“Perhaps he promised to drive her home.”
“Without a chaperon? Your sister could not have been so cork-brained as to destroy her reputation by traveling for days alone with a man.”
“But he might have convinced her I was sick, on my deathbed, and she had to rush home. He could have told her they were picking up his second cousin in Kensington, to act as companion.”
“And he kidnaped her instead?” Stony looked around at the book room shelves. “You have been reading too many novels, Miss Kane.”
“Well, Strickland could have done something! I would not put anything past the maggot.”
“What would you have had me do, beat him bloody until he confessed to hauling her off to some love nest until she agreed to marry him?”
Ellianne did not answer that.
“Deuce take it, he is nothing but a weakling, and I am no bully. I could not strike a man of his age, in his condition. Besides, I do believe him. All Strickland wants is his estate back. Stealing your sister would never accomplish that, and he is not stupid enough to think it would. He is afraid of you, by George.”
“Really?”
Stony could not tell if she was appalled or proud. “He most likely never came up against a woman with such strength…of character.”
Ellianne’s shoulders drooped. “Then we are no closer to finding my sister than we were before.”
“No, but now we do not have to waste our efforts chasing down a dead-end alley. We can concentrate on finding who did help Isabelle leave, and why.”
“I suppose,” she conceded, then scowled at him. “But I still do not understand how you could have done what you did.”
Stony did not pretend to misunderstand. “He is just a lonely man with neither friends nor family.”
“You felt sorry for that scum?” Her voice was as harsh as the parrot’s screech.
Stony shrugged. “He was weeping.”
“So you invited him to your stepmother’s dinner party? Gwen will kill you, Wellstone, if I don’t.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ellianne watched through the book room window as Wellstone left the house and set out down the street. She got a crick in her neck from craning to keep him in sight. As Aunt Lally said, he had a fine leg for a swell. Ellianne thought he had a fine leg for anyone, and the rest of him was not to be sniffed at. Of course, she had sniffed, surreptitiously, while he was leaning close. He smelled of soap and spices and something she could not quite put her finger on, but was positive she should not be thinking of touching.
She was thinking it, though, wondering for the first time in her life what it would feel like to touch the smooth, hard planes of a man. She would never do it, of course, but she rested her forehead against the pane of glass and imagined Wellstone beside her, his shirt loosened so she could put her bare hand against his bare chest.
It was her daydream; his shirt was on the floor. She knew some men had more hair on their chests than others, and she pictured him first with golden curls there, then with oiled muscles like a Roman athlete. She’d touch him ever so lightly with her fingertips, just to see. And then lay her palm against his heart to feel it beating. She might even rest her cheek there, to hear his life’s blood pulsing. Would her heart beat as quickly? Surely it was galloping twice as fast as usual now, with the viscount around the corner, not under her covers.
Ellianne felt her skin grow warm at the thought. How had she gone from touching his chest to lying naked beside him? Lady Higgentham was right: Wellstone was dangerous. The man could turn a girl’s head from three streets away. Not that Ellianne was smitten, of course. She was far too wise for that, she told herself, rubbing the back of her neck. But what if, just supposing, he were to touch her?
Other men had groped at her. She’d been repulsed. But Wellstone was no rough youth, no crude lecher, no sweaty-palmed suitor. He’d know how to treat a girl so she felt like a woman, and treat the woman like a lady.
Maybe she would like his hand on her bare skin, stroking, soothing, seeking. What then? Could she let him touch her here, and there, and that sensitive spot?
She had to rest her cheek against a different pane of glass to cool herself. The first one was fogged over with her breathing. Ellianne very much feared that she would like Wellstone’s touch far too much, and let matters go far too far. Then what?
Ellianne did not think she could do it, take a man, even Wellstone, as a lover. Everything she believed, everything that she’d been taught, screamed in outrage at her wanton fantasies. But why should she not find some pleasure in life, experience what other women had? Because it was wrong, and because she had to live with herself long after he was gone.
