The Unwanted Heiress (The Archer Family Regency Series)

by Corwin, Amy

  Her shoulders sagged. She had to trust him. He might be a kidnapper but he was her only hope of survival.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Search warrants. — A search warrant is granted by a magistrate on the oath of a credible witness that there is suspicion of stolen goods or any property unlawfully come by… — Constable’s Pocket Guide

  When Nathaniel and Archer could find no trace of Charlotte, they returned to Dacy house. Nathaniel called for his carriage, trying not to develop a reasonable plan of action.

  Exhausted and wondering if Charlotte was safe, he climbed wearily into the dark interior of his carriage.

  He sat and took a deep breath.

  Perfume and another unpleasant odor filled his lungs. His carriage stank foully. He twisted in his seat and knocked into something soft, sitting on the seat next to him.

  “Oh, God!” he groaned. He’d forgotten to check the carriage for females. He stuck his head through the window and hailed the coachman. “Stop! We have an extra passenger.”

  When he turned to discover who was hiding in the corner, he was annoyed to find her pretending to swoon. The young lady slipped bonelessly to the floor at his feet.

  “Here, there’s no need for that. I know you are only pretending,” he said. He gripped her shoulder and shook her. In the dim moonlight from the window, he saw her head flop backward. It hit the seat opposite with a soft thud. A dark stain covered her throat and the front of her dress.

  Suddenly the stench of blood filled the close confines of the carriage. Horrified, he rubbed his sticky fingers on his trousers. After a minute, he bent over and searched for her wrist for a pulse. Her skin had not cooled completely yet, but already it felt chilled with death. He dropped the flaccid arm.

  Nathaniel scrambled out of the coach. “Lansbury!”

  “Yes, yer Grace?”

  “There is a dead woman in my coach!”

  “What?” The coachman climbed down from his high perch to look inside. “Lor’ love us! So there is,” he exclaimed, peering into the interior over Nathaniel’s shoulder.

  “What happened?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Why, I don’t know!” Lansbury said.

  “How could you not know? Did you leave the coach?”

  “No.”

  “Then how could she be murdered without you knowing? You were sitting not four feet away, right above her!”

  “Lor, yer Grace, it is a puzzle to be sure.” He scratched his head. “Was she alive when yer Grace found her?”

  “Of course she was not, you dolt!” Nathaniel said, losing his temper. “I did not kill her.”

  “Never said you did, yer Grace.” Lansbury took his large hat off and scrunched it between his hands while he stared at Nathaniel.

  “Is something wrong?” Archer interrupted, strolling toward them.

  “Yes—there is a dead female in my coach!”

  “By God, there is!” Archer peered inside. “Did you kill her?”

  “No, I did not. She was dead when I climbed inside.” The rank smell of blood clung to his clothing. He brushed at his coat, turning his head away to get a breath of clean air.

  “Then who did?” Archer asked, pale with shock.

  The coachman nodded, his eyes accusatory.

  “How should I know who killed her? Was anyone else near my carriage?” Nathaniel asked the coachman with increasing tension.

  “No, sir. Not that I seen.”

  “This tragedy is incomprehensible,” Archer said, studying Nathaniel with worried eyes. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know!” Nathaniel struggled to keep his voice low. “That poor girl—I don’t know who would have done such a thing.” The sight of her slashed throat and stained bodice would not leave him alone.

  The door to the Dacy residence opened. Lord Dacy strolled out, eyeing the crowd on his doorstep with surprise.

  “Are you having difficulties with your equipage, Your Grace?” he asked.

  “No!” Nathaniel replied sharply.

  “Dead body,” Archer said, gesturing at the carriage. “Inside. Female.”

  “Miss Mooreland,” Nathaniel added. The men stared at him, and he flushed. “I recognized her.”

  Lord Dacy glanced inside. Drawing away, he motioned to his butler who stood in the doorway holding a candelabra. “Send a footman for the constable,” he ordered. “And someone to notify the magistrate. We will need the coroner, as well. I am sorry, Your Grace, but you will have to wait.”

