One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1) (6 page)

“He is aristocracy,” she said quietly. The fine quality of the shirt he wore, together with the small, gold cravat pin was an indication that this man had once been a gentleman of leisure. “Who lives around here?”

Luke snorted. “This is London. At this time of year it is packed to the rafters with the wealthy. He could be from anywhere. Just because he has been found here doesn’t mean he came from here.”

“He is a big man for anyone to move far,” she reasoned.

Luke sighed and pierced her with a glare.

“What? I am just saying,” she countered with sniff before he could say something as condescending as the look he was giving her.

“I know, but he is an adult; a fully grown male who can go where he pleases, when he pleases, and doesn’t have to account to anybody. There is nothing to say that he hasn’t walked himself here and been in an altercation of some kind.” His thoughts immediately turned to the much older and considerably more ruthless gang who roamed the area. Was this a mugging gone wrong?

“How do you go about finding out who he is then?”

“I
don’t,” Luke countered. “This is something the magistrate can deal with.” The last thing Luke wanted was to get involved with solving a murder mystery. Unfortunately, from the keen interest in Poppy’s eyes, she was too curious for her own good and likely to get herself involved in something she ought to leave well alone. He had to find a way to warn her off somehow. With that in mind he rounded on her.

“We could do with those pick-pockets coming back,” she muttered glancing around at the empty pathways, oblivious to his somewhat threatening stance.

“Really? Why? Do you want to give them your bag this time?” He lifted a querulous brow and wondered if she was having a dig at him.

She glanced around them. “Did you catch any of them?”

Luke shook his head and threw her a rueful look. “You started to scream again before I could. I decided to come back to see what else had happened to you given the racket you were making.”

Poppy’s lips twitched as she fought a smile. She nodded sagely but didn’t bait him. He was clearly put out that she had dared to question his masculine fitness. When he looked at her suspiciously she merely stared back, her expression as bland as she could make it. She could do nothing to hide the mirth in her eyes however and seeing it seemed to make him grumpy. Desperate to change the subject before she laughed and incurred his wrath even more, she looked in the direction the pick-pockets had vanished.

“I could go and find someone to go for the magistrate,” she offered hopefully.

Luke snorted and shook his head. He wondered if she thought he was as daft as he looked. “I think it is safest if we stay together. After all, there might be a murderer watching us right now.” He didn’t think so but if he had to frighten her into wanting to stay close to him then he would. Even while they had been talking she had started to stare far too longingly at the paths around them and, although he was positive he could catch her before she got too far, she screamed – loudly. The last thing he wanted this morning was add to his problems by being caught wrestling with a hysterical female in a secluded park with a dead man by the river. His colleagues in the Star Elite would never let him live it down.

“Where are you from, Poppy?”

“Pardon?” Poppy’s stomach dropped to her toes. Her mind went blank. She didn’t want to lie to him but then she didn’t want to tell him the truth either. She wracked her brain to come up with something plausible, but didn’t know London well enough to come up with any place names nearby she could give him as an alternative to the truth.

“Which part of London do you hail from?”

“Oh, well, I recently moved to Camden,” she replied evasively, and hoped her lie didn’t show on her face. “I hail from down south and don’t really know anyone around these parts.”

He was watching her as she spoke and suspected from the furtive way her eyes kept darting about that she hadn’t told him the truth. Listening to her speak, there was a faint brogue to her voice that had nothing to do with the south. Unless his ears were deceiving him she was from up north somewhere. Disappointment blended with anger as he realised that she might not be as trustworthy as she appeared after all. He felt a flicker of self-disgust that he had been foolish enough to be attracted, even for a short while, to someone who was not only trouble but also a liar.

Poppy fought the urge to squirm beneath that steady regard. For a moment she felt like a naughty child and wanted to blurt her guilt out just to get him to look at something else. There was something about this Luke Brindley that made her feel gauche and tongue tied. She rather suspected that he knew she had just lied to him and he wasn’t all that impressed by it. When she did try to brazen her deceit out and glare at him challengingly she felt the guilty flush of telltale warmth sweep over her cheeks and gave up. Instead, she turned her gaze away from the accusation in those wonderful eyes of his before she caved in and confessed everything.

“Whereabouts in Camden?” Luke demanded.