She had no doubts he’d be gone. For that matter, she was uncertain if he’d come to her hypothetical bed at all. Wellstone had sworn he was not interested in her body. He’d vowed he was not after her fortune either, which he could get only by marrying her, and that was even more improbable. He was a confirmed bachelor, and she was a self-proclaimed spinster.
If her licentious thoughts could not turn into legitimate acts, then it was far better they took place in air castles than in reality. She stepped back from the window and sat at the desk, pretending to read the correspondence from one of her financial advisers. Ten minutes later, when she had not gone past the letter’s salutation, she called herself a nitwit and a ninny. The imaginary affair had to be over before it began. There would be no wedding; therefore there must be no bedding, not even in her all-too-imaginative mind. As soon as they found Isabelle, she would never see Wellstone again. Never imagine golden chest curls tapering lower, never wonder at firm, horseman’s thighs, never ponder what pleasure his strong hands could give. Never.
The reminder of Isabelle made her feel guilty that she was having improper thoughts, thinking about improper deeds, while her sister was still lost. She wished she could go back in time, back to Fairview with her bankbooks and her charities, and her sister safe beside her. She’d never had sleepless nights there, never cavorted through wicked, wanton, waking dreams of passion in a loving man’s arms.
Loving? When had love entered into her fantasies? She firmly gave her errant wits a shake. She was not going to open that particular Pandora’s box, not when it might prove impossible to close.
No, she would think about Isabelle instead. Ellianne took out her list, the dreadful one she’d made after speaking with Lattimer the first time. She crossed out Strickland’s name. She had earlier made a mark through kidnaping, for Isabelle had packed, without any of the maids’ help. A ransom note would have been delivered ages ago, besides.
Foul play? Again, she’d packed. Perhaps something dire had happened after Isabelle left Sloane Street, after she had sent the illegible letter, but surely one of the neighbors would have heard, or fellow passengers at the coaching inns.
If Isabelle had left Aunt Augusta’s on her own, at night, she must have had good reason. Having heard Ellianne’s suspicions about Strickland, Mr. Lattimer had suggested Isabelle feared being forced into marriage against her will, but Ellianne still rejected that theory. As she’d explained to Wellstone, their aunt held no authority over Isabelle, being neither guardian nor trustee of her fortune. Of course, if a wedding had taken place, Ellianne would have no choice but to honor it, or see her sister cast out in the streets.
Isabelle was no weak, watery-eyed miss. The only way a ceremony could take place without Ellianne’s sister’s consent was if they drugged her. Mr. Lattimer spoke of avaricious vicars who turned their eyes to the wall when the bride could not make her proper responses. But Strickland swore his innocence, and Aunt Augusta was too cheap to pay the necessary bribes.
If Aunt Augusta had refused to consider Isabelle’s choice of husband, however, Isabelle might have decided an elopement was the only solution. She would have reached Gretna Green by now, though. She would have written to Ellianne, if only about her dowry, if not out of affection. Ellianne could not believe her beloved sister had not t
rusted her enough, had not written to her about the man, unless he was totally ineligible. Good grief, he could not be married, could he? No, Isabelle was not a fool.
Ellianne had never truly considered suicide, but Mr. Lattimer had brought it up as a possibility. That was a greater sin than adultery, and Isabelle was a good churchgoer. And she had packed. A girl did not take luggage to jump in the Thames.
A connection to Aunt Augusta’s death was next on the list. Ellianne could not imagine how, unless Isabelle’s suitor had shoved the old woman when she rejected his honorable offer, then fled with Isabelle. Again, Ellianne swore Isabelle was not fool enough to be attracted to such a cad.
Ellianne ignored her own temptations toward the primrose path and an unsuitable parti. No, Isabelle and her would-be betrothed would have come home to Fairview, anyway. Ellianne had always solved her sister’s problems; she had never left her to fend for herself. Even if the man were far beneath Isabelle, a footman or a chimney sweep, anything, Ellianne could have fixed it, could have made things right, if that was the man Isabelle wanted to marry.
