If He's Wild (14 page)

As his friends and Argus moved to deal with the hysterical servants, Hartley walked over to Lady Birdwell. She was, by his figuring, at least five and fifty, but she was still a good-looking woman, a bit plump, with more gray than brown in her hair, but stylishly dressed and not too careworn. She stood in the doorway to Sir Harold’s office, staring at the man slumped over his desk surrounded by gore-stained papers. There was no sign that she was weeping, and he wondered if she was in shock. He touched her arm, and she turned to glare at him.

“See what you have done?” she snapped. “He was just a foolish old man. Why could you not have let it go, left him alone?”

“My lady, I think you know exactly why he did this,” Hartley began, seeing the knowledge in her tear-filled eyes.

“I know. He did it because
she
bewitched the old fool. Stupid, stupid man,” she muttered, her voice shaking with the grief she tried to hold in. “I thought if I just ignored it, it would pass, that it was just a need he had to feel young again. Do we not all feel that need from time to time? But then I began to realize it was more, far more, and something that could destroy us. I tried to tell him so, but he would not listen to me. And now see how it has ended. I will lose it all, not just my husband.”

“And why should you lose everything just because your husband had an accident cleaning his gun?” Hartley asked very softly, not wishing the servants to overhear him.

Lady Birdwell stared at him. “No one will believe that.”

“They rarely do, but it stands. He has paid for his crimes. There is no need for you and your children to do so.”

Finally, she wept, and Hartley pulled her into his arms. He held her until she gathered her strength and pulled away, wiping the tears from her face. She glanced around her to see the other men watching her, and all her servants sent on errands. After studying their somber faces for a minute she looked back at Hartley.

“And what will happen to her, to the one who made him do this?” she asked. “My poor Harold did a stupid thing, but he was not alone. He was led to this by that woman.”

“We know,” Hartley replied. “We are working to bring her to justice. I am sorry the path to that has caused you grief.”

“That did not. Harold did. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Let us in there to go through his papers.”

“Should you not wait until they have removed him?” Even as she voiced the question, two footmen arrived with several blankets and performed that duty. “I need to tend to the body. Do as you like.”

“Lady Birdwell, I sent your husband’s secretary to make certain that whatever money your husband had here or at the bank or in funds is protected,” said Argus.

“She would take that, too?”

“She has before. It needs to all be secured before she gets word that your husband is dead.” Argus kissed her hand. “I am most sincerely sorry for your pain, my lady.”

“No, you have naught to apologize for.” She sighed and looked toward the desk where her husband had ended his life. “The pain I feel now is for that foolish man. He betrayed our marriage, but he did not deserve such a punishment for that. And mayhap I feel some sorrow for the fact that there is no more chance for my husband and I to regain what was lost.” She looked at the four men watching her. “In truth, I am indebted to you all, for this could have cost me everything and left my children scorned and penniless. Good hunting, my lords, and be sure to invite me to her hanging.”

Hartley watched her leave, walking away to see to the cleansing of the body of a man who had betrayed her. “I hope no one minds that I have, more or less, promised to keep this silent.”

“Not at all,” said Argus. “The man’s wife and children do not deserve to suffer for crimes they did not commit. I never have believed in taking everything a traitor owned when it meant his entire family was destroyed. Wives and children have no control over what the lord of the house does. Now, shall we get this distasteful chore put behind us?”

For nearly an hour they searched through Sir Harold’s papers. Hartley carefully set aside the few things he felt might be helpful yet did not incriminate the man. A glance through the ledgers Birdwell had been working on when he and the others had arrived to talk to him told Hartley that the man had been spending lavishly on his mistress, Claudette.

“Aha!” Sir Argus held up a sheaf of papers. “Our fair viper got herself a new house out of the poor old fool. This may show why we found nothing of interest in her lodgings.”

“I would not be surprised if the woman has several bolt-holes,” said Hartley.

“Let us go and search this one.”

After bidding a somber farewell to Lady Birdwell, and gaining assurances that they could return to search more thoroughly if they needed to, Hartley and the others climbed into the carriage and headed for the late Sir Harold’s love nest. Hartley knew Birdwell was no completely innocent victim; the man could have resisted temptation. He certainly could have refused to pay for his delights with his country’s secrets. Yet it was sad that Claudette had brought a good man down, caused him to pull away from his family, hurt them, and stain his own honor.

