The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Just because Argent worked for Scotland Yard now didn’t mean the man had stopped killing.

  Spilling blood became a delicious addiction if one wasn’t careful, Morley reflected.

  He should know.

  Argent clattered up to the Anstruther gate behind him on his own bay steed. The strident assassin-turned-lawman having fetched him at dawn, a mere hour after Morley had collapsed into bed.

  He would like to have claimed that something common like a woman or a troubling case had kept him up into the wee hours of the morning. But he couldn’t. It had, in fact, been the spilling of blood. His new and dangerous addiction. These nocturnal goings-on would put him in an early grave, of that he was certain.

  But there was no help for it now. No stopping him.

  “You look like the devil used you for his mistress last night.” Argent slid off his bay and tossed the reins to the same footman Morley had. “Have you taken to some new and dangerous vice?”

  The observant assassin’s insight was his greatest asset in the investigative field, but Morley cursed it this morning. “If I believed in the devil, I’d think you his bastard, Argent,” Morley quipped.

  “A better sire then some I’ve known,” the former assassin replied gravely.

  On this they agreed.

  “I wouldn’t have stirred you had I not known you’d want to see this.” Argent pulled out a notebook, a standard practice for all investigators. Unless a man could organize his thoughts and recall them as perfectly as Dorian Blackwell, he needed to write them down. “It isn’t every day a countess is found raped and strangled to death in a Belgravia terrace garden.”

  “Lady Broadmore was a viscountess, Argent,” Morley corrected, nodding to the constable who held open the gate. “Lady Anstruther is a countess.”

  Argent shrugged, scratching at the russet shadow-beard stubbling his hard jaw with a heavy hand. “Never was very good at telling the difference,” he said casually. “Never much cared to learn.”

  “You’ll need to learn the law and structures if you want to thrive in this society, Inspector,” Morley assessed. “Scotland Yard isn’t the underworld. Everything must be aboveboard.” Even as he said this, Morley called himself nine kinds of liar. As an inspector, his words represented an absolute truth. As for his nighttime employment … such was not the case. Though, he had to admit, an intimate acquaintance with strictures and laws did help one to break them.

  Argent slid him an even look. “Survival is a talent of mine, Morley, or have you forgotten?”

  Morley hadn’t forgotten that once, a long time past, Argent had stabbed him and saved his life all in the course of one night. “All I remember is that it is better that we are allies than enemies.”

  “Better for whom?” Argent didn’t smile exactly, but his cold blue eyes danced with amusement.

  “For the both of us, I imagine.”

  “Do you know what I think, Morley?” The assassin turned to him at the base of the entry stairs.

  “No one can quite tell what you think, Argent. Inscrutability is one of your few merits.”

  Argent ignored his attempt at levity. “I think you allow people to underestimate you, in fact, I think you encourage it.”

  Suddenly uncomfortable, Morley turned toward the steps. “We haven’t time to dally, not when there’s been a murder.”

  “Dead bodies keep.” Argent gripped his shoulder, squeezing the muscle found there. “You tailor your jackets to hide the strength in your shoulders. It is the source of much speculation between Blackwell and me, why a powerful man would conceal his power rather than wield it.”

  Morley shrugged the big hand off, pulling an air of nonchalance around him like a cloak. “I wield as much influence as I desire,” he hedged. “Besides, elegance is the male fashion, is it not?”

  Argent was not amused. “You soften your vowels like a born gentleman, but walk with the light-footed swagger of a thief from the East End. You’ve been a soldier, a killer, the best marksman in the Royal Highland Watch, or so they say. You were no one until the queen knighted you for your bravery, Sir Carlton Morley. Your past is as clear as steam in a pall of coal smoke.”

  “What are you getting at, Argent?” All levity fled the interaction.

  “It’s less about what I’m getting at, and more about what you’re up to…” Argent lifted a skeptical brow. “You’re a walking corpse these days. A man who eats little and sleeps even less. The others are starting to think you’re a man possessed, but I’ve seen that look before. You are a man obsessed. The question is, with what?”

