Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1)

by Shehanne Moore

  “But, Rube, I only got a trowel.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve only got a spoon. Do what Ruby says. Now. Or I mean it. I’ll swing for you myself.”

  Her voice. He’d wondered, hadn’t he, that night, about what particular level of gutter-snipe she was. What hole she’d crawled from, for all the brilliant mantle of her entirely faked refinement never slipped for a second. Those words, that husky, rough undertone, said maybe not a center of the earth one, but certainly one deeper than that grave they were obviously digging.

  “But, Cass. Cass, listen. I swear I’m not imagining it. I can hear it. What if it’s—”

  “Are you stupid? Devorlane Hawley’s nowhere about. He can’t be. I assured it with Lord Koorecroft.”

  “I wasn’t thinking Lord Hawley. What if it’s Gil?”

  “Oh, how the bleedin’ hell can it be Gil? Jeesus-sake. Ain’t that Gil. Ain’t that only Gil there? Dead as the soddin’ dodo.”

  “Ruby’s right, the dead don’t walk.”

  Oh, didn’t they? Devorlane crept forward. He didn’t believe these words he’d just heard, but now was the time to get through the border of bramble and bracken, to sidle with the broken wall beneath his fingertips, and to peer, with a clawed breath, at the coronet of women, laboring in the cold of the early winter sunlight, digging, with a kind of desperation. At least she was.

  A kind of something else too. His eyes unfortunately roamed the nicely rounded curve of her buttocks clearly outlined by the clinging gown. The soft, velvet gown.

  When the throbbing ache in his thigh was under control for the first time today, why give himself another? Especially when her husband’s days of peace and tranquility had ended sooner than any of them anticipated by the looks of this. What the hell was that seeping through the barrier of the sheet? Blood? Had she assisted with his demise?

  The thought determined him. Here was his chance. He was soldier enough to know there was dissent in the ranks. And man enough not to fear three women. He stepped forward.

  After all, what the hell could they do to him?

  “Good afternoon, ladies. It’s a fine one, don’t you think, for holding a burial service out of doors?”

  On his head. For a breathless second, a second where Cass’s heart vaulted up her ribcage and thudded against her teeth, she swore that was where Pearl was going to land the trowel. With a smack. If she did they were finished. Completely. Utterly. As it was Cass’s breath screamed like a rusty gate hinge and the hole wasn’t even half dug. Not in million years could she make it big enough for two.

  “I said … ”

  As the trowel thudded against the ground, Cass’s throat dried to match the frost-laced earth she’d labored to crack. A fall into the black, half dug hole, swimming there beneath her, would be a welcome release, from everything. Him most of all. Especially now Pearl flew wailing along what Cass always thought of as Brother Kentigern’s path, as if the devil was not only here, on the very boundary of the herb garden, but right behind her.

  How could Cass fall down in that hole though? Pearl was followed immediately by Ruby. Code red must have been flagged and, with such speed, Cass couldn’t bolt after them. Someone was going to have to stand here and face him. Tightening her mouth, she dragged up her chin.

  “I heard what you said, Lord Hawley. Indeed, I think we all did.”

  His footstep echoed close beside her. “Dead, is he?”

  What a stupid thing to say. She had given Devorlane Hawley better credit for brains than that. Of course Gil was dead. Would he be lying there, wrapped in tablecloths, his legs tied in bolster covers she had taken from the linen cupboard, and fixed on with curtain tassels, if he wasn’t?

  “Well? What do you think?”

  Yes, the thing was to make this look natural.

  Setting her foot on the spade, she pushed downward into the ground as if she cut with a cake knife that neat little section of earth.

  Why stop, after all? To stop only made herself look guilty. She would be arrested. She would hang. There was always the chance that if she tried to make this look as if it was all perfectly normal, planned—why shouldn’t she bury Gil here—she just might get away with it.

  Besides, there was something calming about the ancient rhythm of the action—thrust, lift, throw, thrust, lift, throw.

  “Give me the spade.”