“I can’t remember,” she said blankly before she could think of a better answer. It was the truth. She couldn’t remember. She did know which route she had to take to get back to the hovel, but she couldn’t remember which street it was on. If she was honest, she didn’t really care because she wasn’t going to be there for too much longer. It certainly wasn’t home. To her, it was unimportant where in Camden the house was located, as long as she could put it behind her once and for all.

When he looked at her sceptically, she explained. “I can remember how to get there, and which door leads to the place I am staying, but I cannot remember what the address is. I only arrived in London last week.”

Luke sighed and shook his head at the curiosity of females. Who in the hell leaves home without knowing what the address is? Did she really think he was that gullible? He knew for definite now that she was lying and the investigator in him was itching to pummel her with questions to get to the truth, but he knew that now was neither the time nor the place.

“God save me,” he mused, eyeing the way she was biting into the soft pink flesh of her bottom lip as though deeply worried about something, or forcing herself to withhold further information. The sight of those pearly white teeth lying in stark contrast to the moist, pink flesh immediately made his body surge to life, and he had to force himself to look away before he really did something they both might regret.

“So?”

It took him a moment to realise she had spoken. “What?”

“So, do you want me to go and find someone to fetch a magistrate? I don’t mind admitting that I don’t want to stay here with the body any longer than I absolutely have to.”

Determined that she wouldn’t escape until he knew more about her, Luke looked her square in the eye. “No, I don’t want you to go for a magistrate. Someone will be along shortly. This is a park after all. As soon as someone appears we can send them.”

“Oh, but –” She took a wary step backward when he stepped toward her.

He opened his mouth to ask for her address when movement in the trees beside them captured his attention. Instinctively he grabbed hold of her elbows and pushed her around until she stood behind him.

“What is it?” She whispered.

She clutched on to the back of his jacket with fingers that shook now with fear. She was too far behind him to see what had caught his attention. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even appear to be breathing all that much. His sudden watchful stillness was alarming.

She cast a wary glance down at the corpse now far too close for comfort behind her she side-stepped carefully away only to jump in alarm when Luke’s hand came to rest on her hip. It blazed a trail through the material of her dress to the flesh beneath. She felt hot. She felt cold. She felt branded by the single touch. It was the first time a man, other than her father, had ever touched her and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. A part of her wanted to move away, but worry kept her still.

Luke didn’t bother to answer. His gaze was trained on the man hidden in the trees. The watcher hadn’t moved yet, but Luke was sure that he hadn’t been there when he had last looked just a few minutes ago. Aware that they were standing out in the open, and were intensely vulnerable in contrast to the hidden predator, Luke kept his gaze locked on his target and quickly made a decision.

“Stay here, Poppy,” he ordered quietly. “Whatever you do, don’t move away from this body.”

“Why? What is it?” she whispered. She tried to peer around him but his shoulders were too wide.

Luke didn’t bother to explain. With his gaze locked on the man dressed entirely in black now trying to hide in the shadows, he began to walk toward the trees. Before he took more than a few steps though, the watcher suddenly left the shadow of the huge oak tree he had been resting against and disappeared deeper into the woods. Luke didn’t even stop to look back as he gave chase for the second time that morning and left Poppy all alone with a dead man on her hands.

“Well, really,” she snapped as she watched the mysterious Luke Brindley vanish for the second time that day.

Poppy watched as Luke disappeared into the trees as silently as a ghost. The stealth and speed behind his departure unnerved her in a way that nothing else ever had. She listened carefully for a moment but couldn’t hear any snapping twigs or crackle of dried leaves. How did someone so large manage to move about so quietly? He moved with panther like grace so confidently that it seemed almost like second nature.

Whoever he was, he was no common or garden gentleman at leisure; that much Poppy did know. Luke Brindley was someone who was considerably more dangerous than a mere tradesperson; not only in persona but to her as a woman. Something deep within her knew it and was warning her to get out now while the going was good.

“You are no help,” she groused looking down at the body at her feet. Thankfully he didn’t reply, but that only increased her sense of being all alone in the world. It was then that she realised that she
was
all alone. Mr Brindley had vanished. He could be the killer. He had emptied the man’s pockets; the contents of which were now scattered all over the man’s chest. Had he been looking for something, some incriminating piece of evidence maybe?

