Did Jonathan lead a secret life? Impossible.
Her heart pounded. Bursts of conversation from the party drifted down the street. The coachman had parked too far away for her to attract his attention. The cloaked stranger raised his voice, addressing Jonathan now.
“You will damn well pay me tonight, Captain, or we’ll meet over pistols at dawn. We made a gentlemen’s agreement.”
Disbelief immobilized her. It had to be a mistake. She took a step forward, her impulse to help. Jonathan turned toward her, his face unfamiliar, afraid.
“Damn you, woman,” Quentin said to her between his teeth. “Do what you’re told for once.”
Before she could retreat the stranger moved. He reached inside his cloak. Then what happened afterward went by so fast she couldn’t do anything to interrupt the sequence of events.
Something metal glistened in the moonlight. Was that a pistol in Jonathan’s hand? The sight of it shocked her. She had watched him at shooting practice with his friends. A marksman. An infantry officer. But why had he felt it necessary to carry a gun to a party? He was strong enough to defend himself on the street. She knew his habits. It was the stranger’s gun. Jonathan must have confiscated it.
“You owe me, gentlemen, and I will collect my due—”
The pistol shot echoed in the street. It went on endlessly, tearing through the tunnels of her present, her perfect future. A human life. A soul wailing in the night. She wanted to insert herself like a shield. Death brushed her cheek, a kiss of coldness. Had she been hit? She stared at Jonathan, willing him to be safe. He was a good man. She felt nothing, numb.
“Lily,” he said in an agonized voice. “Lily, please, please. Get away from here right now. Run.”
She saw the other man crumple to the curb. She picked up her skirts. Heavy as lead, they felt. Hurry, hurry, Lily. Get help. It’s not too late. She reached the coach, shaking with fright. She heard her breath rasp as the footman stared at her in horror.
“Miss, miss,” he said in alarm. “What happened?”
“What now? What has he done?” Lady Kirkham’s voice tolled a funeral bell in her brain. “Little bastard. I told his father that boy was born evil.”
Lily pulled at the footman’s sleeve. “You have to help. He’s shot. Tell the coachman. I can’t breathe.”
The coachman jumped down from his box. “Wait inside, miss. It will be all right.”
Lily’s voice broke. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether he brought a gun—”
Lady Kirkham slid to the edge of her seat to reach for Lily. Lily drew away, aware that she made little sense. The coachman brushed past her with a bat under his arm. The footman gently pried her fingers from his sleeve.
“I’ll show you where he is,” she said. “It happened around the corner, and the man came out of the alley. I shouldn’t have left home. I—”
Stronger than she appeared, Lady Kirkham caught Lily under the arms and half dragged her into the coach. She smelled of costly perfume and perspiration. “Stay here with me,” she whispered fiercely. “Whatever is done is done.”
Chapter 14
Her fiancé and his friend insisted that Lily was imagining things. There was no dead man in the gutter. Jonathan admitted that he and Quentin had gotten into a minor argument during which a drunk had rambled by and pestered them for cash. But neither gentleman had shot anyone in the street or carried a pistol to a play.
The driver and footman reassured her that they had searched the street and found nothing more suspicious than a stray dog sniffing about the sidewalk. They smiled at each other, apparently pleased to have been involved in a harmless rescue.
Quentin dismissed her story with his usual patronizing contempt concealed behind a pretense of courtesy. He was, in fact, so unconcerned that Lily began to doubt herself. His stepmother remained silent throughout the short ride back to Mayfair. If she suspected Lily was telling the truth, she could hardly confirm what she had not witnessed. Perhaps she was afraid for her own life.
Jonathan tried to calm Lily. He stroked her hair and begged her to believe him. “Haven’t you known me all your life? I swear on my soul that I didn’t kill anyone. Would I defile you with my hands if I had?”
She refused to meet his gaze, shrinking from his touch. “I insist that we go to the police station and give a report.”
