The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Your Grace.” Morley beckoned from the door. “A moment.”

  “Excuse me.” It disturbed Cole, how little he wanted to leave the room. How strange and solitary he felt at the prospect of losing Imogen’s proximity.

  “I’ll go check on Isobel.” Lady Anstruther stood and reatreated, and Cole watched her go, grappling with stunning regret.

  Resolutely, he followed the chief inspector back into the garden.

  Morley glanced back toward the window of the solarium. “She doesn’t seem to like you, overmuch.”

  Cole made a wry sound. “The feeling is mutual. Or, it was. We seem to have … reconciled our differences for the moment.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Morley nodded. “You see, I know that you were in Her Majesty’s Special Operations Corps. I understand that surveillance and … assassination were your particular specialties.”

  Even from across the path, Argent’s head perked at the word assassination. They’d known this was something they’d had in common ages ago; it was why they now sparred together. It was difficult in a world like theirs to find a man with a similar competency for killing.

  “The worst kept secret in all of London, apparently,” Cole lamented. “I’m the spy everyone recognizes.”

  “In this case, that might be a boon.” Morley studied him in that quiet way he had, the one that made a man feel more like a target than a companion.

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “It’s possible that Lady Anstruther has a dangerous enemy. One that might be dissuaded if it were known she were under your protection.” The volumes of expectation in Morley’s words were unmistakable.

  Cole grimaced as he considered it. Half the London elite had witnessed her embarrassment at his treatment of her the night before. No one would believe her to be defended by him.

  “What did you do or say that made her comfortable enough to all but accuse you of this?” Morley motioned to the strangled woman.

  Trenwyth remembered the delicate feel of Imogen’s throat beneath his hand the night before. The captured thrum of her pulse, the soft press of her sinuous body. The incomparable taste of her.

  She must have been terrified.

  He watched silently as Lady Broadmore was covered and moved to a stretcher, suddenly weak with gladness that it wasn’t Imogen or her sister. “I’ve been an ass,” he admitted to both Morley and himself. Looking up into the unsettling, perceptive eyes of the chief inspector, he asked, “Do you have any clear idea of who could have done this? Any suspects of initial interest?”

  Morley sighed and lifted a paper in his hand. “This list certainly helps, but no. I’ll have to look deeper into Lady Broadmore’s personal life, but I believe that this is connected to Lady Anstruther. Though—” He broke off, his gaze becoming remote.

  “Yes?” Cole demanded sharply.

  “There are some very strange similarities to another unsolved murder case that’s nearly two years old. A prostitute was found strangled, which, unfortunately, is an omnipresent crime in this city. But the parallels to Lady Broadmore’s case are salient. The fact that her eyes were closed is unique, though not unprecedented, as though the killer wanted to pretend she was sleeping rather than dead.”

  Argent lifted a dubious russet brow. “That isn’t much to go on.”

  “That and her … undergarments are completely ripped away,” Morley continued with an uncomfortable gesture. “As I’m certain you’re aware, lady’s underthings are sewn with an opening between the legs. Rather makes the entire—er—area accessible, doesn’t it? So why strip only that article away, and not the rest of her garments?”

  With a perplexed frown, he stepped to the stretcher and lifted the white sheet. “Also, the utter lack of previous or subsequent violence is worth noting. She hasn’t a bruise anywhere on her body but her neck. Rape is generally a violent affair, more violent than sexual if you ask me. But in this case, and the one I referenced, dominance doesn’t seem to be the motivation. It’s almost as though the perpetrator would be a lover.” Covering Lady Broadmore’s visage, he stood and faced them. “Though … what a murder of a viscountess in Belgravia and that of a kitten of St. James’s Street have to do with each other is rather baffling.”

  Something inside Cole snapped, and he stalked to Morley, seizing his arm. “Kitten? Two years ago? Who was the victim?”