  Morley decided to tell the truth. “I’m a man obsessed with justice, Argent.”

  “There are many forms of justice.”

  Returning the hard stare with one of his own, Morley stepped closer. “So there is.”

  “Does your justice have anything to do with the exonerated criminals disappearing with alarming frequency—”

  “Leave. It. Alone.” Morley enunciated every syllable in a whisper threaded with steel.

  Those eerie arctic eyes narrowed, and the two men stood toe-to-toe, nose to nose, each muscle bunched with tension, blood feeding the essence of violence into each breath.

  Most men hadn’t a prayer against Christopher Argent, but the assassin had one thing right … Morley was a man used to being underestimated.

  And often used that to his advantage.

  What Argent didn’t know could hurt him very badly, indeed.

  Eventually, Argent stepped aside, his mild look returning as he swept his hand toward the grand entry. “To the task at hand.”

  Morley inspected the exterior of the Anstruther manse, willing the fire in his blood to die. The house was an elegant, eighteen-room dark stone structure that drew the eye away from the uniform white grand houses dominating the aristocratic neighborhood of Belgravia. At this early hour, the lords and ladies of the ton hadn’t yet stirred from their overstuffed beds, many of them having whiled away the night at some useless revelry or other. Most of them would have tucked in at the same early hour he did, but the idle rich needn’t wake until noon.

  They placed the safety of their borough in his hands, and that was a responsibility that never slept.

  And neither did he.

  “Tell me what you know,” he ordered as they mounted the front steps.

  “Lady Anstruther hosted a charity event last night which, as her next-door neighbor, I attended. The guest list had more lords and ladies than Burke’s Peerage. The deceased viscountess was seated near the head of our table between the Duke of Trenwyth and Dorian Blackwell. If you ask me, she was a tittering, ill-tempered quim.”

  “I’ll thank you to bite your vulgar tongue when we’re in the presence of the countess,” Morley admonished.

  “You’re welcome to bite my vulgar ass, and I’ll say what I like,” Argent volleyed back tonelessly. “Besides, Lady Anstruther is friends with my wife, and acquainted with my vulgar tongue.”

  It was Morley’s turn to lift a brow.

  “Not in that way.” Argent scowled, returning to consult his notes. “The body was found by Lady Anstruther’s younger sister, a Miss Isobel Pritchard, as she came home from some husband-hunting ball right before dawn.”

  Pritchard … Why did that name tug at his memory?

  They found Imogen Millburn, Countess Anstruther, and Isobel clinging to each other for support in a parlor the color of spring mint leaves and marigolds.

  They stood when the butler, a rather rotund man named Cheever, announced him.

  Identical pairs of round hazel eyes stared over at him. From what Morley surmised, the sisters resembled each other in everything but affect. Though both were fair-haired and delicately structured, the elder sister, Lady Anstruther, looked at him with the weary gaze of a woman who had seen much. Including, if he was not mistaken, death.

  How unexpected.

  Young Isobel held a handkerchief to her pale cheeks, catching the tears streaming from eyes rimmed red wi
th woe.

  “Chief Inspector.” Still clad in a voluminous lavender night robe decorated with violet flowers, Lady Anstruther stepped toward him with her hand outstretched. A remarkably casual gesture for a countess. “Thank you for coming.”

  “My lady.” Morley bent over her hand, noting that the other was still a captive of Isobel’s desperate grasp. “I’m very sorry for this distressing situation. Who would you prefer to show me the body?”

  “I’ll show you to the garden,” the countess answered steadily. “It’s just through here.”

  “Imogen, no!” Isobel protested, tugging on her sister’s hand. “You shouldn’t have to look again, it’s too, too horrible.”

  Lady Anstruther only kissed her sister’s cheek, distracting her while she pried the girl’s white-fingered grasp from her hand. “Isobel, darling, it would be polite to offer Chief Inspector Morley and Mr. Argent a cup of tea, would it not?” she asked gently.

  “Tea?” The pale girl, who looked no older than seventeen, blinked as though she’d never heard the word before.