  An order, not a suggestion. Her eyes widened. He stepped closer, the weight of his stare burning holes in her. If she didn’t hand it over, was he going to grab it?

  “The spade, Lord Hawley? I’m sorry?”

  Why, if she gave him that, what would be next? Lord Koorecroft’s? A prison cell? The hangman’s noose? This was over, unless she could think of something. Unless--pray God--Ruby stole back along the path with something. The broom handle. The meat mallet. Something. Anything. Because she couldn’t hang. For something she never did? God, no.

  “Must I believe you’re deaf as well as everything else? I said—give me the damned thing.”

  “No.”

  He reached for the shaft. She’d give him it all right. Right across the top of his skull. A flying smack was all it would take. Of course it would mean explaining to Pearl and Ruby why he was now lying face down in Brother Kentigern’s herb garden. Why they must dig more. But no-one would understand better than them.

  She tried prying his fingers loose, but he jerked the shaft towards him. Terrible, wasn’t it, when he’d one calf-skin booted foot in the grave that all she could see was his lips, close enough to kiss?

  She’d never done such a thing. Certainly not over a corpse. In a carriage, at a door, but no more than that. It was terrible. Unseemly.

  Somehow she found her voice. “Why?”

  “Why?” He let his gaze roam her face. Actually she wasn’t mistaken about how close he was. “Why do you think?”

  ***

  She didn’t think, did she? Not in that instant, or the next one either. He knew by the way she lowered her eyelashes, over her widened eyes and directed her finally skewered gaze to his waistcoat. She couldn’t believe it. And as for now? Devorlane shut the door of the monk's cell and joined her at the dresser.

  “Do let me get that for you Mrs. Armstrong, seeing as your friends seem to have deserted you and you obviously need it.” The drink he poured, firstly for her then for himself, was like her. Darkly deceptive. “But maybe murder requires it?”

  “Me?” She shrugged and took a step forward. “I’m sorry but whatever gives you the idea I’d do that, Lord Hawley? Well?”

  “The fact you were burying a corpse in the garden. Let me get the fire too.”

  “Fine. Be my gue—“

  She took another step. So did he. Right in front of her. “Seeing as I wouldn’t want you thinking it’s warmer outside. And bolting."

  “Me? How do you make that out?”

  "What do you think? Well?" He slid his gaze over her face. So formidable a front. Even now she stared at his waistcoat as if she was trying to work out how to steal it off him and how far she’d get with it too. No, he wasn’t about to think a façade was also what he lived behind. He didn’t. Or if he did, it had become so moss encrusted, so lichen bound, he had crumbled beneath it into a pile of dust. A heap you’d have to kick to get a reaction from on any other subject but one. Revenge.

  The last thing in the world he’d planned on doing was taking that spade from this baggage, never mind digging the damned grave and helping her deposit a body in it, without fully considering how any of it would look in the eyes of the law, he needed every particle of his wits about him.

  “What exactly do you want, Lord Hawley, seeing as this isn’t exactly a social call? And you’d hardly dirty your perfect boots for nothing.”

  “Want?”

  “Yes. Want.”

  “Why do you think I’d want anything?”

  “Because people always do. So don’t pretend. I don’t imagine you’re exactly the exception.”

  “Well, run
with the jackals, Mrs. Armstrong, and you’ll soon find they always want a piece of you, especially when the meat is fresh.”

  “How informative. I should never have guessed.”

  “But even when it’s not.”

  “Hmm.” She tilted her chin. “You’ve run with the jackals, you know so very much about them?”

  “It all depends on the jackals.”

  “No, it depends on what you run as. A wolf in jackal’s clothing.”

  Talking running, there was no saying where Pearl and Ruby had run off to. What they might come back with either. Then there was the matter of what thrummed hot and strong in his blood. How he hadn’t just wanted to seize the spade. He’d damn well had to refrain from seizing her. Those lips. Those hips. That backside. What had flamed in that second was something he seldom experienced. But then perfect women never held any charms for him.

  It would all of it be worth it now he had her on the turn though. Finally. After ten years.

