Lady Killer (32 page)

Clio’s mouth opened and closed. “You think that I am here for the viscount’s money?”

“Could be. And no one would blame you. In fact, I’ve been told to offer you ten thousand pounds.”

“For what?” Clio had to clench her hands to keep them from shaking.

“For your departure. You see, it has been suggested that you might be doing this just to interfere with His Lordship’s wedding to your cousin. And there are those who have a hefty investment in seeing that go forward. So they were thinking, what if you just left?”

Clio struggled to keep her hiccups at bay. “You wrong me, sir, with your accusations, and your filthy offers. Do you remember how I said I was sorry you hurt your head bending over to get my spoon the other night?”

“Yes,” Corin replied, nodding.

“Well, I am not. In fact, I wish I had a platter here right now so I could hit you over the head myself.”

The air crackled with tension for a moment, and then Corin smiled widely. “I was just checking. I had to be sure, you know. I don’t want to see Miles get hurt again.”

“You mean—you mean you said all that just to test me?”

“Aye.”

“You could just have asked me. There was no reason to insult me like that.”

“There certainly was. If your plan was to interfere, or make some money, you would have been surprised by my offer, and possibly pleased, but not insulted. Your being insulted is a credit to you.”

“Do you remember, before, when I said I wished I had a platter to hit you over the head with?” Clio asked sweetly, but her eyes were narrowed. When Corin nodded, she went on. “I was wrong. I wish I had a hundred platters. Actually, make that a thousand.”

“A thousand what?” a voice asked from the threshold of the bedroom.

Corin and Clio both jumped. “You might try entering a room like a gentleman, Thr—Your Lordship, when there is a lady present,” Corin rebuked him as Miles strode toward the bed. “How long had you been there eavesdropping on us?”

“Not long, why? Did I miss something good? What does Clio want a thousand of?”

“Platters,” Clio explained in a strangely tight voice. He was dressed from head to foot in black, which exaggerated every fabulous angle of his body. The sight rendered her entirely breathless.

“That’s right, platters to hit me over the head with,” Corin stepped in to explain, a little too eagerly. “I was cheating at backgammon again.”

Miles looked at Clio. “Is that the problem?”

She just nodded, glad for the obfuscation and still too stunned to speak.

“Very well. Corin, as punishment for your ungallant behavior, I order you to go and get a thousand platters for Lady Thornton. Heavy ones. And don’t hurry. We won’t be needing you any more tonight.” Miles was speaking to his manservant but he was looking at Clio. Her body was tingling all over.

Clio was so entranced by the sight of Miles, by the expression in his eyes, by the heat in his voice, that she forgot all about Corin’s insulting test. The sound of the door shutting behind him and Toast was the only thing that broke the spell of Miles’s gaze.

“I have interesting news,” he told her, crossing to the bed and taking her hand.

“You are feeling subtle?” Clio inquired.

The corners of Miles’s lips curled up into a half smile. “I always feel subtle when I am with you. But this is too important. I just received this from Which House.” He held out a wrinkled piece of paper.

A line zigzagged through the middle of it, twisting around groups of squares and rectangles, and ultimately ending up where it began. It took Clio a moment to understand it. “A map. This is a map.”

“Of your itinerary last night,” Miles agreed triumphantly.

“Where did you get it?”

“Inigo drew it. Apparently he was worried you were not working hard enough and followed you to see how the investigation was going. Your clients certainly are demanding.” Clio blushed and was about to interrupt when Miles went on. “It goes from Which House here, and from here around the neighborhood. But nowhere on that map do you even approach Lady Starrat’s house.”

“Which means—”

“You did not kill her and you are not the vampire,” Miles finished the sentence for her. He watched quietly as the news really settled in and felt a strange sense almost of loss. She had needed him when she thought she needed someone to protect the world from her. Now that need had vanished.

“Then the note must have been sent by the vampire himself, to upset and confuse me.”

“Note?”

“The afternoon of the day we found Flora in my bed, I received a note that said, ‘You do not know what you are.’ I assumed that someone was warning me that I was the vampire. But now I think it must just be part of the vampire’s plot to scare me. It was because of that note that I went to the meeting today, in the crypt. Because the message was written in the same hand. I was hoping that whomever had summoned me—” Clio’s voice trailed off as she caught at an idea. “If the vampire sent me those notes, then it must have been him I was supposed to meet. He must have hurt Justin after I lost consciousness. But Justin’s presence scared him away before he finished with me.”

Justin. Miles did not like the idea of being beholden to Justin Greeley for anything. “Are you sure Justin was not the person responsible?”

“Positive. He just followed me there and decided to take advantage of finding me alone.” She paused. “He really is locked safely away in Newgate?”

“Yes,” Miles answered, amazed that he had ever been jealous of the man. “He is safe inside Newgate.” He was reminded of something. “Do you have either of the notes you received? Can I see one?”

Clio shook her head. “I no longer have them. I destroyed them.”

“How?”

“First I tore them into very small pieces. Then I, well—I ate them.”

Miles stared at her for a moment. “You ate them,” he repeated. He tipped his head back and laughed. “Of course. So that no one would see them and be concerned. You did it because you are always trying to protect other people from yourself.”

Clio spoke without thinking. “At least I am not always trying to protect myself from other people.” She regretted the words almost as soon as she had spoken. “I am sorry, Your Lordship, I shouldn’t have—”

“If you are going to probe the secrets of my soul,” Miles said, interrupting with a wry smile, “you really should call me ‘Miles.’ ”

“Miles,” Clio repeated.

“Better. I never trust anyone who addresses me ‘Your Lordship.’ ”

“Corin does,” Clio pointed out.

