Alyssa Everett (4 page)

“Good, because if you think he’s going to take the blame for that die-away, play-acting sister of yours—”

He wasn’t far off in his assessment of Helen, but it galled me that Beningbrough should dare pass judgment on my family, especially when he’d only met us that same day. I sprang to my feet. “Surely you’re not suggesting Helen killed that man.”

“I’m not suggesting it, I’m saying it outright.”

I took one look at his smoldering, arrogant face and wanted to wipe the look of righteous certainty off it. “Oh, yes,” I replied acidly. “It makes perfect sense that a delicately built girl of five-foot-two should have overpowered a strapping six-footer.”

The heavy-lidded eyes registered surprise—apparently Beningbrough was not used to being contradicted—but he answered readily, “What about the statuette beside the body? She may be little, but she could have struck him over the head with it while standing on the stairs.”

“And then dragged the body to the middle of the room? Where’s the trail of blood?”

A muscle worked in Beningbrough’s jaw. “He might have staggered there himself before he fell.”

“Not everyone’s skull is as thick as yours, Lord Beningbrough. Do you really think he could stagger in that condition? I’m certain he dropped like a stone.” I glanced back to where poor Cliburne sat on the stairs, dark head bowed. “What makes you so sure your cousin didn’t kill him?”

“Because I know Teddy, and whatever his defaults of character may be, he’s neither a liar nor a murderer.”

“As much as it pains me to disillusion you, he must be one or the other, because the first words out of his mouth when we came running were a confession. He said he planted Sam a facer, and Sam struck his head on the stairs. That sounds like manslaughter at least, and by his own admission. I heard him as clear as day, and so did Helen and my mother and father.”

For a moment, Beningbrough looked as if I’d slapped him. I might have prided myself on having scored a hit if the occasion hadn’t been such a sobering one. “Well, it isn’t true,” he countered stubbornly.

“Of course it isn’t true.”

Beningbrough’s brows rose in a look of blank surprise. “What?”

“Any ninny can see he made the story up out of whole cloth. A man who goes sprawling doesn’t land on the
top
of his head. And while I don’t doubt Cliburne is capable of moving the body to the middle of the room, why should he do that if Sam really struck his head on the stairs?”

“And Teddy hasn’t a trace of blood on him,” Beningbrough pointed out. At my questioning glance, he said, “Yes, I checked. I never thought for a moment he might be responsible, but I’m hardly naive enough to suppose the evidence doesn’t matter.”

“So where does that leave us? It’s clear enough Sam was brained with that bronze statuette. The thing is lying right beside him, for heaven’s sake. It might as well have a sign on it reading Murder Weapon. Someone carried it in here from the morning room, which points to premeditation. Helen is petite enough that I doubt she could lift it handily, let alone swing it down on a man’s skull from the necessary angle...”

I looked up into Beningbrough’s face and stumbled to a halt. His drowsy gaze was roaming over me, those gray eyes traveling past my face and down my evening gown of slate georgette. It might have been flattering if I hadn’t known he disliked me, and if he hadn’t just admitted to checking his cousin for blood. Now it appeared he was doing the same to me.

Well, let him look. I’d had nothing to do with Sam’s death. And at least I was suitably attired in evening clothes, while Beningbrough was still wearing the buckskins, brown fustian riding coat and top boots he’d worn for his afternoon call. I wondered if he hadn’t had time to change for dinner, or if he habitually went around dressed like a stable hand just to proclaim his contempt for everyone else in the world. Or perhaps he simply knew such rugged clothing suited him, since his muscular thighs and broad shoulders had no need for ornament or tailors’ tricks.

He realized I’d caught him studying me and looked away. “It wasn’t Teddy,” he said, his voice curiously husky.

“It wasn’t Helen either. She’d never kill anyone. Morality aside, she’s too good at getting men to do her dirty work for her.”

Beningbrough glanced at his cousin, his mouth turning down in a frown. I had the feeling that was exactly what he was afraid of.

Ben

There had to be something wrong with me. A dead man lay stretched out within plain sight, gore matting what was left of his head, while my ludicrously honorable cousin faced possible prosecution. What was I doing? Losing my train of thought, deep in contemplation of Lady Barbara Jeffords’ breasts.

She’d just made a speech about how the footman’s death wasn’t an accident and the murder weapon must be the statuette and so forth and so on
ad abundantiam
, and the more she talked, the more breathless and animated she became. When she became breathless, I’d discovered, her breasts strained against the low neckline of her gown, hinting at the possibility that they might actually spill over. I imagined taking them in my hands from underneath, standing over her shoulder and lifting them and...