He looked at his companions and saw that they, too, brooded in silence. “At least his family will not suffer. Once his treason was known, there truly was no other way for him.”

“True,” agreed Aldus. “And this way his widow does not have to suffer the scorn or the poverty. It is still a dreadful, sobering matter. On the other hand, if we had spies as cold-blooded and cunning as this bitch, we would rule the world.”

“At least the male part of it,” drawled Gifford. “I think, however, the female half of the world would soon have all those Claudettes dead and roasting in hell. Mayhap we move too carefully.”

“We do,” said Hartley, “but we have to. She can flee the country all too easily. Even if we got word of her flight, she could still be waving at us from the deck of whatever fast-moving ship she boarded. Between the smuggling and the spying going on between us and France, there must be a dozen ships slipping in and out of each country’s borders every day and night.”

“I know. I just feel as if we put the gun in the old fool’s hand.”

“Claudette did, and so did he. He broke his marriage vows, as many of our class do, but that does not excuse him for pleasing his lady love by handing over important shipping information.”

“Many good men died because of that,” said Argus, revealing by the tone of his voice that he had little sympathy for Sir Harold. “Alone and at sea, and with no wife to cleanse their bodies and give them a decent burial. And, now, there is the fine love nest he gifted Claudette with. I doubt we will find her there.”

As the carriage stopped and they all climbed out, Hartley said, “Then we must hope that she had to flee so quickly she left something of importance and interest behind.”

Argus just grunted and, without pausing to knock, let himself into the house. The hall was filled with servants who had obviously been busy stripping the house of anything valuable. It did not take long to get them all rounded up and secured. Leaving Argus to question them and Aldus to make sure that all the valuables were retrieved from the bags and trunks littering the foyer, Hartley and Gifford began to search the house.

It did not take much longer to realize that there were no incriminating papers left behind. A few half-burned letters added a few names to the list of people they needed to question, but there was little else. Hartley walked into the bedroom the lovers had obviously chosen for their own and grimaced. It looked and smelled like a bordello.

“My Ellen would cringe if she saw this,” said Gifford.

“Your mistress has exquisite taste,” said Hartley as he searched the clutter on the dressing table. “Except in her choice of protectors.”

“So kind.” Gifford sighed and began to search the bed. “Appalling as this is, it must have cost Birdwell a small fortune.”

“She left in a hurry,” Hartley said as he viewed the mess in her dressing room. “I doubt she has been gone very long.”

“How could she know about Birdwell so quickly?”

“Had a servant in her pay, I suspect. Whoever it was probably ran here before the smoke from the gunshot had even cleared away. Mayhap ran to her when he heard we were questioning Birdwell.” He sighed as he took a final look around the room. “I was hoping to find some jewelry. Some piece of what she stole from the compte and his wife would have been a very nice prize.”

“Well, she missed one piece of her jewelry. Mayhap this will help.”

Hartley looked at the ruby earring Gifford held up, and his heart skipped a beat. Grief pinched at him as he took the earring from Gifford. He could see his sister wearing the pair of ruby drops, smiling with pleasure over the gift her husband had given her on the birth of their son. He clutched it tightly in his hand, silently promising his sister that he would make the woman pay for what she had done.

“It was Margaret’s,” he said. “De Laceaux gave the pair to her when Bayard was born.”

“With Germaine’s testimony that she saw Claudette take the jewels, it should provide a nail in the bitch’s coffin.”

“It will help. We still have to catch her, though.”

It was almost dawn by the time they sent the servants away and secured the house. Hartley was exhausted as he made his home and up to his bedchamber. He stood beside the bed, stared at the empty expanse, and then turned to go to Alethea. She woke even as he entered the room. Kate slept on a cot in the corner, and he made his way silently to the bedside.

He kissed her and savored both the passion and the peace the caress filled him with. Sitting by her side on the bed, he held up the ruby earring. She stared at it and then looked at him, the knowledge of what it was in her eyes.

“Do you want me to see if it tells me anything?” she asked.

“No. Mayhap later, if we continue to have trouble finding her. I recall all too well what touching something else the woman had held did to you and would prefer that you do not have to go through that again.”

“It is proof that she was there that day on the beach, is it not?”

“It is, and it might be enough if we catch her. I want more, though. I want proof that she killed Rogers and Peterson, proof that she works for our enemies. I want every black deed she has committed to be known and have her condemned for all of them. I want all her allies to hang with her. However, if this is all we have when we find her, I will use it.”