  “I like mine brewed strong as Turkish coffee,” Argent said softly.

  Unsurprisingly, her ploy worked, and the young woman seemed to return from whatever stupor fear and fatality had created. “We—we have coffee, if you prefer it to tea, Mr. Argent.” Her own smile was shy and watery as she smoothed the skirts of her rumpled peach ball gown that confirmed that she hadn’t been to bed yet.

  “That would be grand.”

  Lady Anstruther took immediate advantage of her sister’s distraction. “This way, Chief Inspector.”

  He followed her out of the parlor and down a hall choked with art and antiques toward two French doors that presumably led to the terrace garden. A pair of constables in their blue uniforms stood vigil at the doors. Their eyes upon Lady Anstruther in her nightclothes, as modest as they were, still glittered with both intrigue and hunger.

  It hadn’t escaped Morley’s notice that she was, indeed, an uncommonly lovely woman. Her hair a stunning gold, shaded with tones of red. Her eyes a gentle confusion of greens, golds, and darker hues. Her robe outlined a slight body with delicate curves.

  His notice of her beauty was more a detection of it, than anything. He looked at her not like a man would a woman, but like an inspector would a suspect. Or a witness.

  Nothing more.

  This confirmed a dilemma he’d been contemplating for quite some time. Something was wrong with him. Something grave and serious.

  But he hadn’t time to brood about it now.

  “How long have you been acquainted with Lady Broadmore, the victim?” he queried, staring down the constables until they noticed, panicked, and found something on their boots worth very close inspection.

  “I only became acquainted with her for the first time last night,” Lady Anstruther replied. “I realized immediately that further acquaintance would be undesired by either of us.”

  “That’s a brave confession to make about the woman who was murdered in your garden.”

  “I am not her murderer. What have I to fear?”

  “She was found on your property. There are accounts of you quarreling with this woman. Lady Anstruther, as of right now you are first on our list of suspects.”

  “While we didn’t quarrel, exactly, we certainly didn’t agree on anything.” Lady Anstruther picked her way carefully through a short path choked with wildflowers and swept to the side, soberly gesturing down at the deceased.

  Something Morley thought long-dead flared inside of him. A memory, one he held locked in the dark vault where his heart had once been, transposed itself onto the murdered viscountess.

  A golden-haired beauty prone in peaceful repose. Indeed, one could believe her sleeping, were it not for the unnatural stillness of her breast. For the blue tingeing her lips and the gray painting her skin the color of the slate sky.

  Death used a rather obvious palette.

  In his memory, the girl’s body was tainted with sludge and silt from the river Thames, discarded beneath a bridge in Southwark rather than swathed in sunlight next to a playful fountain. A coarse frock had barely covered the evidence of her brutal death instead of a ball gown of magenta silk.

  But the woman on the shore of the Thames had bruises on her thighs … and blood.

  Caroline. His beloved sister. His twin.

  She’d also been strangled to death and discarded like so much rubbish.

  A familiar white rage drowned out everything but the evidence. Tattered undergarments, shredded to ribbons, floated limply in the Anstruther fountain. The countess’s skirts were twisted above her knees, though her silk stockings and slippers remained intact.

  All evidence pointed to rape … but he’d require the body examined before he could be certain. Once his suspicion was confirmed, he could mobilize.

  He’d conduct his inquest, find the culprit, and make certain justice was meted out.

  Justice. It wasn’t a new obsession. Only an intensifying one.

  A gentle voice permeated the roaring in his ears. “Chief Inspector? Sir?” The past melted from his vision, and the concerned features of Lady Anstruther replaced them. “Are you all right? You’ve gone rather pale.” She placed a hand on his sleeve, observing him with steady, watchful eyes.

  Needing an anchor for his fervent thoughts, he reached into his coat pocket, and smoothed his thumb across the perforations of the sealed letter he found there. Perhaps he’d consult with Dr. Francis Aubrey-Dencourt. The man was not only a medical genius, but specialized in forensic medicine. Their professional correspondence had become ambiguously personal of late. Dare he say, more than just friendly? And while he didn’t care to examine the sense of indulgence he felt over the good doctor’s letters, he didn’t feel that asking for a favor would be out of the question.