And she caught me staring. Good Lord, I couldn’t even remember what she’d been saying. So I just mumbled, “It wasn’t Teddy,” which, thank God, seemed to satisfy her.

Lady Barbara made some reply, mercifully unaware what kind of mental liberties I’d just been taking with her person. I glanced over at poor Teddy. How had he got himself mixed up with the scheming likes of Lady Helen? “Your sister never did explain what she was doing in a clinch with the murder victim at Hookham’s library.”

Lady Barbara frowned. “That doesn’t make her a killer.”

“No, but it makes her no better than she should be.” I’d no sooner spoken the words than I recognized the hypocrisy of branding Lady Helen a hussy when I’d just been squeezing her sister’s bosoms in my head. I didn’t even like Lady Barbara, who had a tongue like an adder and an unapologetically outspoken air. What the devil was wrong with me?

She tossed her head, sending her moonstone eardrops dancing against the rich red of her hair. “In that case Helen should be a fine match for your cousin, who’s no more discerning than he should be.”

There was a commotion at the door, and in charged Teddy’s father, my uncle Daventry. He looked worried sick, as any good father would be. I was glad Teddy had sent for him, though not so glad to see Teddy’s brother John entering in his wake.

Strictly speaking, John was only Teddy’s half-brother, for he was Uncle Daventry’s by-blow from a youthful affair with a French emigrée. John was my age—older than Teddy, the heir, which had to be rather galling, though at least my uncle had acknowledged John and raised him as his son, which is more than most fellows born on the wrong side of the blanket can say.

His jaw set, Uncle Daventry strode across the room to where Teddy sat on the stair. Poor Teddy looked up with a hunted expression.

John sauntered up beside me. “Why, Ben, I never expected to see you here. A tragic business, no?”

I nodded. “Lady Barbara, do you know my cousin, Mr. Mainsforth?”

She made the most perfunctory of curtsies. “We’ve met. His brother is planning to marry my sister, after all.”

“Which will make us brother and sister of a sort ourselves, dear lady.” Resting a hand on his heart, John gave her an ingratiating smile. “But only of a sort.”

That was why I’d never quite warmed to John. There was something not entirely sincere about him. He always talked as if he were enacting a part on the stage, or trying to cozen an old lady out of her life savings. Once, at a family gathering, my father had been speaking to the landscape gardener with whom he’d been spending his time. When John saw me glance in their direction, he said, “It must be hard on you”—but with a note of the same smug, knowing tone the boys at school had always used when they made jibes. It left me itching to take a swing at him. What right did he have to offer an opinion?

Still, John dressed with flair and had a kind of saturnine good looks, and ladies, especially older ones, usually loved his smooth manners. Besides, it couldn’t have been easy for him, growing up as plain Mr. Mainsforth when his younger half-siblings were ladies and a lord.

“So, Ben, what brings you out tonight?” John asked. “Don’t tell me you’re courting our lovely Lady Barbara here.”

“God, no!” I said at once, in the same instant as she gave a derisive snort. I shook my head. “Nothing of the kind. I’m only here for Teddy. I came with him this afternoon to straighten out that business with his intended, and then returned to get to the bottom of this mess.”

Lady Barbara related the events of the evening, John making sympathetic sounds all the while. “And how is Lady Helen holding up?” he asked when she finished.

Lady Barbara’s gaze slipped to where her sister stood leaning on their father, still crying on his shoulder. In her usual acerbic tone, she said, “She’s been sobbing ever since this began.”

“The poor delicate flower.” John sighed. “If you’ll excuse me, dear lady, I believe I’ll go and offer her my services.” He bowed himself away.

Frowning, I watched him go.

“You don’t particularly like him, do you?” Lady Barbara asked.

I gave her a damping look. “That’s a rather personal question. He’s family.”

“Very well, it’s none of my business what you think of him. But as for me, I find it odd he should be offering his services to my sister when his own brother is all but accused of murder.”

I thought it odd too, especially since John had been the very person to inform Teddy about Lady Helen’s tryst with the footman at Hookham’s library. I watched him bow with his usual suave familiarity over the girl’s gloved hand. “Perhaps he simply likes talking to pretty girls. I know I do.”

Lady Barbara said “Humph” and gave me a cool, openly contemptuous stare. It was such an odd reaction that I felt a stir of unease. Why had she looked at me that way? Did she doubt I liked talking to pretty girls? What if I’d given her the wrong idea with my quick denial when John asked me if I was courting her? I
wasn’t
courting her, of course, not by a long shot, but I didn’t want her thinking I took after my father.