She knew what everyone was thinking, the last item on her too-short list, one of the few scenarios that fit the facts as they knew them: Isabelle had fled to her lover. Not to a border marriage at the blacksmith’s, not to a ceremony at their own church witnessed by all their friends, not to marry, not at all.
No. Isabelle might have urges and curiosity and wanton dreams—Ellianne could understand those things, more since meeting Wellstone—but Isabelle was no trollop. She had the same morals, the same decency that Ellianne had, the same boundaries between right and wrong, between dreaming and doing.
The Kane sisters might not have been born ladies by right of title, but they were reared to be honorable. They would go as virgins to their marriage beds—or to their deathbeds.
*
Mr. Lattimer’s note came later that morning. The body of an unidentified young woman had been discovered by a delivery boy in an alley. Did Miss Kane wish to go with him to the morgue?
No, no, no! It could not be Isabelle! It could not be! Not her baby sister, born when Ellianne was nine, hers to cherish when their mother died after so many miscarriages. Isabelle was hers to hold and protect, hers to die for if need be. Isabelle could not be dead, left in a dirt heap, lost forever.
Aunt Lally’s lip was quivering. “Let the rabbit-ears Runner go by himself. He can tell us if—”
“No, if it is Isabelle, I cannot leave her there among strangers an instant longer. I have to go.”
So she sent a reply back to Bow Street and a note to Lady Wellstone, telling Gwen that she had to cancel their engagement for that afternoon.
The Runner and Wellstone arrived at the same time.
“I shall escort Miss Kane.”
“No, I shall. It’s my job.”
“It’s what I was hired to do.”
“I am the professional.”
“The professional what?”
Then Stony heard someone say, “Just like mongrels, seeing which can piss higher.” He looked around for Polly, or the precocious parrot’s cage. The parlor was empty, though, except for himself and Lattimer and old Aunt Lally, Mrs. Goudge, busy with her needlework in the corner. That sweet old woman, so devoted to her husband’s memory that she stopped speaking, could not have uttered those words, could she? No, he decided, she could not even have thought them. The walls must be thin, with the parrot close by. He went back to pissing—that is, pressing to accompany Miss Kane on this morbid mission.
“Deuce take it, man, the morgue is no place for a gently bred female! You should have gone yourself.”
“Miss Kane wished to be informed of every possible development in the case.”
“Which you could have done after you went to the morgue alone, by Jupiter!”
“As you would have done, Wellstone?” Ellianne asked from the doorway. “Without informing me?”
Stony cursed under his breath, both because she had overheard him and because she was wearing that horrid black coal-scuttle bonnet so he could not see her face or her expression. He bowed. “Good day to you, Miss Kane. I am sorry you have to face such dread news and, yes, I would have spared you this.”
“It was not your decision to make, my lord.”
The “my lord” was both an indication of her distress and her disapproval of him. Stony glared at the Runner and muttered, “It should have been.”
“I believe we had an agreement about being partners.”
“Circumstances have changed. Some things are simply better left to stronger shoulders.”
“Like carrying in firewood, no doubt,” she said. “But this is a matter of fortitude, not brute force. Shall we go, Mr. Lattimer?”
The Runner’s ears turned red, but he held his arm out to her. “Indeed, I would have gone alone, Miss Kane, to save you the distress, but I doubted I could have made a positive identification.”
“Why is that?” Stony asked, taking Miss Kane’s pelisse from Timms’s trembling hands and helping her into it. The damned Runner was not going to be allowed to get familiar with Stony’s charge; neither was the viscount going to let her go alone with the chub to face the waiting misery. “Are you colorblind?” He gestured toward the unfortunate bonnet as he straightened the collar of Miss Kane’s wrap. “How many redheads do you think are waiting to be identified?”
Lattimer stood by his guns. “The woman’s hair was shaved off.”
Stony’s hand fell back to his side. “What, all of it?” The raised eyebrow that only Lattimer could see asked the question that was unspeakable in Miss Kane’s presence.
The Runner’s whole face was scarlet in embarrassment, but he nodded. “Yes, all of it. Shaved.”