“Exactly,” Miles nodded. “I met Corin when he broke into my country estate years ago. Definitely not to be trusted.”

“What about people who call you ‘viscount’?”

“Worse. Miscreants of the lowest order.” He rose, crossed to a table, picked up a silver salver, and returned, holding it toward Clio. “Does this look anything like either of the notes you received?”

Clio reached for the piece of parchment on the silver platter, but Miles pulled it from her. “Don’t touch it. Just look.”

“
‘Do not try to fool me, Dearbourn,’
” Clio read aloud. “No. Why?”

“It was found clutched in the hand of the person I sent to Newgate to impersonate you,” Miles explained succinctly.

“Clutched in her hand?”

“His hand. I had a man impersonate you. And yes. He was dead.”

“Someone killed my imposter?”

“Yes. Just before someone tried to kill you.”

“Not kill. Justin only wanted to kidnap me. But—” She got a faraway look.

“What?”

Clio shook her head. “Nothing.” She did not really think Justin was the person behind the death of the imposter. Although it would clarify what he had meant when he had spoken of the “precautions” he had taken to prevent anyone from reporting her missing. If everyone thought she was dead, no one would notice her absence. “How was sh—he killed?”

“By this,” Miles nodded at the paper. “He crushed it in his hand when he died, but you can still make out the lines of the original folds. I’ve seen it before in Europe. When you unfold the packet, the center leaps up, propelling whatever is there into the air. In this case it was poison, probably white arsenic. The warden reports hearing a sneeze when he opened the message, which would certainly have expedited things, but that would not have been necessary. One good breath and he was dead.”

Clio shivered. “Do you have any idea who could have sent it? Any idea who went to see him? Or rather, me?”

“Yes. You are very popular. Sixty people materialized to try to get a look at you, but they were only allowed to peer in through a small slit so that the imposter would go undetected, and they had to leave their names. My men are still going over them.”

Clio nodded, lost in thought. Then she looked up. “At least the note shows that whoever did the murder knew it was an imposter and was not deliberately trying to kill me,” she said with an attempt at airiness. “That counts for something. And the vampire, or whomever ordered the meeting today, also failed to kill me. I must be very lucky.”

“Yes, I expect that explains it. One sharp blow to the ankle, one blunt object to the head, and one knife to the ribs. Luck.”

“My ankle does not hurt at all anymore,” Clio said. “At least not compared to my side.” A frown flickered across her features.

“Are you in a great deal of pain, Clio?”

“No. But I am very frustrated. In a normal investigation, you can try to figure out why someone is doing something bad, and at least use that as a guide and possibly a lever. But with a fiend, there is nothing to hold on to, no rational explanation. The vampire is killing people because he needs their blood to live. Period. Which leaves us no closer to catching him than before. And I feel like time is running out.”

In so many ways.
She looked toward the window, toward the sliver of moon that hung high in the sky. Learning that she was not the vampire did not bring her the relief she had expected, did not make the waning moon any easier to look at, and she knew why. It was because it still meant the passage of time. It was past midnight. In four days she would still lose Miles.

“Tell me again about finding the vampire three years ago,” she said, breaking the silence. “About exactly what it was like when you came upon him.”

Miles stiffened, but he answered. “We followed him into a room. He was leaning over a girl. I put my sword behind his back. He turned around. There was blood everywhere. Blood on her pillow. Blood on his clothes. Blood on his hands. Blood on his lips. We fought. He escaped. I chased him.”

Clio continued to stare out the window, but she did not see anything. She was lost in thought. She knew she was missing something, something vital, but she could not figure out what it was. Finally, she turned her gaze to Miles. He had begun fiddling with an object he had picked up from the table beside the bed and she realized it was the inner workings of the clock she had kicked over three days earlier.

“I am sorry I broke that,” she offered.

“It does not matter. Time marches on indefatigably whether or not the clock counts it,” Miles replied with a hint of bitterness. “Besides, it’s not broken. Only misaligned.” He tinkered with something, then turned a little knob and the clock began to click in a steady rhythm.

Clio could see the spring moving, the golden gears spinning, each into the next, with finely tuned precision. “It’s like an ideal little world, where everything fits together perfectly,” she said with real admiration. “It is beautiful.”

“It is an illusion.” Miles brought his fist down on the clock, hard, reducing it to a pile of bent metal, and now the bitterness was palpable. “Even the slightest change in pressure or temperature can upset the balance, and as soon as the balance is upset it stops working.” With a casual motion, he swept the pieces onto the floor, then looked at her with strangely blank eyes. “Nothing perfect can endure, Clio. No matter how much money you have, you can’t buy time.”

He stood and began moving from her, but Clio reached out and grabbed his hand. “No,” she agreed in a low voice, crackling with urgency, “but you can steal it.”

He turned back toward her, slowly. “Steal it?”

Clio nodded. “By ignoring it. By filling it impossibly full. By losing track of minutes and hours.” She pulled him toward her and he came. “I will show you how.”

He looked down at her, her magical smile, the hope in her eyes, and his face was impassive. But his mind was reeling. He did not, could not, deserve her. “Why me?” he asked finally. The question was almost inaudible.

“What?”

“Why me? Why did you let me make love to you?”

Clio hesitated. Looking at him, gleaming in the moonlight before her, she felt her breath catch in her throat. She longed to tell him the truth, but she was terrified of his reaction. What if he laughed at her? What if he frowned? What if he did not say anything at all? What could he say, really, that would not make her ache inside? What could he say besides ‘thank you but I am marrying your cousin in four days’? What could telling him possibly accomplish except to make him pull away faster?

“Because I love you, Miles,” she said simply.