“Will you tell Germaine?”

“Not yet.” He yawned and then stood up. “I would very much like to stay with you, to crawl beneath the covers with you and hold you, to let your sweetness wash away the ugliness we saw tonight.” He told her about Birdwell.

“That poor woman. I am glad you let it end as it did. She does not deserve to pay so dearly for her husband’s idiocy. If it was known what he had done, she would lose everything.”

“Yes. I just hope that we stopped Claudette from being able to take what was left.”

“Come to bed, Hartley.”

“No. You are still too wounded to have a hulking great man in your bed.” He kissed her again. “Soon, though. Sleep well, love.”

She watched him leave and sighed. This was hard on him, and she was useless to help. That would end soon, however. Alethea was determined to get out of her sickbed as soon as possible. She needed to be there for him when he failed and when he finally won. Everything inside her told her that, although the chase was going to be a long one and danger was ever present, Hartley would win. As she snuggled down beneath the covers, she prayed that that was a true knowing and not just wishful thinking.

“Oh! Foul, I say! Foul!”

Alethea laughed as she watched Germaine swing her racket at a laughing Bayard, who easily dodged it. Four of her cousins were also in the garden, and they hooted with laughter as Germaine chased Bayard around. Two were Penelope’s half brothers—Artemis, who was eighteen, and Stefan, who was sixteen, both much closer to being men than boys. The other two were Argus’s natural sons, the fifteen-year-old Darius, and Olwen, who was just eleven. She knew they gathered here to help in protecting Germaine and Bayard, to ensure that there were plenty of eyes searching for a threat as well as many voices to cry out for help if it was needed. Armed men stood guard elsewhere. She also knew that many of her relatives helped in the hunt for the man who shot her, as well as for Claudette and her sister. Yet the presence of the boys also helped Bayard and Germaine reclaim a little of their lost childhood.

It all should have comforted her, and it did, but it also made her feel like a prisoner in her new home. Alethea also missed Hartley. He was always gone, trying to hunt down their enemies or find more proof to send Claudette and her allies to the gallows. For eighteen long nights she had slept alone. The doctor had removed the stitches from her wound only yesterday, the wound an ugly scar but firmly closed. Yet she slept alone last night—again.

No matter how often she scolded herself for needlessly worrying, Alethea couldn’t stop herself from wondering if Hartley would ever return to her bed. He might even be waiting to see if she was already carrying his child, that he had only come to her bed to breed one. With each new reason she conjured up for why her new husband was not sharing a bed with her, Alethea’s spirits sank lower.

“Stop it.”

That deep, sharp voice startled her out of her increasingly melancholy thoughts, and Alethea looked up to find Artemis glaring down at her. He stood like a challenging warrior, with his feet apart and his arms crossed over his chest. She started to ask him what he wanted her to stop and then recalled that he was extremely empathic.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, fighting to subdue a blush. “I was just thinking.”

“Very loudly. I do not usually sense one of our blood, so you had let your shields down.” He sat down next to her. “What were you thinking about? Why your husband is not here?”

Alethea frowned at him. “You do not have Modred’s gift, do you?”

“God save me, no. ’Tis not difficult, however, to discern one type of happiness from another. Having lived through Penelope’s romance with Radmoor, her bouts of thinking herself unworthy, cast aside, unlovable, and so on”—he waved one long-fingered, elegant hand in the air to imply that the
so on
was infinite—“I recognized your increasing sadness as similar to hers.”

“Oh.” This time there was no controlling her blush. “It matters not. Foolishness, that is all.”

“It certainly is foolishness—unless, of course, you think he is setting up a mistress, or three.”

“Three?” Artemis just cocked an eyebrow at her, and Alethea decided not to question that any further. “No, Hartley swore that he would be faithful, that he believed in holding to vows spoken. Said that was why he had never sought out a wife before now despite needing an heir.”

“Good man. Could be exactly why he did not marry years ago as so many others would have. Last of his line and all. Can make a man take whatever he can just to breed that all-important heir. Had to be very certain in his choice. At least most reasonable people would see that clearly enough.”

Alethea crossed her arms and scowled at him. “You are a wretch. I am astonished that Penelope has not been driven to beat you daily.” He laughed, and it was such a contagious sound, she joined him.

“Be at ease, Cousin,” Artemis said. “Do not borrow trouble. The man swears fealty and has chosen you above all others after having enjoyed so many rakish years. That is no idle thing.”