  The thing was not to let her think she had so much as an inch here because that inch had a habit of becoming miles where he was concerned. So, forget kisses and all that horse shit, he’d lost the way with that moonlit night. Look at the indignities he’d suffered as a duke’s son in that damned regiment to begin with, how they’d pissed in his food—pissed on more than his food.

  He knew what he wanted here. Exactly what he wanted. He wasn’t leaving here till he had it either.

  “Do drink up Mrs. Armstrong, while I get that fire.” He strolled to the hearth. “And you can tell me as I do, was Elgie even a spy of the realm you kissed me in defense of? Since you won’t tell me whether or not you killed him.”

  “Why would I when he dropped dead of his own accord. A sick man like that. It wasn’t exactly unexpected.”

  What? No, ‘Me? Now why would I kill him?’ No beating around a garden of bushes? The masculine concept was one he was familiar with, although he’d that night she’d caught him at her window as a glowing example. How she’d run to Lord Koorecroft, who Pearl and Ruby might have fetched by now. Lord Koorecroft who knew about him and the emeralds. She didn’t though, did she? Or that Koorecroft knew all about it either. Well? That was something he kept secret.

  He reached across the hearth for the char-cloth. That damned lie about the realm and being a spy was the worst of it. A hell of an achievement if he discounted the most hellish one. The fact he was kidding to think that what was in his mind about her hadn’t been there permanently since he’d seen her in the library. So deeply engraved too, even the throb in his thigh had dulled.

  Well, he’d rather shove a hot poker in it and twist it round. After all, everything he’d suffered and everything he’d lost was written in blood. His. Small wonder boredom had become a retreat for him. The one place no-one could take. Not even her.

  She downed the drink in one, poured another drink and spoke in the commonest accent he’d ever heard from her lips.

  “All right, wasn’t it? I mean he had it coming. Had it coming a long time if you ask me. Ask old Rube, or Pearl. They’d tell you. So yeah, seeing as you’re asking about realms and kissing you, that depends on the realm, ‘cos God knows what one he’s in now. Gil Gressingham Nicodemus Starkadder’s right hand man. And I didn’t kill him. Pearl, or Ruby either. Felt like it many a time. Got to tell you that. But never. There now, is that what you want to know? Does that satisfy you? Would you have been frightened of me if I had killed him?”

  Sparks showered onto the darkened char-cloth. In fact they all but burned his trousers, the immaculate ones he’d paid a fool’s fortune for and didn’t even like. For ten years he’d imagined hearing these words. In the icy rain of Ireland, the snows of Switzerland, the heat and blast of Corunna. A hundred different places. But still, only one way, the one in which he brought her to her knees, cleared his sullied name. And saw her body jerk on the end of a rope, as he stood by rubbing his hands gleefully. He was exonerated finally.

  In all that time he’d never once imagined he’d ever hear them though. Now he had, he’d never imagined that he would crouch here on an unswept mosaic floor, in a cold room, cursing, as sparks flared from a piece of flint, having just buried a body in a herb garden. He’d never once imagined truth would be enough, the way she bled these words because she’d no choice. Although he realized that entering this room today, when she asked him what he wanted, truth, while not all of it, was partly it.

  “Still.” She rubbed her hand across her nose. “You’re right about everything else. I did kiss you ten years ago in that coach. I put my hand down your trousers too, for which I do most heartily apologize, although I won’t deny I’d do the same again if I had to. I was pushed you see. Yeah. Definitely.”

  And she thought he was what? Turning cartwheels. Well, if she thought he was taking nothing more than capitulation and a pair of burned trousers from the situation, she’d another think coming.

  Seconds ticked by while she poured another drink. “But you knew who I was already, so let’s not pretend it’s exactly a surprise.”

  Well, damn it. It wasn’t, was it? Was she going to take that as well? Smugly rub his nose in the fact the pretense was so paper thin it was all right to be done with it? Then there was the business of them being in this together. Was that why she’d given him something because she thought she’d something on him?