  “Pardon me,” he said shortly, searching for a brief explanation. “I hurried here without breakfasting first.”

  “Of course.” She released his arm, patting his sleeve. “Allow me to call for Cheever, and he’ll have Cook send up extra breakfast.”

  “No need.” Narrowing his eyes, he stayed the woman by grasping her arm.

  She stilled like a rabbit caught in a snare, and Morley deduced that she was no stranger to violence. “I must say, I find your composure remarkable, Lady Anstruther. Does the fact that a woman was found murdered and sexually assaulted in your garden not at all disturb you?”

  At this, Lady Anstruther winced and wrapped her arms around her middle in an oddly childlike gesture. “Chief Inspector Morley, I assure you I’m not only disturbed by this, I’m horrified and revolted. But, I confess that this isn’t the most upsetting thing to have happened in the course of my life. And, as I’m sure you’ll find out upon further investigation, before my fortuitous marriage to the earl, I was employed as a nurse at St. Margaret’s Royal Hospital. So, you see, this is also not my first experience with death, even one so gruesome as this.”

  Morley searched her eyes and found only sincerity and regret. Either the woman was in earnest, or she was a better actress than Argent’s wife, Millie LeCour.

  He noted the capable delicacy of her hands, and silently compared it to the wide span and thickness of the finger marks marring the vicountess’s neck. Whether Lady Anstruther was involved or not, she certainly hadn’t assaulted and strangled the victim.

  “I need to establish just when this occurred,” he stated. “Do you recall the last time you saw Lady Broadmore?”

  “It would have been at dinner,” she recalled, wrinkling a troubled forehead. “So, perhaps half past nine o’clock. Since we didn’t get along, I assumed she’d left early.”

  “You assumed? You did not see her leave?”

  Her eyes shifted away from his. “I—I’d had a trying evening, you see, so I came here, to the garden to compose myself.”

  “And how long did you tarry in the garden?”

  “Not long, maybe a quarter hour or less, but I didn’t see the viscountess
after that.” She slid a glance to the body and closed her eyes briefly. “The ball ended around half past two, and I went straight to bed. I believe this happened sometime between then and when Isobel and my mother returned home at five. Isobel gave Mother a sleeping powder, and came down here for some tea and to take in the air. That’s when she found … when we sent for Mr. Argent.”

  Morley nodded, making a notation of the times in his notepad. “So to your knowledge, you were the absolute last person alone in the garden before your sister arrived home early this morning to find Lady Broadmore like this?” he clarified.

  A heavy, protracted silence caused him to look up and find that all the color had drained from the countess’s face.

  “Lady Anstruther,” he pressed. “This is very important. Who was the last person you identified in the garden?”

  Lifting her chin over a difficult swallow, she looked to the stately pale mansion towering over her garden wall. “Collin Talmage,” she answered in a quivering voice. “The Duke of Trenwyth.”

  * * *

  It took a herculean amount of will on Cole’s part not to swipe the entire mess of intelligence paperwork into the fireplace and tell the Home Office to go hang themselves. Even one-handed, he was still more capable than half the agents in the field, and he’d been relegated to little better than a fucking secretary.

  A secretary with a lofty title and a great deal of power and influence, but even so.

  He was not cut out for shuffling papers and making weighty assessments. He’d been born a man of action, more comfortable with decisions made in the moment and acted upon decisively.

  Besides, he couldn’t focus on something so pedestrian as paperwork. Not with a cockstand that seemed to appear every other minute. Incidentally, the precise rate that the memory of last night’s encounter with Lady Anstruther forced its way into his mind

  Perhaps now was a good time to call upon Argent and schedule a sparring session. Restless aggression simmered beneath his skin, and his neighbor was the only man who didn’t take his rank or deformity into account. To the cold, logical bastard, Trenwyth’s impediment was all the more reason to train. To become stronger. Faster.