  Morley tensed; the muscle bunching beneath his hand was thicker than Cole had expected. He stared at Cole as though he’d sprouted horns, but he answered the question after a moment of frank consideration. “Can’t say I remember the name just now. Florence or Fiona or something … though that was her given name on her birth record. These prostitutes are generally in the habit of ascribing themselves, and each other, clever pseudonyms and the like.”

  “Ginny?” Cole pressed desperately. “Could her name have been Ginny?”

  Morley’s eyes sharpened, and Cole wondered if his entire world might be sliced to shreds by the man’s next words. “That name does sound familiar. In fact, I believe it was brought up that evening. I’ll have to consult the case file and it’s in a different borough, over at the records office at number Four Whitehall Place, Scotland Yard.”

  “I want that file,” Cole growled.

  Morley attempted to shrug him off, but Cole’s grip was ironclad.

  Argent moved behind Morley, his shoulders bunched in readiness. “Careful, Trenwyth,” he warned.

  “I will see it,” Cole gritted through his teeth. “Try to keep it from me.”

  “Why would you want to?” Argent queried, studying him as he would a newly discovered species of man, with interest and a bit of hesitation.

  Realizing he was getting nowhere, Cole released the chief inspector and turned toward the fountain, glad to see its gruesome contents had been removed. “I visited the Bare Kitten before…” He held up his left arm. “There was a … woman, Ginny, with whom I spent the night. I … took something of hers all that time ago, and I wanted to…” Christ, this was difficult.

  “What did you take?” Morley queried.

  Her virtue. It wasn’t like he could return it to her, but he could somehow make amends. He might even do what he could to make an honest woman out of her. A prostitute duchess, wouldn’t that beat all?

  “That is my business. But if she’s … dead I…” God. Had he been searching for her ghost all this time? Had his tragedy become hers, as well? The very thought slammed into him with the weight of a blacksmith hammer, threatening to break him at the core. His knees weakened as grief and fear washed over his skin and filled his mouth with the taste of bitter gall.

  “Tell you what, Trenwyth. I’ll request the file from wherever it’s been archived, and when it’s in my hands I’ll invite you down to my office to peruse its contents.”

  Cole forced himself to turn back to the man and speak to him, even though all he wanted to do was break something. “I’d very much appreciate it.”

  “You are owed, for your sacrifice in the field, if nothing else.” Morley’s gaze flicked to his hand.

  “How long do you think it’ll take?” Cole pressed.

  “I’ll contact you the day after next.”

  “Until then.” He nodded to both men before making his way back toward the tree. He knew he should take his leave of Lady Anstruther, but it somehow seemed wrong to do so, because of his body’s rather aggressive reaction to her nearness.

  He’d never promised any kind of fidelity to Ginny, that he knew. But if he had, whatever happened to him in the presence of Imogen would have been nothing short of a sin.

  Please, God, he prayed for the first time since his faith had bled out of him in a pit of hell in Constantinople. Don’t let her be dead. Not like this. If Ginny had been the victim of a crime similar to the one he’d witnessed today, Cole knew it would be the end of him.

  For his last vestige of hope would die just as violently. And there would truly be nothing left.

  CHAPTER SIXTEENr />
  To Imogen, sleep was as elusive as the stars behind storm clouds these days. She knew it was there, where it had always been, but her exhausted mind remained restless and churning. A factory of predictions and anxieties.

  Once upon a time, she would have wandered her garden in search of peace, refuge, and a bit of bracing fresh air. Now it had become something else. The stage of a murder. A murder that was perhaps meant for her.

  She’d think it imprudent to be wandering through the garden now were two policemen not stationed at her home, one within and one patrolling the grounds outside. Chief Inspector Morley promised her the best Scotland Yard had to offer, leaving her with a blithe and burly Irishman named Sean O’Mara, and also a rather dashing North African gentleman, Roman Rathbone, whose marble-dark eyes gleamed in a way that suggested he’d spent more of his years misbehaving than enforcing the law. Imogen had warily sensed a spark of significant attraction from both men in regard to Isobel.

  She’d have to watch for that, as her sister was obviously too young and tender for either of their attentions.

