After the Scandal (11 page)

The catalogue spilled out of him. “Expensively tailored evening clothes. Coat of darkest green superfine from Schweitzer and Davidson on Cork Street—judging from the style of the buttonholes and shining gold buttons. Immaculate white linen and cravat. Snowy satin breeches to catch the light.” Everything designed to appeal to the eye. Dressed to lure. Dressed to rape.

Dressed to kill.

Tanner could calculate to the farthing what that rig had cost and exactly how much it would all fetch at a rag trader’s in Black Swan Alley when Rosing’s valet deemed it was out of fashion. Enough to feed a family of four for a year.

But that waistcoat had been covered almost entirely by the high cut of Rosing’s coat. Tanner’s normally infallible memory provided him with an image of a fashionably white waistcoat—white to match Rosing’s linen and cravat. Not gold-threaded brocade.

Fuck all.

Tanner did not want to believe the evidence. Because he wanted it to be Rosing. Tanner wanted another inexcusable, irrefutable reason to hate the bastard and take his revenge.

Lady Claire was looking at him closely again, the short, sharp lines of a scowl marring her perfect face. “Fancy you should know all that. I never notice what men are wearing. All men have watch fobs, don’t they? How can that mean anything?”

“Everything means something. Everything. Not
all
men have watch fobs. All the men of
your
acquaintance, meaning your social peers, who are rich and have the money for such ornaments, have them. Not your butler, nor your footmen—nor Miss Carter’s footman. Jesse Lightfoot, I should think,” he added offhand. “No. Whoever wore this fob, and assaulted Miss Carter and killed her, had money.”

Tanner bent down to take a second look at the bruises upon Miss Carter’s neck, looking for some other mark, for a blot of blood beneath the skin that might have been caused by a ring on the hand of her murderer.

And there, low across the sinew, where her shoulder met the right side of her neck, was a larger spot of bruising, but it was not distinct enough to draw any conclusion as to being from a particular crest.

“There. Do you see this?” He directed Lady Claire’s glance to the spot. “This darkened, wider mark likely came from a ring. On a man’s left hand. Thus, a married man, rich enough to wear a ring and have a gold watch fob.”

Which also left Rosing—who was unmarried—unequivocally out, damn it all to hell.

Tanner tried to deflect the sharp stab of disappointment sliding between his ribs, by making himself continue to look for other evidence. Because both his gut and his formidable mind were in agreement that the killing of the maid and the assault on Lady Claire were related.

The evidence would be there, somewhere, if only he were clever enough to see it.

But he could see nothing at that moment, with Lady Claire so close beside him, following his gaze, looking herself, and wanting answers. At least half of his brain was taken up with cataloguing all the things about her that he had guessed and dreamed about while watching her from afar.

The subtle scent of orange blossom and roses, of sunshine and bright happiness, that wafted off her body like perfume from a flower was not new, yet Tanner let his eyes slide closed as he took a deep inhalation of the now-familiar scent.

But there was more, more he had not been able to see in the uncharted depth of the moonlight on the river. He opened his eyes to fill them with the sight of the lamplight shining off her blond hair, long and fine, falling across her shoulders now that it was released from its pins. It looked soft to the touch, and he nearly put his hand out to let the loose tendrils sift through his fingers. She reached up and tucked it back behind her ear with an efficient flick of her delicate, fine-boned wrist.

And he was struck again by how warm and
real
she was, despite her air of wide-eyed, delicate fragility. She was herself, and not the figment of his obsessed imagination.

So real that when she returned the coin to his hand he had to steel himself for her touch—for the havoc the fleeting press of the tips of her fingers against his palm would wreak. Even with just the whisper of her warmth, she could nearly knock him over.

She was not in the least similarly affected. She was all clever inquisition. “How can you see all that? And before, what you said about her? How can you know all that?”

He dredged his mind back to the here and now. “I made a logical assumption from my observations. Things are there for you to see, if you learn how.”

“Goodness. Is this what they’re teaching at Eton and Oxford these days?”