“I know. ’Tis just that I am but a newlywed, and my honeymoon ended after only two nights.”

“And you want him to love you as you love him.” He grinned and kissed her on the cheek when she growled at him. “Do not chew over that bone for too long. Consider what he does, Cousin, not what he does or does not say. Men can be idiots at times, not even realizing that words are needed.”

She watched him rejoin the others and sighed. It was no great surprise that such a young man would know all about emotions and how they could twist a person’s heart and mind. He was an empath and, apparently, a very strong and precise one if he could differentiate between one sort of sadness and another. Artemis was also surprisingly wise for such a young man. She should heed all he had said, but feared she would not. Emotions could wreak havoc on wisdom.

No, it was not wise words she needed to soothe her fears. She needed Hartley back in her bed, in her arms, in her body. She was healed. Despite all her stuttering and blushing, the doctor had understood her query after her stitches were removed and had declared her ready to take up her marital duties again. Alethea just had to think of a way to make Hartley understand that.

Hartley wanted to hit something or someone. He was not particular. He wanted to hurl himself into a street brawl, fists flying. Eighteen days had passed since Alethea had been shot and since someone had tried to kill his niece. Yet he had nothing. No proof save for one small ruby earring. A name and a picture but still no criminal. It was frustrating beyond words. They had Alethea’s sketches, and they had the name of her assailant, but no one would admit to knowing the man.

He stood outside yet another low tavern with Aldus, waiting for Argus to arrive. They needed his strange skill at making people talk. Whoever the man was who had attacked Alethea, he was deeply feared by the denizens of London’s criminal warrens. That much Hartley had discerned. There was a chance that no one in this tavern really knew the man, but the chance that no one in any of the many taverns they had entered had ever heard of or seen him was very slim.

Even worse, they had lost two more of the men on the list of Claudette’s lovers. One young Sir John Talbot had been stabbed in a brothel, and another had apparently fled the country. Hartley wondered about the murder, wondered if Claudette had discovered how they were questioning all her lovers and had decided to get rid of them. It might be time to warn the men as well as question them.

He also wanted to go home. It was getting dark, and Hartley did not wish to spend another night hunting their quarry. He wanted to spend it making love to his new wife. His whole body ached for her. He would wake in the night and spend far too long fighting the urge to go to her bed or drag her into his. She was healed now, and he would not sleep alone for another night. Nor, he thought as he watched two men swagger into a brothel on the other side of the street, would he spend another whole night roaming the rat-infested areas of the city.

“I think we need to sit back and look at what we already have,” said Aldus as Argus’s carriage pulled up. “We have been working at this night and day and may need to just step back, take a breath, and study what we do have.”

“That would suit me,” said Hartley. “We will have Argus talk to these fools in here and then go home. I would like to spend a night with my new wife.”

“Ah, newlyweds,” drawled Argus as he walked by and headed into the tavern. “Such heat, such neediness, such constant pining for each other. Love is in the air. I do believe I feel a little nauseous.”

Hartley shook his head and followed the man inside, a chuckling Aldus at his heels. Once they had found a table and ordered some ale, he watched Argus work his magic. It took two long hours to garner anything of importance, and it was not much. Even Argus looked disgruntled.

“Perhaps we are looking in the wrong places,” Hartley said as they left the tavern.

“For a hired killer?” Argus frowned. “This is where they usually linger, waiting for someone too cowardly to do their own dirty work to hire them. And this is the time those who want to be hired begin to gather. Sun starts to go down, and the sewer rats start to creep out.”

“This man dressed better and spoke better than anyone here. Alethea said he had a hint of an accent one might associate with men such as this, and he needed a bath.” He exchanged a brief grin with the other two men. “Yet why could he not be low gentry, or someone she has blackmailed into doing this work for her?”

“Or someone who just enjoys doing such work,” murmured Argus. “Someone who is just a little higher than these dregs. Killing can be a profitable business. He may be trying to rise up in the ranks, so to speak.”

“Well, ’tis evident that no one here knows him. You got a hint, a nibble, but no more. So, at best he has wandered through here, but he is no longer a part of this lot.”

Climbing into the carriage after telling the driver to take them to Iago’s, Argus sat on the seat opposite Hartley and Aldus and rubbed his chin. “I believe I need to more carefully study the list of her lovers.”