If the pick-pockets returned now, they would help themselves to the coins Luke had found, dead man or not. To anyone who else happened to be genuinely taking an early morning stroll,
she
was standing over a dead man whose personal property had been bared for the world to see. Not only that, but the marks around his throat were clearly visible now that Luke had untied the cravat – marks that highlighted he had been murdered. It looked incriminating even to her and cast her under a cloud of suspicion she knew she would struggle to explain her way out of.

“He could come back,” she whispered. “Again. He will ask questions – again.”

Given how he had studied her bag, she wondered if he would insist on taking it off her so he could have a look inside. If anyone was arrogant enough to, it was the man who had chased after a shadow without a qualm.

“What to do, what to do,” she whispered.  She didn’t want to, but she knew that there really was only one option available to her. With one last furtive glance around to make sure that nobody was watching, she turned around and retraced her steps toward the main gates. She didn’t know what she would say if she happened to cross paths with Mr Brindley again but didn’t want to even think about that right now. She felt guilty for having to abandon the body, especially when Luke had told her to stay with it, but she just couldn’t risk being accused of killing someone.

“Whoever Mr Brindley is, he can deal with the body himself if he ever returns,” she muttered. “Besides, you don’t want to wait around just in case the killer does turn up.” That thought made her feel a little queasy and was enough to force her to redouble her efforts to get out of the park before Luke reappeared and stopped her.

As she merged into the passing pedestrians on the busy main road, her thoughts remained locked on the enigma that was Luke Brindley. She hated to think that someone like him could be a cold-blooded murderer, he was just too handsome. Besides, there was something about his calm, unflappable manner that was distinctly reassuring. He had been annoyed at her questions, but then she hadn’t really done herself any favours by sounding fraught and irrational. He hadn’t been aggressive, just impatient and a little patronising. Just the thought of some of the questions she had asked him made her wince. It was her own fault if she had irritated him. Now that she came to think her questions over, she had been a little foolish.

“He must think you are a right nincompoop,” she muttered, then clamped her mouth closed when a passing gentleman looked at her warily.

If she wasn’t so attracted to Mr Brindley – Luke - she could begin to put the entire debacle behind her and focus on what to do about the contents of the bag she still carried. It wasn’t lost to her that she still had the wretched thing, but couldn’t quite make her mind up whether that was a good thing or not. She had a strange feeling that it wouldn’t just be the face of the corpse that would haunt her dreams from now on. The image of a rather dapper, and incredibly mysterious man called Luke, would stay with her for a very long time as well. Still, there was no reason why her rather unexpected attraction to him should mean that she should allow herself to be suspected of a crime she hadn’t committed, especially when the mysterious Luke Brindley appeared guiltier than she did.

Confident that she was doing the right thing, Poppy ducked her head, sent a silent prayer of apology to the mysterious Mr Brindley and the corpse, clutched her bag tighter, and made her way back to the hovel.

“Sodding hell,” Luke snarled as he side-stepped a barrow man and had to take his eyes off the stranger only a few feet ahead of him. Although he did so for only a few seconds, it was more than enough time for his quarry to vanish. Luke lengthened his stride and scoured each nook and cranny as he walked to the end of the street and out onto the main road, but he didn’t see the stranger again.

Had that been the killer? Or was that who Poppy had been in the park to meet?

Although Luke hadn’t had the opportunity to see much in the way of distinguishing features, he had noted that the man had cropped jet black hair and was so slim he looked almost gaunt. To cap it all, his clothing was unremarkable; the kind of clothing a lot of people in London wore, and that gave him the ability to blend in with the many pedestrians out on the pavements this morning. And vanish he had. Completely. Totally. Disappeared off the face of the earth in a heartbeat.

“Where in the heck have you gone?” he groused with a frown as he scoured the people hurrying in all directions.

At the end of the road he turned around and studied the busy thoroughfare closely. Traders were setting up stalls to one side of the busy high street. Barrow men were pushing their carts loaded with wares while women carried baskets of goods and foods. Children scurried this way and that as they too headed off to work. At first glance it was just an ordinary street in London full of working-class people. However, Luke knew that somewhere in the midst of the chaos was a possible killer; the murderer of the man in the park. He also suspected that he had gotten
that
close, but luck had worked against him for a third or fourth time that morning.