  The full summer moon hung low and heavy in the clear night sky, and Imogen pulled her wrapper close against a moist chill that chased away the heat of the day. On nights such as this, torches and lanterns were not needed, as the moon provided enough illumination once the eyes adjusted to the silver-white gleam.

  Though Lady Broadmore’s body had been taken to the morgue, and no blood was spilled, the base of the satyr fountain still seemed tainted. Stained by something more gory than blood, more sinister than even death.

  Imogen skirted the fountain altogether, padding down a path that wound through wildflowers as she measured the many possible sources of threats to her life and family.

  Not Trenwyth, she thought with relief. He’d become many unfamiliar and dangerous things in their time apart, but not a rapist. Not a murderer of the innocent and helpless.

  “So who, then?” she asked the moon in a soft whisper. And why? Supposing Lady Broadmore’s death truly had anything to do with her, the question became all about motivation, didn’t it? Had the murder been meant to protect her? Or in some sort of morbid effigy of her?

  Imogen thought of her beloved childhood cat, Icarus. He’d adored her, and to demonstrate that high regard, he’d often leave the corpses of little birds or mice at the foot of her bed. He’d sit next to them, amber eyes gleaming with pride and satisfaction, awaiting her prompt and expected adulation.

  Was this the message the killer had intended? Lady Broadmore had seemed bent on making an enemy of Imogen. Had one of the men in her employ or—dare she think it?—a guest left her a gruesome gift in the form of her adversary’s corpse?

  The other more frightening possibility was that the killer had, indeed, mistaken Lady Broadmore for Imogen in the dark. Once he’d gotten his hands on her and discovered his mistake, he had still carried out his dastardly crime upon the wrong woman.

  This seemed most likely the case. Imogen chewed on her lip as she contemplated the next question very carefully.

  Who wanted her dead?

  Barton was always a possibility. Though she’d been certain at the time that she’d stabbed him in the artery, perhaps she’d been mistaken. He’d never been found. What if he’d been stalking the shadows all this time, waiting to finish what he’d started in that terrifying alley behind the Bare Kitten? If he’d let his anger fester nearly two years to an obsessive point, it made perfect sense that he should return for her with the intention of carrying out his rape and mortal revenge.

  She really should have notified the inspectors of him. They had the list of former criminals in their possession, and the chance remained that it could be one of them. However, she’d unfairly left out a significant piece of the puzzle.

  Because Trenwyth had been there. Because she still wasn’t certain that she was safe from a charge of murder.

  And because if she made it known, even to the police, that she’d once been a Kitten of St. James’s Street, everything she had worked for would be ruined. Her charity disgraced. Poor Isobel would be a pariah. She might lose the patronage and friendship of Millie, Farah, and Mena. Indeed, though she’d made a brittle truce with Cole this very afternoon, he still might carry through with his threat to bring into question the validity of her marriage to Lord Anstruther.

  He’d be so angry with her for lying to him. She was certain of that now.

  Lord, what a mess she seemed to make of everything. She’d been a fool to think that she could run from her troubles. That money and a title would erase the misdeeds of her past.

  That she wouldn’t make new and grave mistakes.

  Who else had had access to her garden that night? Only all of London, she thought woefully. Even a few characters from her past. Jeremy Carson, the sweet barkeep who misquoted just about everyone. Dr. Longhurst, a dark horse afflicted with brilliance. A brilliance accompanied by a certain amount of awkwardness in society. A touch of cold indifference, as when he’d informed her of poor Molly’s death.

  Was it possible he …

  The unmistakable sound of flesh connecting with flesh in aggression broke her reverie, and she abruptly realized she’d drifted close to the stone and iron fence that separated her garden from that of Trenwyth Hall.

  Her breath accelerated in time with her heart as she drifted close enough to rest her hand upon the ivy crawling the iron trellis, and impeding her view. Grunts and growls provided a lethal melody to the percussion of violent strikes that she felt down to her very bones.