“I know there is still a market for women’s hair for wigs and things,” Ellianne was saying, oblivious to the by-play between her two escorts as she walked through the front door, “although less so than a few years past, but what kind of monster shaves a dead girl’s head to get her hair?”
“The same kind of dirty dish what slit her throat in the first place, I’d guess,” the Runner supposed, ignoring Miss Kane’s gasp and Wellstone’s faltering step.
“Good gods, man, you might try to be a bit more careful of a gentlewoman’s delicate nerves,” Stony said, his own shaken. He took Ellianne’s arm. “Are you still sure you wish to go in person, ma’am? Surely the unfortunate woman is some female off the streets, a bawd who argued with her pimp, a light-fingered light-skirt who stole from the wrong patron.”
“No, sir, she were a lady,” Lattimer declared, despite Stony’s scowl.
“How the devil can you deduce that?” the viscount asked. “Some new kind of detecting at a distance, by reading tea leaves, perhaps?”
Lattimer ignored the scowl and the scorn. He was being paid by the lady, after all, not the angry toff. He took his occurrence book out of his pocket and turned to the last page. “Right here, my lord, they say the unknown female has no calluses. No rough fingernails. That makes her a lady, all right and tight.”
Not necessarily, Ellianne thought, glad for the gloves she wore. Her own fingers were ink-stained from the ledgers, with a callus from holding the pen so often. She left in such a hurry she might still have traces of cooked asparagus under her nails, from feeding the dog. She could not recall if Isabelle’s hands were well manicured or not. Her sister used to suck her thumb as a toddler.
Ellianne hesitated alongside the coach, her lips moving in silent prayer.
Damnation, Stony thought as he handed Ellianne into her aunt’s town carriage. He took the seat beside her, leaving Lattimer to ride backward, facing Miss Kane, for all the good it would do him, with that ugly bonnet in the way. “Pretty hands do not make the woman a lady. She might still have been a well-paid courtesan, one who had a falling-out with her protector. Those things happen frequently.” When Miss Kane turned her head toward him, he added, “Or so I am given to understand.”
“That’s as may be,�
�� Lattimer said, “but you can see why I didn’t go on my own to look at the corpse.”
Stony could not see at all, nor why the blasted Redbreast had to use such language in front of a lady. He’d heard the whimper that escaped Miss Kane’s lips at that hopeless word corpse. Stony grasped Ellianne’s hand in his, hidden by her skirts. “Dash it, you should have gone!”
Lattimer was starting to get angry. He was doing his job, and this well-dressed nob was belittling him at every turn. “What was I supposed to do, guess?”
“To start with, you might have made note of her clothing, in case Miss Kane remembered similar attire, or if the dressmaker had left a mark.”
“She was naked,” Lattimer snapped back, “which I was not going to mention to Miss Kane.”
“In that case, you could have looked to see if she had green eyes, for one, or if she was the right height, and slender, like Miss Kane. You could have discovered if she had any scars or birthmarks, anything that would prove the poor woman’s identity, or disprove her connection to Miss Isabelle. You could have gone a great deal further on your own, without needlessly distressing Miss Kane.”
Lattimer was frantically turning pages in his log book. “Green eyes, green eyes. Someone must have made a note of it. And the height, I was certain they said average length. Now where…?”
Ellianne could not help smiling, even now. Trust Wellstone to look for the ray of hope. And trust him to try to protect her from whatever might happen. He could not shield her from the truth, no more than she could have kept Isabelle wrapped in cotton wool for her entire life, but he would try, the dear, pigheaded clunch. She did not think for a moment that his care of her had anything to do with money, for once. He was simply a genuine gentleman, and a nice one, too. Despite their gloves, Ellianne found his touch comforting and was glad he’d insisted on coming along, once he’d ceased insisting that she stay home. She squeezed his fingers, and was reassured by the answering pressure. It was good to have a friend nearby, not charging ahead without her, but at her side.
A Perfect Gentleman Page 14