Her question surprised a short bark of a laugh out of him. “No. Not at all. Perhaps some.”

“Then … how? How do you know? How did you learn?”

“I correspond with people. Scholars in France and … elsewhere.” And then he made himself abandon this patent ploy to prove himself more learned that he was, and give her the truth. “And I learned at an altogether different sort of school. A kidding ken—a school of baby thieves. I told you, I wasn’t always a duke.”

“Yes, you said that. I don’t exactly understand.”

He might have let himself prevaricate again—he could lie readily enough. But it seemed important that she know exactly what sort of man she had gotten for herself when she had agreed to get into his boat. “I was a thief. I was the Tanner.”

“No.” For a moment she stared at him as if she could not conceive of him in such a role. Nor could she imagine it as anything but a tragedy. “How awful.”

It ought to have been awful, but it wasn’t. If he were honest with himself—and if he told the truth to no one else, he told it to himself—it had been a lark, really, the stealing. His sister had borne the weight of the moral compromise and unending worry. He had found it all a grand game, ready to be played. He had
liked
the challenge of the picking of pockets and the pilfering of unguarded lour. He had nourished himself on the thrill of picking out and sizing up a mark. He had very much liked to steal. Still did, even though he had learned it was wrong.

“I thought everyone knew I was a terrible scandal.”

Her smile spread out across her face like a warm sunrise over the river—pink-tinged dawn. “You, the lofty, silent Duke of Fenmore, a scandal? No. I can’t imagine.”

“Can’t you?” He felt his own face curve into a corresponding smile, as if he were powerless not to answer the joy in hers.

“No. Will you not tell me?”

For the first time, he was truly tempted to retell the old story in all its gory fullness—and especially to her. How his sister had taken up stealing to feed the two of them. How old Nan the kidwoman had taken them into her fold, and turned them both—but especially his sister, Meggs—into accomplished pickpockets and picklocks. How stealth and guile had been their bread and butter. How they had stolen because their hunger—their very lives—had depended upon it.

And how he had loved every dirty, exhilarating minute of it. How he had missed it when he had been made to stop. Missed it like a dead friend.

And so he hadn’t stopped. Just switched sides.

But now was neither the time nor place, standing over Miss Carter’s pale corpse, to reveal his work for the Admiralty. “No. It would bore you. Suffice it to say that I have a range of rather felonious skills not taught at either Eton or Oxford that I find come in rather handy. Like picking locks, and sizing people up. And while I am sorry that our time on the river should have brought us here, and exposed you to the seamier side of life, and not given you the peace you so dearly desired, I’m not sorry that we were the ones to find Miss Carter. Without our having done so, there would be no chance to bring her killer to justice.”

“Yes.” Claire nodded in agreement. “Justice. I like how that sounds. And I like how you call her Miss Carter, full of respect. It’s lovely.”

And she smiled at him. Not the contented, guileless smile she wore in ballrooms but something smaller and more personal and therefore more poignant. Because it was a smile for him, and him alone.

And it absolutely slayed him.

And he, who was always armed to the teeth, who had learned to kill with knives and guns and his own capable bare hands, could summon no defense.

But Lady Claire carried on as if she hadn’t rendered him incapacitated. As if he hadn’t already had a full heaping of her praise. “And thank you, again, Your Grace. Thank you for doing what’s right. I’ve learned it is a rare man who will do what’s right and just, especially at some personal cost to himself. I daresay you didn’t mean to stay up all night doing this.” She spread her hands to indicate the room around them and the whole entirety of their strange circumstances. But still she smiled.

Tanner could feel a bonfire of pleasure swell within his chest at such praise. Enough pleasure to push away more responsible thoughts of how he had not, in fact, meant to stay up all night, nor to keep her up all night with him. For once, he didn’t disagree or try to slough off her praise. He let himself bask in it, if only for a moment, like an alley cat in a sunbeam, content for a small while to be petted and purring and happy. And he smiled back.

In response, she extended her hand for him to shake. As if they were equals. As if he were truly a man for whom she felt a measure of esteem.