  What was going on? Had Inspector O’Mara chased an assailant onto the grounds of Trenwyth Hall? Had the duke, himself, found someone in his own garden?

  Imogen attempted to part the thick ivy, but was thwarted by her lack of strength. Then she remembered what Cole had said when he’d appeared in the garden that morning. The ancient tree, not twelve paces away, hid a passage between their properties.

  She didn’t know what time it was; late enough that dew had begun to collect on the moss beneath her feet as she hurried to duck beneath the ponderous branches of the Wych elm. Reaching the trunk, she instantly noted the part where the stone and mortar had crumbled away; leaving enough space for someone to shimmy through. Though how a man of Trenwyth’s size managed remained a mystery to the laws of man and nature.

  She could feel the striations of the tree bark snag at her shawl as she shimmied through the fissure and held close to the stone wall. Crouching down, she peered from beneath the low-hanging branches and caught her breath as her mind struggled to process the magnitude of what she saw. The sheer masculine brutality of it.

  Cole brawled, but not with a murderer.

  Or perhaps she was wrong about that. In fact, she became certain she was, because two men who moved and struck like this were physically made for little else but systematic execution.

  The moonlight reflected off the golden warmth of his naked torso, and burnished his bronze hair in a shroud of silver beams. He seemed to shimmer like a mirage, the illusion made more severe by the incomprehensible speed with which he moved against his opponent.

  Christopher Argent, of all people.

  The grounds of Trenwyth Hall were decidedly more grass than garden, and the two men fought each other clad in naught but loose trousers. Like Imogen, even their feet were bare.

  Ducking a brutal blow, Cole tucked his lithe body and rolled out of Argent’s reach, unfolding to stand a great distance off. They circled each other like predators fighting over territory, eyes gleaming and feral, teeth bared, and muscles knotted. Each looking for a weakness in the other to exploit and finding none.

  Judging by the sweat slicking their hair at the temples and creating a rather intriguing sheen on their scandalously bared flesh, they’d been at this play for quite some time. Each held what looked like blunted metal knives in their right hands.

  A thin line of blood dripped from Trenwyth’s eyebrow, following the line of his temple, but he hardly seemed to note its existence
.

  Imogen knew she should not be watching this, but she couldn’t help but play the dishonorable voyeur to such an emollient moment. Violence was about to explode between them, and a shameful, primitive part of her wanted to watch the detonation.

  For the artistic value, if nothing else.

  These men, locked in a timeless engagement, were not built for this era of elegance and refinement. They were creatures of combat and carnage, their muscles crafted in layered ropes and swells advertising a strength born of hardship and labor.

  And both men had scars. Such awful scars that Imogen had to clear a sheen of sorrow from her eyes with a few rapid blinks.

  Argent’s back was to her, but the pale giant’s topography was a map of torture. A web of once-burned skin covered one entire shoulder like a plate of gruesome armor. A myriad of puckered wounds suggested several battles with a knife. And maybe a bullet or two.

  Millie LeCour’s stoic husband was certainly more than he seemed.

  Imogen couldn’t help but catalogue the differences between the two men. Argent’s decidedly wider shoulders buttressed a bulk not often seen on this island. Surely he came from Viking stock, his skin pink with exertion and lightly freckled. His hair darker than copper but lighter than wine. He moved with an ease not often seen on men of his size. As though the elements made room for his passage and prepared for the brutal force he brought with him.

  Trenwyth, on the other hand, stood taller than any man had a right to be. His sinew was forced to stretch over thick bones and layered with veins. His abdomen seemed to have one more flexed ripple than his opponent’s, and Imogen’s gaze hungrily followed the line between them until it ran into a waistband.

  He stalked and circled on bent knees, the predatory savagery on his face contradicted by a calculating gleam in his lupine eyes. Here was the wolf she recognized from that long-ago day in the Bare Kitten. Generally so stoic and self-contained, so certain of his uncontested reign.

  And yet. He had to perfect his skill, didn’t he? To remain at the head, a leader and noble, he must keep his mind and body honed to a dagger’s point.