by Amanda Quick
Edison’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I do not give a bloody damn what Society thinks.”
“You have made that quite clear.” Emma tried frantically to signal him with her eyes and remind him of Mrs. Wilton. It had been Edison’s idea, after all, to maintain the charade of an engagement in front of everyone, including the household staff.
Edison spared a sharp glance for the housekeeper, who hovered uneasily, Emma’s bonnet in her hands. Then he turned back to Emma.
“While we are engaged, Emma, you take your instructions from me. I am, after all, your future husband. You may as well get into the habit of obeying me.”
That was too much. Emma consigned Mrs. Wilton to perdition. “Sir, you go too far.”
“Not far enough, it would seem, since I neglected to make my instructions concerning my grandmother perfectly clear. Henceforth your orders are to stay away from Lady Exbridge.”
Emma spread her hands, exasperated beyond measure. “What on earth are you worried about?”
“She’s a dragon,” Edison said bluntly. “Given half a chance, she’ll eat you alive.”
“I assure you that I can take care of myself, sir.”
“Nevertheless, I do not want you seeing her alone. Is that understood?”
“It’s all well and good for you to give your instructions now, but as you were not around to issue them two hours ago when Lady Exbridge’s message arrived, I fail to see how you can hold me accountable.”
Mrs. Wilton coughed. “Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am, there’s a message for ye.”
Emma frowned. “Another one?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Wilton picked up the silver salver that sat on the hall table. A folded sheet of paper rested on it. “It arrived a couple of hours ago. Right after you left. The boy who brought it to the kitchen door said to tell ye that it was urgent.”
“I wonder who could have sent it.” Emma picked up the note, aware that Edison was still seething.
She ignored him while she opened the missive. She read the note quickly.
Miss Greyson:
From your remarks about actresses last night, I must conclude that you know more about this affair than I had supposed. I have given the matter a great deal of thought since we last spoke. It is obvious I underestimated you. We are both women of the world. I have decided to be open with you. It is imperative that we speak privately as soon as possible. I must explain certain facts to you.
I assure you, Miss Greyson, it is in your best interests to meet with me today. I have a proposition to put before you, one that I think you will find extremely interesting and very profitable.
Please come alone to my house as soon as you receive this note. I must warn you that delay of any sort could be dangerous. Tell no one that you intend to visit me. I will remain at home for the rest of the day in anticipation of your visit.
Yrs.
M.
“Good heavens.” Emma raised her eyes and saw that Edison was watching her very intently. “It is from Lady Ames.”
“The devil you say. Let me see it.”
Edison snapped the sheet of foolscap out of her hand and glanced at the message. When he looked up again, Emma saw a familiar gleam in his eyes. She suspected that there was a similar excitement in her own gaze. They both knew what the note meant. Miranda had clearly succumbed to the pressure of knowing that Emma was aware of her career as an actress.
Conscious of Mrs. Wilton standing nearby, Emma kept her expression polite and composed. “Interesting, is it not, sir?”
“Very. The Strategy of Redirection appears to have worked.”
Emma glanced at the clock. “It is not yet four-thirty. There is still time to call upon Lady Ames.”
“A moment, if you please,” Edison said sharply. “I wish to consider this development more closely before you go haring off.”
“There is no time for lengthy consideration.” Emma snatched her bonnet back from Mrs. Wilton and plunked it on her head. “Excuse me, sir, but I must be off.”
“Damnation, Emma, hold on here.” He cast an uneasy glance at the hapless housekeeper. “I have not yet decided how best to deal with this.”
“You may accompany me to Lady Ames’s house,” Emma said as she sailed through the doorway. “We can discuss the matter en route.”
“You can be bloody well certain that I will accompany you.” His tone was ominous as he followed her down the steps. “I have a number of things I want to discuss with you before you speak to Miranda.”
“Yes, of course, sir.” Emma surveyed the busy street. “First, be so good as to hail us a hackney.”
“Why would you wish to bother with a dirty public coach?” He glanced across the street to where his groom stood waiting with the gleaming phaeton and team. “We shall use my carriage.”
“No, Miranda might see it in the street and recognize it.”
“What of it?”
“In her note she specifically says that I am to come alone. If you accompany me to her address, you must stay out of sight. The hackney will be anonymous. If you remain in it, she will not see you.”
Edison looked dubious but she knew that her logic was sound. It did not take him long to see that too.
“Why is it that every time I manage to convince myself that I am giving the orders around here, something like this occurs?” he muttered.
Nevertheless, he quickly flagged down a passing hackney carriage and handed Emma up into the cab. She wrinkled her nose at the smell, a mix of ancient, dried vomit and soured wine. Experience had taught her not to examine the stains on the floor of any hackney coach too closely. Edison climbed in behind her and sat down. He eyed the interior of the hackney with ill-concealed disgust, but he refrained from comment.
He looked at Emma. Her own excitement was bubbling so high that it took her a few seconds to notice the dark expression in his eyes.