  “Of course,” Nathaniel replied stiffly. His hands felt sticky. He glanced down to find them begrimed with dried blood. When he raised his eyes, the men around him stood gazing at his stained hands with dismay. Lansbury, his coachman, took a step back. “I did not kill her.” Nathaniel said. “I only touched her to see if she was still alive.”

  Archer thumped him on the shoulder. “Of course. Dacy, send word to Lady Victoria that I will be a trifle delayed, will you?”

  “Certainly,” he said. He stepped aside to give orders to several footmen the butler had collected.

  The men were hurriedly tucking shirttails into waistbands and trying their best to wake up and concentrate.

  Archer grabbed the elbow of one of them. He gave him a few quiet orders before pushing him forward down the street.

  While Nathaniel watched, he felt an urgent need to take action. If he was arrested for murder, who would find Charlotte?

  He had to keep his freedom. Other than the newspapers and a few of his enemies like Bolton, no one had dared to insinuate he had had a hand in Lady Anne’s death. However, with the dead woman in his carriage, that would change. Things were going to get ugly fairly quickly even if he was a duke and an innocent one at that.

  Dacy waved them all toward the front door. “We can wait inside if you wish.”

  They straggled up to a sitting room on the second floor.

  When they got to the sitting room, Nathaniel moved toward one of the chairs a little apart from the others, desperate to think. However Dacy cut him off. He refused to allow Nathaniel to sit until a heavy length of oilcloth had been found and placed over the silk cushion of lovely Sheraton chair. Nathaniel wearily started to sit down, but he found his trousers so stiff and uncomfortable that he stood up again and paced the room instead.

  “Would you like a change of clothing?” Dacy offered, leaning back comfortably in his chair. He picked up a snifter of golden-colored brandy.

  “Yes, I would.”

  “You know where my room is. Ring for my valet and he will find you something. Just don’t bother my wife.”

  The warning was spoken in a mild voice, but it didn’t fool Nathaniel one bit. Oriana Dacy, Nathaniel’s elder sister, was heavy with her first child. Her husband’s casual remark did not hide his protectiveness.

  Nathaniel had once heard a rumor that Chilton Dacy had faced Napoleon himself in battle. Dacy would have killed the despot if he had not been foully attacked en masse by a cowardly gang of French cutthroats. Nathaniel didn’t feel inclined to provoke him or panic Oriana.

  Nathaniel agreed, relieved to be able to get out of his stained clothing.

  “Shall I dispose of these, Your Grace?” Dacy’s valet asked, holding Nathaniel’s blood-soaked breeches between two fingers. He sniffed with disgust as a few dried flakes drifted down onto the blue-and-gray patterned Oriental rug.

  “No. Put them in a bag. I will take them with me.” Some instinct warned Nathaniel to keep the garments. Disposing of the clothing would appear too suspicious.

  The valet folded them and placed the bundle inside a small portmanteau before handing it to Nathaniel. “Is there anything else, Your Grace?”

  “No.” Nathaniel rushed out, wondering if one of the Bow Street runners had arrived yet. If they had, would they take him into custody tonight? He’d probably be safer in gaol than walking the streets with two fathers desperate for revenge.

  He stiffened when he remembered the events after Bellingham had shot Mr. P
erceval, the Prime Minister, in May of eighteen-twelve. The sensational accounts had imprinted the affair deeply upon his young mind.

  Bellingham had been tried and hanged by May twenty-eighth, a mere seventeen days after the murder.

  And evidence was piling up against Nathaniel.

  He had to prove he had not gone mad and set about killing off this Season’s most annoying debutantes. The murderer had to be stopped, and Nathaniel had to find Charlotte.

  What if the murderer found her first? What if she was missing because….

  A sick rage violently shook him. No. He could not think that. She was safe. She had to be, and he would find her.

  And when he found her, she would corroborate his statement that he could not have killed Lady Anne. She could verify he had not had any blood on him when he joined her.

  Racing down the stairs, he stopped mid-way.