“Thank you,” she said again. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me this night. And the things you’ve shown and taught me. For asking me to help you. I want to help you catch this killer.”

The night had already gone on far longer than the half of an hour he had planned to steal from her. And catching a killer was going to take far longer than one night and would expose her to things too far out of her depth.

His conscience, which had thus far remained docile and silent in the face of his larcenous plan to steal her for his bride, at last demanded to be heard. She’d had enough of drama and death for one night. He needed to be the gentleman she thought him. He had to be content with her esteem, and hope when he made his proposal that it would be enough.

“Lady Claire, that is very kind of you, and as much as I want your help and assistance, it really is past time I got you back to your parents. They’ll be worried about you.”

The lady’s eyes lit with a spark of something he had not see in her before—something hopeful, and quite determined, and entirely fractious. “I’ll send them a note. Say I’ve gone home, to the London house.”

She took him aback at the readiness and facility of her solution. It spoke of an agile mind that was entirely at odds with the rather more pristine image he had built of her in his head.

And it was even more alluring than her immaculate innocence. “Why, Lady Claire. You surprise me. And do you assay such notes to your parents often?”

“No.” She slid her shoulder up fractionally in an attempt to be nonchalant. “But I see other people doing it all the time. And they say that when you lie you should cleave as close as possible to the truth, and the truth is that I am well, and unharmed—thanks to you—and in London.”

“It will not be a lie, because I
will
take you home. But best leave out any mention of me, I should think, in your note.”

“Why not mention you?”

Oh, but he liked her affronted indignation. It was utterly delicious, her regard. So much more delicious than he had ever imagined. And he had imagined it more than he ought.

“My dear Lady Claire, I’m hardly the sort of fellow a parent would think of when they need their lovely young daughter escorted safely around London. Though you may not know my scandal, I’m quite sure your parents do.”

“Nonsense, Your Grace. You’re exactly the fellow who
has
escorted me safely into London. I wouldn’t have come with you if you weren’t. And I wouldn’t be going on with you otherwise.”

“Going on with me?” Did she understand, then, the full ramification of their solitary sojourn? Did she not object to tying herself to him so permanently with the marriage he would be duty and honor bound to propose?

“I mean to go on with you in finding justice for Maisy Carter. We started this together, we found her together, and I think we should go on together. Justice must be done, you said. I heartily agree. And what did you say before? ‘Past bloody time.’”

He could see the excitement, the sheer, bloody, hopeful, innocent determination shining in her clear-sky eyes.

And he was tempted—sorely tempted—to keep her with him just so he could bathe in the warm light of her regard for a while longer. And cement both the bond that seemed to be forming between them and the inevitability of their having to marry to stifle the potential scandal.

But a stolen hour, or even four, to keep her safe and with him, had been one thing. It would be entirely another if he were to continue on with her and take Lady Claire Jellicoe on a jaunt into the dripping, stagnant stews of London in the wee, dark, thieving hours of the morning—that would be larceny on an altogether grander scale than even
he
had ever imagined.

Chapter Seven

“Please.” She turned the full hopeful force of her smile on him, and all at once he understood that her hopefulness, her expectation—and his own corresponding desire not to let her down—was being wielded like a weapon against him.

He had never before thought himself so easily disarmed.

“I can help you,” she insisted. “I can talk to people. I know I can. And I’ve been to Westminster. I’m sure I can go to this Almonry place.”

“Lady Claire.” He tried to make his voice firm and even frosty, but he was afraid he could not hide his own desire to keep her with him. He ought to dissuade her. “The Devil’s Acre will certainly be beyond your experience of Westminster. It will be like nothing you have ever seen, or smelt, before.”

Tanner knew he had to put aside his own wants and needs and plans, and do what was right for Lady Claire, not what she wanted in the heat of the moment. She was too caught up in the thrill of the new and different and forbidden. She had to understand she really couldn’t go to a place like the Almonry, and emerge unscathed. He would not ask her to even try. He would not make her his accomplice.