“They’ll think you’ve gone mad,” Quentin said in thinly veiled exasperation. “Your name will be ruined and mocked in the morning news. Do you think a corpse can rise from the gutter and vanish in the blink of an eye?”
“I know what I saw.”
“You saw shadows in the dark.”
“You are a liar,” Lily said.
“You are insane.”
“Please, Lily,” Jonathan said in a low voice, throwing Quentin a look. “Nothing happened. Don’t speak of it again until you’ve had some rest. You’ll be yourself in a few days.”
“And if any dead bodies pop up overnight in Piccadilly,” Quentin said blithely, “you can turn us both in. Or you could show common sense and realize you’re hysterical over nothing.”
Jonathan glowered at him. “I knew it was a bad idea to go to that party.”
“It was a bad idea to leave Tissington,” Lily muttered, shrinking from the hand he extended to her.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “But we’ll be going home after the wedding. Trust me until then.”
She ignored his advice. Everything she believed about him was false.
She wouldn’t ever believe a word he said.
She told her parents, Sir Leonard and Diana, Lady Boscastle, as well as her brother, Gerald, what she had witnessed the instant they greeted her at the door of the viscount’s town house. She even told the butler when he appeared to take her evening cloak. She wished with all her heart that Chloe and Dominic had not gone to Chelsea so that she could enlist their support.
Someone brought her brandy. Her brother listened to Jonathan repeat that he was innocent, that he loved her, that he wanted to take her back to the country. Her parents were bewildered, sympathetic, but torn. Their main concern was that she not ruin her name.
“Lily, my darling girl,” her mother whispered with tears in her eyes as she sat beside her on the sofa. “I know that you are devoted to reading romantic tales, as am I. Is it possible that you have confused your craving for adventure with what you think you saw? A lady’s life can be so dull at times.”
Romantic tales.
She thought wistfully of a beautiful face half-concealed behind a black domino. She remembered that hard-lipped mouth, a kiss wicked, sweet, and wild. She had changed that night. She had glimpsed another world, darker, intriguing, decadent . . . or not? Looking back she wondered if his kiss had been an omen of ill things to come.
Had she made a secret pact with a demon? They had embraced each other under a sword crossed with Sir Renwick Hexworthy’s wand. What a preposterous thought. What did Wickbury have to do with what she had witnessed tonight? She could not escape into a fictional world even if she wanted to. But why couldn’t her real life be as wonderful? Yes, Wickbury held its horrors. But good always won in the end. At least there was logic to follow.
“You weren’t drinking tonight, were you, Lily?” her brother asked in such a hopeful voice that she wanted to cry.
She glanced in appeal at her father, usually the first to defend her. He avoided meeting her eyes. She knew his heart well. He didn’t believe her either. Everyone thought she’d popped her cork. Maybe she had.
“We will not discuss this ever again, Lily,” he said decisively, standing beside Jonathan at the window. “Perhaps you ate or drank something that has disagreed with you. Perhaps you are coming down with a case of the influenza.”
“We should summon a physician,” her mother said, clearly relieved that there might be a physical reason for Lily’s disconcerting flight of fancy.
“We should summon a Bow Street Runner,” Lily retorted stubbornly.
Sir Leonard’s face tightened. “You will be ruined if anyone outside the family hears of this. It is to Jonathan’s credit that he is giving you his comfort.”
“And his name,” her mother added worriedly. “Oh, Lily, don’t let this spoil your beautiful wedding.”
Lily rose from the sofa. The brandy had gone to her head, but instead of calming her, it gave her false courage. “I can’t spoil a wedding I will not attend. I’m not marrying him. I won’t do it.”
Jonathan strode across the room and took her firmly by the shoulders. “You are promised to me, and I to you. In a few days you will have had time to rest and reflect, and everything will go back to normal.”
Lady Boscastle sighed in relief. “Wedding nerves, my love. All the excitement, the parties—”
“—the stories that stuff her head with nonsense,” her father interjected. “No more of these Wickbury Tales, with wizards and fallen women and . . . I don’t know what. I forbid you to read another page of this rubbish. It is a well-known fact that females are easily misled by literature.”