  Like hell she did. He had who, now he just needed why. Why she, her friends, London’s finest snaps and that man, the right hand man, were here. It couldn’t be chance. It had somehow to be one thing. Get that and he wouldn’t just go straight to Lord Koorecroft, he’d be the hero of the hour. “So? The Wentworth emeralds--”

  “What? The emeralds. What about the soddin’ bleeders?”

  “Are you always this common?”

  “When the coat fits. What’s it to you, coming in here in your fancy-boots? What's them bleeders to you either?”

  “Are you meaning before or after you put them in my pocket?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one asking the question.”

  “And you’re the one who’s come looking.” Yes. Nothing she’d say could stop him now, not given what burned in his breast beneath his ice cool exterior. The indignation, the humiliation, the fact he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman.

  “Says who? You? Oh, that’s a good one, that is.”

  “Well, it is seeing as you planted them on me. Let’s face it, whatever way I look at this, what the hell else is there here, that such an illustrious thief could—”

  “This place as a matter of fact.” She shrugged. “It’s mine. Never thought of that, now did you?”

  He almost dropped the burning splint. “Yours? This place is yours?” Seldom had he heard such piss. Spoken without a blush too. As if this was something he should know. Well, he didn’t damn well know and he didn’t damn well want to know. “I thought you were renting it?”

  “I am.”

  “Then how is it yours?”

  “Not legally. I do admit.”

  He leaned forward and tossed the splint onto the heaped paper and pinecones in the grate. “But you can fix that, can you, when you steal it?”

  “Steal it? I hardly need steal what was my father’s, Lord Hawley. I only need prove it. Yes.”

  “What?”

  Now that … that, when it came to what he’d heard, every Aesop fable and Mother Goose tale rolled into one, that stole the cloak from Red Riding Hood, the boots from Puss, and left Cinderella without any shoe to speak of, never mind a glass one. Lord Armstrong her father? That was why she was here? Well, it wouldn’t stop him.

  She raised her chin. “What I say. You want to think I’m some common ten a penny thief, here for something I wish I’d never clapped eyes on, that’s your affair. Me now, I’m here for the house I remember being in with my mother. Yeah. Of course it wasn’t yesterday, I grant you that. But me and Matthew—”

  “Matthew? You mean there’s more of you?”

  “My bro
ther, Lord Hawley, as I think I told you.”

  She had. He’d thought Matthew was a fabrication. He still did. Owned this place? Was this the latest thing in stealing? Making off with houses now?

  “Somehow we must have got sent away, him and me. That bit I don’t remember. To Uncle Starkadder’s in—”

  “Uncle Starkadder?” He wiped his palms together, giving another dismissive sigh. Was it any wonder? Horse piss like this. He should yawn. “Uncle Starkadder, of Lord Thief of London fame, had Lord Armstrong of Barwych in his family tree? How remarkable is that?”

  She took a step forward with her glass. Smoke stung his eyes. For a second he strove not to blink. Difficult when the contents of her glass sizzled in the fire.

  Still, at least the glass hadn’t been added to the mosaic floor tiles. At least she only wasted good drink. Although she’d doused the flame he’d fought hard to bring to life there, even scorching his trousers in the process. So, the tiger had claws. Wasn’t nearly so refined as she made out either. Imagine that?

  “Why don’t you—”

  He raised bored eyebrows. “Get out? I’d like to, but may I remind you I just helped you bury your lover, Miss Armstrong.”

  “And now you want a medal for it? Is that it?”

  “Not if it’s stolen.”

  The thing—the worst thing—was he remembered children playing on this very floor, just when he didn’t want to. And while it ran hot in his veins to dismiss the fact she’d ever been one of them, what if she had? And this, by degrees more twisted than the floor pattern itself, was what she had somehow come to? The most daring jewel thief in England. Impossible. He couldn’t think of it. He wouldn’t. No. She had to have got that sorry tale from somewhere.

  He dusted another bark flake from his palm, rose to his feet. “And you think people will believe you? Especially when they find how empty your spying claims are, unlike that grave.”