Or perhaps she already thought as much, and my answer had only made it worse. I wished I hadn’t told her that afternoon that if I ever married, getting an heir would be the only reason. I’d meant I’d sooner keep a mistress, of course, but now I realized it had sounded as if I had no interest in females at all. And I couldn’t think how to correct that impression, short of announcing out of the blue,
By the way
,
I
had a ravishing artist’s model in my keeping until just last week.

Across the room, John straightened as Lady Helen withdrew her hand, holding it in an awkwardly cupped position. John made some remark to her father, and while Lord Leonard was answering him, the girl glanced down at her gloved palm.

“Did you see that?” Lady Barbara asked, her green eyes wide.

“I certainly did.”

John had passed Lady Helen a secret message.

Chapter Three

Barbara

“I want to know what that note says,” Beningbrough said as we watched Helen tuck the slip of paper into her glove. “We have to get a look at it.”

I’d been thinking the same thing. “When Helen goes up to her room tonight, I’ll make some excuse to join her, then find a way to get my hands on the message.”

“Good. Does your bedroom overlook the street or the mews?”

“The street.”

“Then I’ll wait out front. As soon as you know what the message says, you can signal me from your window.”

A little thrill went through me at the thought of leaning out of my bedroom window in the dark, whispering down to the robustly handsome son of a duke. It smacked faintly of
Romeo and Juliet.

Unfortunately, Beningbrough was no Romeo. “Just don’t keep me waiting too long. I have better things to do than cool my heels in the street.”

Honestly, was there ever a more conceited ass? “I’d hate to put you to any trouble, Lord Beningbrough, especially over something so trivial as a murder. Perhaps I could send some refreshments out to you while you wait? A feather pillow?”

The sarcasm must have gone right over his head, for he simply gave me a sharp look and said, “Thank you, no.”

“Are you sure? We could even spare a lackey to lick your boots, if you think it would make the time pass more quickly.”

He was not as thick as I’d feared, for an unwilling smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “That won’t be necessary, Lady Barbara. But since we’re both determined to straighten out this coil, perhaps we might dispense with the formalities.
Lord Beningbrough
is rather a mouthful. Call me Ben.”

“Very well, then...Ben.” Belatedly, I realized how odd it would look if I called him Ben while he was still addressing me as Lady Barbara. People would say I was being too familiar, even chasing after him. I could almost see the new caricature in the
Times.
“In that case, you must call me Barbara,” I said with some reluctance. “We’re going to be connections of a sort anyway, once your cousin marries my sister.”

“Barbara.” With a curt nod, he left to talk with his uncle.

Despite my best intentions, I watched him as he crossed the room. He might be infuriatingly full of himself, but he certainly had a pleasing swagger.

Ben

“Shall we drive you home, Ben?” Uncle Daventry asked as the four of us—Teddy, John, my uncle and I—left Leonard House together. “Or did you come in your own carriage?”

“I came by hack,” I answered as we descended the front steps. “But if it’s all the same to you, I believe I’ll go home on shank’s mare. It’s not far, and the walk will give me a chance to think.”

“I doubt your mother would approve.”

“Yes, yes, I realize as much. The night air is unhealthy, and I could meet up with felons or low women with the pox, to say nothing of the possibility that a hitherto-undiscovered volcano might suddenly erupt and bury me in ash before I reach Piccadilly.”

Uncle Daventry strained to hide a smile. “She means well, Ben. And whom else does she have to fuss over, except you?”

“I know.” I nodded wearily. “And I do my best to be patient, truly I do. But you have no idea how trying it is to be perpetually coddled and wrapped in cotton wool.”

Unexpectedly, Barbara’s taunts popped into my head.
Perhaps I could send some refreshments out to you while you wait?
A
feather pillow?
We could even spare a lackey to lick your boots
,
if you think it would make the time pass more quickly
. At least one person wasn’t the least bit worried about my hardiness. The thought actually made me smile.

“Walking home sounds good to me too,” John said. “You don’t mind if I leave you and Teddy to keep each other company, do you, Papa?”

“No, I don’t mind. Just don’t stay out too late. Teddy could use our support, and we don’t know yet how soon the coroner will convene the inquest.”

“As if I would fail him!” John set one white hand dramatically over his heart. “Teddy knows he may count on me.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’ll drop by tomorrow too, Teddy.”

He gave me a grateful look. “Thanks awfully for everything, Ben.”