Lily’s brother rescued the empty brandy glass from her grasp. “That’s funny, sir. I could have sworn I caught you reading one of those books after supper a week or so ago.”
“I’d give everything to be in one of those books right now,” Lily said softly.
The quartet stared at her in shock. Then her mother’s eyes teared up again, and she broke into heartbroken sobs, as if she had raised a monster instead of a girl with a mind of her own.
“I think, gentlemen,” Jonathan said somberly to her father and Gerald, “that we should get her into bed and dosed with a sedative. We’ll want to keep the servants in the dark about this until she recovers. The embarrassment, you understand.”
“She’ll be standing beside you at the altar in a fortnight,” Sir Leonard said in a collected voice that half convinced Lily to believe him. “And after you exchange vows, it will be your responsibility to keep this prurient reading material out of her hands.”
Chapter 15
The staff gathered in the great hall of St. Aldwyn House to welcome the duke back home. He gave them a smile of appreciation and inquired about the health of their families, his neighbors, his pony, and his two pigs, Pyramus and Thisbe.
He listened politely to their replies. But he felt tired, not his usual self, and said he hoped they would understand if he went straight to his office and did not eat the vegetable pie and strawberry clotted-cream trifle the cook had prepared in his honor.
He could hear them whispering to one another after he excused himself. Unlike another man in his position, he did not bother to chastise them.
They knew something wasn’t right.
He wouldn’t confess what it was. But in time the head housemaid, Marie-Elaine, would find out; God only knew how. Samuel suspected his valet talked, and he would be unable to escape their infernal concern for him. He hoped to convince everyone that having to rewrite the end of the last book had made him melancholy, that he always had a hard time saying farewell to his characters for a while, because who knew when, or if, they would ever talk to him again?
He might not even care.
He might just write an epilogue revealing Lady Juliette to be a man-slaying dragoness who decided to put an end to both Michael and Renwick in one great swoop of her tail.
Marie-Elaine missed nothing.
“It’s a woman,” she told the cook, Mrs. Halford, while the upper staff sat grouped in the servants’ hall to discuss the situation.
Mrs. Halford put a cloth over the pie sitting before her on the table. “How can you tell? He might just have gotten another stinking review.”
Marie-Elaine shook her head. She and her illegitimate daughter, Josette, had been living at St. Aldwyn House longer than any of the other servants. “It’s his look.”
“I’ve never seen that look about him before,” Mrs. Halford agreed. “And it’s not as if he’s lived like a monk.”
“Yes, and he’s never been in love before, either.”
“His Grace and that bookseller’s daughter weren’t exactly acting like mortal enemies when I caught them in the pavilion last month.”
“That isn’t love,” Marie-Elaine said bluntly. “I ought to know.”
The duke’s valet, Wadsworth, sat down at the table with a pack of cards. He had owned a gaming hell six years ago and had gone to prison after a knife fight on the premises had ended in a nobleman’s death. “What were you doing out there anyway, Mrs. Halford, at that time of night?”
The cook rolled her eyes. “I was picking parsnips. It’s the only time I can sneak out for a breather without those pigs snuffling at my heels.”
“He’d have a fit if he knew,” Marie-Elaine said absently. “He leads such a private life.”
Mrs. Halford shook her head in worry. “Perhaps he’s getting sick again.”
Marie-Elaine sighed. “Shuffle the cards. Bickerstaff isn’t talking, but we’ll get to the root of this soon enough.”
The body had not shown up in the two weeks since the murder. Lily’s father leased a cottage on the outskirts of London, hoping the tranquil atmosphere would compose her thoughts. No one outside her immediate family was allowed to see her, except for a physician, who grimly revealed to her parents that he wasn’t sure, but that after examining her, he thought she had tried to tell him she was turning back into a goose.
Lily heard her father shouting up from the bottom of the stairs, “It is those damned books again!”
