to be meeting someone, perhaps she would not be challenged.

  With the small fortune she’d collected from Annica, Sarah and Charity safely tucked in her reticule, though she hated to risk it, she was determined to secure Laura Talbot’s future. If only she could find the man who held the current right to that future! She scanned the main salon and her heart sank. There was no trace of Lord Geoffrey. She filled a glass from a wine fountain on a long sideboard and made a circuit of the room, hoping she had missed him in the crush or to at least find someone she knew. Oh, for one of the Hunter brothers right now—anyone who could tell her where Lord Geoffrey might have gone.

  Fighting despair, she climbed the red-carpeted stairs to a mezzanine from which smaller rooms branched out. From that vantage, she looked down over the main salon again. Still no Morgan.

  With fading
hope, she glanced into the smaller rooms to see if Lord Geoffrey had found a private game. Only a few rooms were occupied, and none contained her prey. She would not go up the next flight of stairs. If rumors were true, that was where lovely courtesans waited for the patron’s convenience and where illicit liaisons were conducted between members of the ton. It was, in fact, where one well-known lady of the ton was said to have granted her favors to satisfy a gambling debt she could not pay. Grace frowned, unable to imagine how the woman had gotten herself in such a compromising situation.

  She finished her glass of wine and sighed, giving one last glance over the main salon. Only the Blue Moon remained, and that was too dreary to imagine. The crowd was considerably less congenial and much more cutthroat.

  Just as she turned from her study, she caught sight of Lord Geoffrey. He had just entered the main salon and was taking the measure of the players. Almost instantly, as if he had felt her study, he looked up and saw her at the balcony above him. He nodded and disappeared beneath the balcony. She turned toward the staircase and waited, her heartbeat accelerating. Her plan was in action.

  When he appeared at the head of the stairs, he smiled and came toward her. “I heard you were about tonight, Mrs. Forbush. And alone, at that.”

  He must have a very good grapevine, she thought. She returned his smile. “Alas, Mr. Hawthorne tires of the play.”

  “His loss,” Lord Geoffrey said, offering his arm. “But you’ve said that before.”

  “This time I am certain of it,” she said, taking his arm. His jacket was still cool from the night air as he led her back to the balustrade overlooking the main salon. Had he come looking for her? Or was it just coincidence that he appeared at Thackery’s? The tables were turned, and now Grace suspected she might have been hunted. Had Lord Geoffrey decided to move in for the kill? That was what she wanted. Wasn’t it?

  “Have you come to gamble or just observe?”

  “Gamble.”

  “You’ve found more than your jewelry to wager?”

  “I have.”

  He grinned and gestured to the tables below. “What is your game?”