“Listen to me, Emma. We must assume that Miranda has panicked,” he said.
“Indeed.” Emma reflected quickly on the possibilities. “She believes I am aware of her past, but she cannot possibly tell how much of it I know.”
“Which means she has decided that you are no longer a simple pawn,” Edison said evenly. “You have become potentially dangerous to her. You must be very very careful when you speak with her this afternoon. Do you comprehend me?”
“I believe you are right in saying that Miranda has decided I can no longer be easily manipulated, but I doubt that she views me as dangerous. She mentions a proposition in her note. Perhaps she wishes to make me a partner in her scheme to use the elixir.”
“It makes sense.”
“Such a partnership may have been what she intended all along. After all, she could not hope to dupe me into winning a fortune for her at cards. Sooner or later she would have had to take me into her confidence.”
Edison hesitated. There is another possibility.”
“What is that?”
“Before I explain, I must ask you a direct question. And you must tell me the truth.”
“What is the question?”
He held her eyes. “Did you shoot Chilton Crane?”
She was so outraged, she could barely speak. “I told you, I did not kill him. I am not sorry that he is dead, but I most certainly was not the one who shot him.”
He studied her for a long moment. Then he inclined his head, as though satisfied.
“Very well, then,” he said. “If that is true, then I think it’s safe to say that Miranda never meant to take you on as an equal partner. I believe she intended to force you to assist her in her card-cheating scheme.”
“What does this have to do with whether or not I shot Crane?”
Emma scowled. “And how could she possibly coerce me into helping her cheat at cards?”
“By blackmailing you.”
“Blackmailing me?” Emma was floored. “But in order to do such a wicked thing, she would have had to find something to hold over my head. Something that would ha
ve made me afraid to defy her.”
“Perhaps she ddid find something to use in just such a manner,” Edison said. “But I snatched the weapon out of her grasp.”
“Whatever are you talking about, sir?”
“Chilton Crane.”
Emma felt her jaw drop. “Chilton Crane?”
Edison sat forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. His expression was coldly intent. “Crane’s death never bothered me but the time and place of it did raise several questions. What if it was Miranda who encouraged him to go to your room that night? She may have intended for the two of you to be discovered together.”
Emma shudderedd. “In which event, I would very likely have been dismissed by Lady Mayfield.”
“You would have been desperate. Perhaps desperate enough to allow Miranda to coerce you into participating in her card-cheating scheme.”
“But it did not turn out that way. I was not in my room when Crane arrived. I told you, someone followed him down the hall and shot him dead.”
“If you did not shoot him,” Edison began thoughtfully.
“I swear I did not.”
Then someone else did,” he concluded.
She looked at him. “Miranda?”
“Perhaps.”
“Why on earth would she kill him?”
“Perhaps she followed him down the hall that night, intending to be the one who discovered him in your bed. But things went wrong. You were not around to be compromised.”
Emma swallowed heavily. “Do you really think that when she realized that I was not in my bed chamber, she shot Crane? Are you saying she hoped I would be put under suspicion of murder?”
“It’s possible that when she saw her plan was about to fail, she realized there was another way to accomplish her goal. She knew you would be the most likely suspect if Crane was found dead in your bed chamber.”
“You think she may have planned to step in to offer me an alibi and thereby save me from the hangman’s noose?”
“If she had done such a thing, you would have been forced to do whatever she demanded of you.”
His calm, well-schooled logic sent a shiver through her. She hugged herself as the frightening possibilities cascaded through her mind. If she had not gone to Edison that night, if he had not implied to all and sundry that she had been in his bed when the murder occurred ...
“Wait.” Emma turned sharply back to face Edison. “According to your version of events, Miranda would have had to come to my bed chamber prepared to kill Crane that night. How could she possibly have guessed that her scheme would go awry because I wasn’t in the room? Are you saying that she brought a pistol with her on the off chance that things would not go according to her plan?”
“I think it very likely that Miranda is in the habit of carrying a pistol in her reticule,” Edison said. “When I searched her chamber at Ware Castle that night, I found a pistol case. There was extra powder and some balls in it but no weapon.”
“Then she may, indeed, have had it with her,” Emma whispered.
“Yes. She probably went downstairs after she shot Crane and waited for the body to be discovered. But nothing happened for some time.”
“So she grew impatient and sent the maid to my room with the tea tray to precipitate the discovery.”
That is how it appears,” Edison said.
Emma drummed her fingers on the seat. “When did this notion that Miranda was the killer first occur to you, sir?”
He shrugged. “It crossed my mind as a possibility at the time because of the pistol. But there were other, equally plausible explanations for Crane’s death.”
She slanted him a reproving look. “Including the possibility that I had killed him?”
Edison smiled faintly. “I told you, I had no great objection to the notion that you had shot Crane, but it did present certain difficulties. First and foremost, I had to make certain that you did not trip yourself up and ruin the alibi I had supplied. I admit that my attention was concentrated in that direction until we were well clear of Ware Castle.”