“You think she may have found one among them who is willing to do her killing for her. I saw no Pierre Leon on the list.”

“The person we got the name from might not have the right one. As for one of her lovers? Quite possible. Especially if the price was right. And we must consider the chance that Leon has already paid the ultimate price for his failure that night in the garden, so she will need another killer.”

Hartley swore. “Quite possibly, thus sending us on yet another wild-goose chase. I also wondered if Sir John Talbot’s death was what everyone thinks it was.”

“You think it might have been murder ordered and not done in the heat of the moment?”

“Why not? The woman prefers all witnesses or potential ones to be silenced permanently.”

“A good point. I think we need to step back and look at all we have discovered so far.”

“Aldus just spoke of the same thing.”

“If Aldus is willing, he and I will carefully examine the list of her lovers and see if there might be something there. I also have obtained a dossier on her family. We can study that as well.”

“Family,” Aldus muttered. “Was not Pierre her family? It might be that we need to cross him off that list. What of Margarite?”

“I doubt she is the killer,” said Hartley. “Alethea was positive it was a man, and the name of the man she drew was Pierre.”

Aldus waved Hartley’s words aside with a sharp slash of his hand. “I did not mean that she was the killer, but where is she? Mayhap she is the one who hired the man or saw to it that Sir John Talbot was silenced. She has to be an intricate part of it all or she would not have disappeared, too.”

Argus rubbed his hands over his face. “Hartley, go home before your wife forgets what you look like. Let us all get a good meal and a good night’s rest and then study what little information we have. We are running in circles right now, and it clutters up our minds.”

Hartley had no objection to that plan and felt his heart lighten as Argus told his driver to stop at Hartley’s home first. Despite his eagerness to find Claudette and the man who shot Alethea, he needed to step back. He needed to think of something aside from where to look next or whom to question. He needed Alethea.

Alethea heard the library door open and panicked. She shoved the book she had been reading behind her and looked toward the door. Germaine and Bayard walked in, and Alethea had to fight hard not to blush. The very last thing she wanted these two to know was that she had been reading a very salacious tome she had found in Hartley’s library and to explain why she had been doing so.

“Here you are,” said Germaine, grinning as she sat next to Alethea on the plush settee.

“Why, yes, here I am,” Alethea replied and hoped her voice did not hold any hint of how guilty, embarrassed, and nervous she felt. “Is there something you want?”

“My dressmaker is arriving to do some final fittings in a short while, and I wondered if you could abide being there, to offer advice and all. I do not want her to make my gowns too risqué. So—will you join us?”

“Is it not a little late in the day for that?”

“She is stopping here after closing her shop so that she can take the final fittings and get straight to work. It troubles her greatly that I have no gowns.”

“Of course. I will come up as soon as she arrives.”

“That will be in a few minutes,” said Bayard as he studied his uncle’s collection of books. “Germaine has a strange idea of what a short while really is. Quite often, she means immediately.”

There was no way she could stand up without revealing what she had been reading. Alethea sat and stared at Germaine, trying and failing to think of a reason why she was not getting right up to go and do as she had just promised. She should have locked the door, she thought despairingly.

Just as she was going to make an excuse as to why she could not go immediately, hoping that it would not sound too inane, Germaine jumped up, grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her to her feet. The book fell to the seat of the settee with a soft thud. To Alethea it sounded like a clap of thunder. She yanked her hand free of Germaine’s to grab for the book before either she or Bayard could see it, but Germaine was quicker. A blush spread over Alethea’s face as Germaine looked at the book and her eyes slowly widened.

“Well, what have we here?” Germaine said and started to grin.

“Wretched girl, give me that.”

Alethea tried to snatch the book out of Germaine’s hands, but the girl danced out of her reach and over to her brother’s side. Her blush grew even hotter when Bayard looked at it and grinned. She wished a hole would open in the floor and swallow her up. There was no way to explain this without sounding like a fool—or, worse, a lovesick fool who was desperate enough to try and use the sins of the flesh to make her husband love her.

“Oh, Alethea, you do not need this,” said Germaine as she returned to Alethea’s side and kissed her on the cheek.

“No?” she snatched the book out of Germaine’s hands. “Do you not recall your uncle’s reputation? A rake, lots of beautiful, experienced women.” She sighed. “I just thought I might learn something, but this book is full of things I do not believe the human body is capable of.” She had to smile when Bayard started laughing so hard he collapsed into a chair.