The London Boscastles had asked their private inquiry agent to become involved. Lily knew this only because her brother had sneaked her a note from Chloe in a basket of fruit.
The boxwood sprig that Lily had saved from the literary masquerade had crumbled. So had her foolish hope that the duke would intervene on her behalf. She wasn’t certain what she expected him to do. He hadn’t witnessed a crime. The only thing he could confess was that he had kissed her. And that she hadn’t put up a protest at all. Neither of which would boost her credibility in anyone’s view.
She woke up on her wedding day and heard Jonathan’s voice below. It held a familiarity that made her ache.
She slipped into a day gown, not bothering to even brush her hair, and crept to the top of the stairs.
“We are going to send her away,” her brother was saying in his quiet voice.
Jonathan looked frantic. “Where? I want to take care of her. I still want us to be married.”
“I don’t know where she’ll go or what the future holds,” her brother said, apparently unmoved by this display of emotion.
Jonathan walked to the front door, then looked up as if he had seen her behind the balustrade. “I didn’t kill anyone,” he said to Gerald. “Don’t you believe me, either? And I want to marry her. We can go into exile, but I still love her. Tell her that for me. Tell her in those words.”
Her brother was silent.
But the moment Jonathan left, Gerald turned and climbed halfway up the stairs to speak to her. “You shouldn’t have come out when he was here. We’ll sort this out. I’m not sure how.”
She shook her head. “You don’t expect me to marry him after all this?”
He glanced back at the door. “Lily, my dear. Don’t you understand? It got out in the papers. Our cousin the Marquess of Sedgecroft managed to get a retraction, but the damage is done. If you don’t marry Jonathan, you probably won’t marry at all.”
“I don’t care.”
He sighed, his eyes shadowed with worry. “We need to go away. Perhaps in a year or two it will be forgotten. This family has survived worse scandals.”
“No. You’re right. I’ll never be offered another decent proposal again. I’ll receive only illicit offers from now on.”
And that night, when she told her parents that she would leave to spare them further embarrassment, she thought they looked relieved.
“We have plenty of relatives with young children who would welcome a hand for
a year or two,” Lady Boscastle said, more animated than she had seemed since the incident. “Who knows? You might even snare an agreeable squire who doesn’t care about your failed engagement or advancing age.”
Lily regarded her mother with affection. “I have no intention of looking at, or for, another man as long as I draw breath.”
Her mother paled. “Then what are you going to do? You cannot live alone. What will you do?”
“Apply for a position. As a housekeeper.”
“To a stranger?” Lady Boscastle said, appalled. “What if he turns out to be—”
“He might be a cantankerous ogre with onions for ears for all I care,” Lily said calmly. “He will assuredly not be a lout who shoots a man in cold blood two weeks before his wedding. And pretends to be utterly innocent of the crime.”
Her father snorted. “What do you know about keeping a house?”
“I have lived in one all my life.”
“Do you know how to plan a supper party?” her mother asked skeptically.
“No. And neither does our housekeeper, but I will buy several books on the subject and study the art.”
“Books,” her father said in despair. “You’ve never gone to the fish market early in the morning and haggled over eels.”
Lily’s stomach turned at the thought. “I suppose I’ll have to learn.”
“Who in his right mind would hire a housekeeper who is rumored to be losing her wits?”
“A gentleman who hasn’t heard the gossip about me. Or better yet, one who doesn’t care about gossip at all.”
“You cannot blame people for speculating,” her father said grimly. “You are not behaving rationally at all.”
True to her word, Lily began to read the newspapers again. She ignored the social announcements and concentrated on the advertisements for domestic help. Her brother drove her to four interviews that same week, and two the following. Lily offered nothing about her personal scandal and oddly no one asked. On one interviewer’s desk, however, she spotted a newspaper clipping in which she glimpsed her name. As it was not a marriage announcement, she could only conclude that she was being interviewed for prurient reasons and not for potential employment.
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