I thought Teddy had acquitted himself rather well, aside from his insistence on putting his head on the chopping block for that die-away Lady Helen’s sake. He had to know he faced possible arrest as soon as the coroner’s jury rendered its verdict, yet he’d stuck fast to his story, and he seemed tolerably composed.

“I haven’t done anything of help yet,” I reminded him. “But don’t worry. You’ll come through this all right and tight.”

We parted to go our separate ways. John and the carriage set off north toward Upper Brook Street while I started south toward Piccadilly. As soon as I reached the end of the square, however, I doubled back to Leonard House.

Once there, I kept clear of the lamplight, waiting in the darkness beneath the front windows. I wondered how Barbara was faring inside. I rather admired the way she’d volunteered to get her hands on John’s note. Whatever her faults—and, good Lord, she had an abundance of them—she was no shrinking violet.

Her looks were certainly out of the common too. She had a figure more suited to a bird of paradise than to a sheltered society miss, and one didn’t often see hair that rich, deep red. Throw in her statuesque height, that alabaster face and her regal bearing, and it was a wonder she didn’t intimidate every male she met. Then there was that bedroom voice of hers, and that habit she had of looking sidelong at a man, her green eyes simultaneously sultry and challenging...

God, the wait was getting to me. I shook my head to clear it and checked my watch. However agreeable Barbara might be to look at, she was a haughty, bad-tempered shrew. I was only tolerating her assistance for Teddy’s sake, and there was an end on it.

Barbara

Shortly after the coroner ordered Sam Garvey’s body carried away, Mr. Dawson and the magistrate’s man took their leave. With Cliburne and the other gentlemen already gone, Helen gave a conspicuous yawn and announced her intention to retire.

“I think I’ll go up too,” I said, grateful I had an assignment to carry out before bed. There was no way I could sleep yet. A murderer remained loose somewhere nearby, possibly still in the house. Before long, the coroner’s inquest would render its verdict, whereupon poor Cliburne might well be clapped in jail. And Helen obviously knew more than she was saying. It was all rather exciting, though of course I couldn’t forget a man was dead.

I waited just long enough to give my visit an impromptu appearance, and then I knocked on the door to Helen’s bedroom. “May I come in?” I asked, poking my head inside. “After such a dreadful evening, I don’t quite know what to do with myself.”

She regarded me in evident surprise. “If you like.”

I couldn’t really blame her for the surprise, since Helen and I had never enjoyed the kind of close relationship typical of sisters. My old schoolmates had looked on their sisters as confidantes, the guardians of their deepest secrets. If I’d ever shared a secret with Helen, anything from how much I’d frittered away on a bonnet to when and where I’d received my first kiss, she would have run right to Papa or Mama and tattled. We lived more like acquaintances than sisters.

But now I rather regretted it, for I realized Helen’s life must be as gripping as any gothic novel. She had men falling at her feet wherever she went, a footman embracing her in a public library, her betrothed nobly overlooking her slip, the rumored lover murdered under our very roof, her betrothed taking responsibility for the crime...and now she was involved in clandestine communication with his illegitimate half-brother.

Helen’s room was furnished in an abundance of pink chintz and lace, as dainty and feminine as she was. Just entering it made me feel clumsy and out of place. She was sitting at her dressing table, still fully dressed right down to her gloves.

“Aren’t you going to ring for your maid?” I asked, setting my candle atop the mantelpiece and perching gingerly on the foot of her bed.

She shook her head. “I don’t think I could sleep yet myself. I only came up because I couldn’t take another second of being in the same room where Sam was k—where he died.” She rose restlessly, stripped off her gloves and tossed them on the bed.

I’d hoped the note from John Mainsforth might flutter to the floor, unnoticed by Helen, but alas, it remained tucked inside the glove. I’d have to find some opportunity to retrieve it when she wasn’t looking.

“I can hardly believe something so ghastly could happen here,” I said. “And then all those strangers milling about—that Bow Street Runner and the coroner, to say nothing of that detestable cousin of Cliburne’s. I have no idea what
he
was doing here.”

Helen sat down on the bed beside me. “Beningbrough? Oh, Teddy sent for him, I’m sure. Teddy idolizes Beningbrough.”

Even the mere mention of the man seemed to bring out the worst in me. “Idolizes that overbearing ass? Why?”

“Teddy says Beningbrough is the most loyal fellow he knows, and pluck to the backbone. It’s a point of pride with Lord Beningbrough that he’s never backed down from a fight.”