“What makes you think you can believe me when I tell you that I did not kill Crane?”
He watched her with gleaming eyes. “I do not think that you would lie to me now. Not after what you so charmingly term the incident that took place between us.”
She stared at him. “Are you saying that just because we have been... been intimate, you now feel you can trust me?”
“Actually, I think I had come to trust you even before we made love,” he said thoughtfully. “But I had not asked you since then about Crane’s death because there was no need to confirm that you did not kill him. Until now, that is.”
“Do you mean to say, sir, that you never once concerned yourself with the possibility that you had employed a murderess?”
Edison smiled. “Not as long as the victim was Chilton Crane.”
A rush of unexpected warmth went through her. “I am touched, sir. Quite ... quite touched, indeed. You are certainly unique in my long string of employers.”
He shrugged. “I have always had a certain tendency toward eccentricity.”
The pleasant warmth faded. “I see. So it is only your eccentric nature that enables you to employ a possible murderess?”
“Umm.”
Annoyed, she pressed on. “Would any murderess do? Or is it only a certain species of murderess you are willing to employ?”
His eyes gleamed. “I am very selective.”
She decided her only option was to abandon the topic. “Let us return to the matter at hand. You still cannot be certain that Miranda actually shot Crane. We are speaking of murder, after all, sir. Surely Lady Ames would not risk such a dangerous deed merely to secure a fortune? On the contrary, I think it’s possible that Miranda is a reckless opportunist who has already killed once to obtain the deciphered recipe from the Book of Secrets and, perhaps, the book itself.”
“Farrell Blue?”
“Yes. If that is true, why would she not kill a second time?”
Emma turned back to the window, her thoughts whirling. “I remember how stunned she appeared when you announced your engagement to me there in the hall that night. I assumed it was because it struck her and everyone else as a terribly unlikely alliance. But I suppose she might have worn just such an expression if she had suddenly realized that her plans had gone awry a second time that evening.”
“She had risked committing murder and had nothing to show for it. The prize was denied her.”
Emma made a face. “I do not care to think of myself as a prize, sir.”
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I did not mean that, the way it sounded,” he muttered. “It was a poor choice of words.”
“Yes, it was.” She sighed and straightened in the seat. “Nevertheless, I suppose it is no worse than thinking of myself as bait.”
His brows drew together in a grim line. “Emma—”
“Returning to our current problem,” she interrupted smoothly, “I do not think anything you have said alters the way in which I shall deal with Miranda.”
“I thought I made it clear, she is dangerous. Very likely a murderess twice over.”
“Yes, but only consider, sir.” Emma gave him a determinedly bright smile. “I am the one person she dares not kill. She desires my help in her scheme.”
Edison sat back slowly. His eyes never left her face. “That fact no doubt gives you some protection from her venom. But you must not take any undue risks, Emma. Listen to her. Hear her proposal. Learn as much as you can, but do not provoke her temper.”
“Believe me, sir, now that the evidence of two murders is mounting against her, I shall make it a point not to do anything foolish or reckless.”
“I would feel infinitely more reassured about the matter if I did not fear our definitions of the term reckless differ greatly.”
“Any man who associates with known smugglers and who does not hesitate to meet a villain at a dockside rendezvous in the middle of
the night is in no position to lecture me on the subject.”
Edison grinned reluctantly. “You really are much too impertinent to make a successful career as a professional companion, you know.”
“With a bit of luck, my finances will soon come right and it will not be necessary for me to go back into service after this post.” She peered out the window. “The carriage is slowing. We have arrived in Miranda’s street.”
Edison glanced out at the row of handsome town houses. “I realize that I’m starting to sound like you when you have one of your premonitions, but I do not like this.”
“What can possibly go wrong?”
“I would rather not contemplate the entire list of things that could go wrong, if you don’t mind. It is far too extensive.” Edison’s jaw was set in rigid lines. “Very well. I will wait here in the carriage while you meet with her. But, Emma, you must promise me that if you feel in any way uneasy, you will not hesitate to leave at once.”
“I give you my word on it.”
The carriage drew to a halt, as Edison had instructed, several doors down from Miranda’s house. Emma alighted quickly and walked the rest of the way.
The neighborhood looked vastly different this afternoon than it had on the night of the ball. On that occasion, Emma recalled, the street had been clogged with carriages. Miranda’s front steps had been thronged with expensively garbed guests. Lights had glowed from every window of her house. Music had echoed from the ballroom. An almost feverish air of activity had animated the scene.
There was no such lively aura about Miranda’s residence today, Emma thought as she went up the steps and banged the knocker. In fact things seemed almost unnaturally quiet. A cool sensation shivered through her. She felt her palms tingle in a too-familiar way. No, please, she thought. Not another premonition. I have had quite enough of that sort of thing of late.
She glanced over her shoulder as she waited for someone to respond to her knock. The other town houses appeared subdued and silent. Of course, it was nearly five o’clock, Emma reminded herself, the hour to see and be seen in the park.