  Archer had not been with him when he climbed into his carriage. He had been alone. He swallowed despite his dry mouth.

  Surely, they would see she had already been dead when he found her.

  Wouldn’t they?

  Nathaniel descended more slowly before easing into the sitting room. Archer and Dacy were lounging companionably and swilling brandy from large snifters. To his surprise, a third man sat opposite Archer.

  “Cheery!” he exclaimed, recognizing his old friend from Eton. “What are you doing here?”

  The tall, slender man dressed entirely in black grimaced at the juvenile nickname. He strode forward and shook Nathaniel’s hand. “Saving your hide again, it appears,” Knighton “Cheery” Gaunt said, before he added, softly, “Dodger.”

  Nathaniel flushed at the reminder of his own boyhood sobriquet.

  However before he could say another word, Dacy interrupted. “Cheery?” he asked.

  Gaunt shook his head, leaving Nathaniel to explain. “We were at Eton together. Cheery, here, was a rather dour specimen, and if you want the truth, he always insisted on proving our masters wrong despite the floggings.”

  “But they were wrong,” Gaunt objected with a twisted smile. “Somebody had to actually read the books they flung at our heads. God knows they did not, or they wouldn’t have been so abysmally ignorant of the subjects they were attempting to teach.”

  Dacy appeared unimpressed.

  “Well, damn it,” Nathaniel said. “We were thirteen at the time. And he never even split a grin as far as I remember.”

  “Ah, irony,” Archer said. “Trust a British schoolboy to have a firm grip on the satirical. I suppose that explains ‘Dodger’ as well?” Archer’s ears were sharper than Nathaniel realized and he had heard Gaunt’s soft remark. “I don’t suppose he got that nickname dodging women, did he? Although at that tender age, I would not have thought he had have developed the trait yet.”

  Gaunt smiled. “That one was a bit more mot juste. He managed to dodge most, if not all, of those floggings with that angelic smile of his. Not to mention his uncanny ability to avoid reading anything of consequence while still coming out with top honors.”

  “After you, you mean,” Nathaniel said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I sent for him,” Archer said.

  “You? Why?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I felt we could use his skills.” Archer replied with an air of smugness that set Nathaniel’s teeth on edge.

  “Skills? What skills?”

  Archer and Gaunt exchanged glances before Archer answered. “Second Sons, Discreet Inquiries.”

  “That is your agency?” Nathaniel eyed his old friend again.

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, Nathaniel remembered reading an account of Knighton Gaunt’s own brush with murder. His father had died under mysterious circumstances that hinted at involvement by his nineteen year old son, Knighton. His elder brother, the heir, was touring the continent at the time. In due course, Knighton had proved his young stepmother had arranged for her husband’s death when he inconveniently discovered her affair with the butler.

  The butler had covered up their deed by trying to implicate Knighton.

  No wonder Gaunt had developed a fascination for discreet inquiries. Not to mention that as a second son, he wouldn’t inherit much and needed an occupation.

  For the first time that evening, Nathaniel felt more optimistic. Gaunt had always been unduly interested in proving things at Eton, and he had managed to avoid murder charges, himself. He might just be invaluable to Nathaniel under the circumstances.

  His tension eased until another set of boots sounded in the hallway. The butler opened the sitting room door and ushered in Mr. Clark.

  “The Bow Street runner, my Lord,” he announced, before shutting the door behind the stout newcomer.

  “Your Grace,” the runner nodded. “I am sorry to see you again under such disagreeable circumstances. I understand there’s been another fatal accident. In your carriage, in fact.”

  “Yes, but I was not in it at the time.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace,” Clark replied evasively. “I have taken a look at the vehicle in question.” His brown eyes stared flatly at Nathaniel. “Do you recognize this?” He held up an oddly-shaped knife with a nearly oval blade.

  “Yes, it is a hoof knife—for shaping horses’ hooves. Nearly everyone with a horse has one. What of it?”

  “It was found on the floor of the carriage.” The runner explained.

  “Well, it isn’t mine.”

  “No, we’ve already ascertained that fact. It appears to be from Lord Dacy’s stables,” Clark said.