“What an idiotic thing to pride oneself on. What if his adversary should be bigger, or a better fighter?”

“I don’t think that’s likely. According to Teddy, Beningbrough is so handy with his fives, no one at Gentleman Jackson’s will even spar with him anymore.”

A vision of the tall, muscular marquess stripped to his shirtsleeves in the boxing ring popped into my head, making my pulse skip. “Is that so?” I scoffed, irritated with myself. “He may have been lucky so far, but someday he’s liable to wind up with that fine face of his permanently rearranged.”

“But that’s another reason Teddy idolizes him. I don’t believe Beningbrough would care.”

I rolled my eyes. “How typical. He’d sooner suffer than show a little humility. If that’s not the height of foolish masculine pride!”

“Oh, Barbara. As if
you
haven’t gone without supper for three days running, or chosen to stay confined to your room when the rest of the family went to the theater, merely because you refused to apologize to Papa when he gave you the chance.”

I straightened indignantly. “That’s different. Those were matters of principle. That time I went without supper, for instance...that wasn’t pride, it was because Papa said I’d taken the tea cake Mama had set aside for him, and I hadn’t. Edmund had. I still had mine from when the tray first went ’round.”

“What difference does it make in the end whether you took the cake or Edmund took it? Papa gave you the chance to apologize for talking back to him, and you wouldn’t. You’d rather suffer than humble yourself the tiniest bit.” With a frown, Helen returned to her dressing table.

“It was a matter of principle,” I repeated, wondering why my ethics sounded like little more than stubbornness in Helen’s version of the events. Just because she was pretty and could charm her way out of any difficulty didn’t mean everyone could sail through life as easily. Some of us had little more than our dignity to cling to.

Recalling my mission, I made a grab for her evening gloves, and in the brief instant she had her back turned I pulled out the note and thrust it under me, sitting on it like a brood hen on a clutch of eggs. “Whether he’s Cliburne’s idol or no,” I said to cover up the faint creak of the bedstead, “Beningbrough is far too high in the instep. Did you know he thinks himself too good to marry?”

“He is awfully handsome, though, isn’t he?” Sighing, Helen picked up her ivory-backed hairbrush and drew it pensively through her curls. “
All
the men in Teddy’s family are handsome.”

“It’s obvious Beningbrough knows it, too.”

Helen twisted to face me. “It’s funny to think who his father is, isn’t it? To look at him, one would never guess it.”

“What do you mean? He looks exactly like the duke.”

“Oh, Barbara, don’t play coy. You know what I mean.” She smiled to herself. “I wonder if Beningbrough also has unnatural tastes in the bedroom?”

At such broad talk, my cheeks warmed. In fact, such a wave of heat rushed over me, I had to resist the urge to fan myself. “It’s none of our business what his tastes are, in the bedroom or elsewhere,” I said primly. “Though, really, I can’t think why he should have. It’s not as if Papa is a drunkard, though Grandpapa Leonard certainly was. And Grandmama Merton had a scandalously colorful reputation, while I’m sure Mama would never leave Papa, let alone take to the stage.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“But enough about Beningbrough.” I didn’t like the strange way the conversation was making me feel. “What about Cliburne? You must have been so thankful to have him here tonight.”

Though Cliburne might not be the brightest glowworm in the hedge, he was sweet and biddable, and he was obviously claiming responsibility for Sam’s death just to shield Helen. I expected her to look either pleased he’d manfully assumed the blame or worried sick over the possible consequences, but to my surprise, Helen’s expression turned wistful. “Oh, Barbara, how did things become so complicated?”

I frowned in confusion. “Helen, if there’s anything you know about Sam’s death—anything that might help Cliburne—”

She turned away and set her hairbrush back on her dressing table. “It happened the way Teddy said,” she said tightly, her back to me. “I don’t know anything more.”

I quickly reached under me, seized the slip of paper from John Mainsforth, and scanned it.
Butler’s pantry
,
11:00.
Leave the back door unlocked.
In a flash, I shoved the note back into Helen’s discarded glove. Mission accomplished.

“Very well, then, it was an accident,” I said to Helen’s back. “You saw it happen?”

“No. I mean, yes.” She turned toward me again, her face pale but mulish. “It wasn’t Teddy’s fault.”

And that was why we would never be close. Helen looked so literally tight-lipped, I knew at once she had no intention of confiding in me, either about Sam’s murder or about why she was allowing poor Cliburne to take the blame. Disappointed, I stood and reached for my candle. “Fine. I suppose I should be getting ready for bed anyway. It’s been a long, trying day.”