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “But you had the opportunity when you and your uncle mounted your horses for your little ride.”

  “Anyone could have picked it up. That proves nothing,” Gaunt asserted.

  The runner nodded and wrapped the knife carefully in a handkerchief before placing it in his pocket. “The lads in the stables claimed one of the grooms, a man called Smythe, had it last.”

  “Did you speak to him?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Of course. I know my duty, Your Grace. He claimed to have put it away with the other grooming devices this afternoon.”

  “Again,” Gaunt said. “That proves nothing.”

  “I understand the young victim’s family has been notified and will come to claim her remains?” Mr. Clark continued.

  “I suppose—” Nathaniel eyed him coldly.

  Dacy interrupted. “I left orders for word to be sent to her parents. We will provide a carriage to take her to their house after the coroner is done.”

  “And you are?”

  “Lord Dacy. This is my house.”

  “So it is.” Clark turned back to Nathaniel. “Would you like to relate what happened?”

  “I don’t know, damn it!” Nathaniel said with exasperation, running a hand through his hair. “My brother-in-law hosted a ball here this evening. I attended. Then, my uncle and I left, ah, for a breath of fresh air.”

  The runner pulled his small notebook from his jacket pocket. “What time was this, Your Grace?”

  “Two AM.” Archer answered. “We took a brief ride before returning here.”

  “What time did you return?”

  “Shortly before four,” Nathaniel replied.

  The officer nodded and wrote the time down. “And then what occurred?”

  “I called for my coachman, Lansbury,” Nathaniel said. “He brought the coach around, and I climbed inside. That is when I found her.”

  “Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but why did you not simply return home on horseback since you were already riding?”

  “Because my carriage was here.”

  “So you had a carriage and a horse here?”

  “Well, no. I came by carriage this evening. To attend the ball.”

  “And you, Mr. Archer, how did you arrive?”

  “By carriage, naturally, since I escorted my wife and ward, Miss Haywood.”

  “And they took your carriage home, I presume?”


  “Ah, no. Miss Haywood took the carriage earlier because she was feeling unwell.”

  “Then, your wife is still here?”

  “No,” Dacy interjected. “I sent Lady Victoria home in my carriage.”

  “And that is when you, Mr. Archer, and Your Grace decided to take a ride? At night? In the middle of this ball?”

  What a convoluted mess.

  God knows he was squirming inside, but Nathaniel grimly kept his eyes steady on the runner’s lined face and smiled. “It was—”

  “We had a small wager, if you must know,” Archer inserted smoothly. “And I will thank you to keep it quiet. Lady Vee does not approve of my wagers.”

  “I see. And what was the wager?”

  “That since I am smaller and lighter than His Grace, not to mention a much better rider, that I could beat him in a race from here to St. James park and back.”

  The runner sighed. “Why would you do this at two in the morning while you were both attending an event hosted by your brother-in-law?”

  “Because we made the wager during the ball.” Archer said. “Naturally, it was imperative we come to a decision expeditiously. By riding at night, we could be assured of as little interference along our route as possible.”

  Nathaniel stared in admiration at Archer. His tale sounded almost reasonable.

  “So, since both of you men came in carriages, and made this, ahem, wager while you were attending this event, I must inquire as to whose horses you used?”

  “Most likely mine,” Dacy said, his tone aggrieved. “Tell me you did not lame my two best mounts—”

  “Of course we didn’t!” Archer replied. “I would never lame a horse.”

  A low chuckle escaped from the runner. He shook his head and wrote a few more notes in his book.

  “So, Your Grace, upon your return, you called for your carriage?”

  “Yes. Lansbury brought it around. When I climbed inside, I found the girl. We immediately sent for you.”

  He studied Nathaniel. “By the way,” he asked casually. “Who won the wager?”

  Archer shook his head. “I am afraid my nephew had the honor.”

  After a moment of speechless shock at his uncle’s surprising decision to lose a wager they had not even placed, Nathaniel grinned. At least he tried to grin. His face felt like rock.