The first had been with Miss Cleghorne and her questionable bag, the second came in the guise of the pick-pockets, the third bundle of mystery was the corpse, and the fourth the mysterious stranger in the woods.

Disgusted at his amateurish mistake, Luke swore, and was about to retrace his steps back to the park when someone appeared at his elbow. He glared at the man who drew too close for comfort but then cursed aloud when he immediately recognised the tall gentleman who was his best friend.

“Good morning,” Barnaby growled before Luke could speak.

“Is it?” Luke demanded dourly. He threw his friend and colleague a warning look and nodded in the direction of the park. “Come with me.”

“Been an eventful morning, has it?” Barnaby drawled with his brows lifted as he fell into step beside him.

Luke shook his head in disgust. “You have no idea just how badly my morning has gone.”

Careful to keep his voice low for fear of being overhead, he brought Barnaby up to date on the morning’s events while they made their way back to the park.

“So you have no idea who he is?” Barnaby asked curiously.

“Which one? The hider or the corpse?”

“Both. Either.”

“No.”

As they walked, Luke found himself habitually scanning the area for any sign of loiterers, pick-pockets, or people acting strangely, or the man in black. Unfortunately, on this particular morning the only people who appeared to be involved in anything untoward were himself, and the delightful Miss Cleghorne.

“What the hell?” Luke growled as he stared at the spot where he had left Poppy. “Damn it all.”

Barnaby looked at him before he studied the area. “What is it?” He couldn’t see anything amiss.

“They have gone,” Luke murmured in stunned disbelief. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. When his brain did begin to function properly his fierce temper grew - to mammoth proportions. He stared at the spot where he had left the body but, apart from a slight wet patch on the path, there was nothing to indicate that either the body, or Poppy, had been there at all.

“The body? The woman? Where are they?” Barnaby glanced around the empty park with a frown but nothing stirred. Not even the birds tweeted in the trees. There wasn’t even the occasional rustle of twigs and leaves from the woodland creatures.

“Gone,” Luke growled, perplexed. He scanned the trees but couldn’t see either of them. “How in the world did she move him?”

“She has scarpered,” Barnaby said, and didn’t need Luke to nod to confirm it.

“She must have had help,” he groused. Had the man he had just chased left an accomplice behind to help Poppy with the body. “God, I think I have just been taken for an utter fool.”

Barnaby clapped him on the shoulder. “What I want to know is why she has taken the body with her? She must be a really strong woman.”

“She wasn’t. She was no bigger than a sprat; all slender curves and femininity.” Luke scowled at Barnaby when he lifted his brows and smirked. “How in the hell could she drag a dead man around the park?” Luke snapped. “She was struggling to carry that damned carpet bag of hers. She couldn’t hold that and drag a man the size of me, unconscious, wet, and a dead weight around a park without being seen. She just wouldn’t have the strength.”

“She had help.” It wasn’t a question. “How big was she?”

Luke turned to look at his colleague, stunned by the latest turn of events. “She was just average. Beautiful, but certainly not inclined to drag a body anywhere, even if she was strong enough to do so. I couldn’t even get her to help me search it. She was squeamish – or appeared to be anyway.”

“She didn’t want to be left alone with the corpse. Maybe she didn’t want to be seen handling someone she had killed?” Barnaby shook his head and wondered what the hell Luke had gotten himself in to. “I thought you were after pick-pockets this morning?”

“I was - am,” Luke snapped. “Right now, they are the least of my concerns. They aren’t responsible for the dead body. That body was aristocracy; and bigger than the pick-pocket gang put together.”

“Did you get a good look at the face?”

“Whose? Hers or the body’s?” Luke asked without thinking. He mentally winced when Barnaby’s smile widened.

“Both. Either, but preferably the dead man’s. Just so we can match it up to any reports of missing persons. It would help.”

Luke nodded. “I can draw them,” he said, and rubbed a weary hand down his face. He studied the path beneath their feet. Even the coins and bits he had dragged out of the dead man’s pockets had vanished. Everything had simply disappeared without a trace – as though they had never been there in the first place.

Barnaby’s brows shot upright. “We need to focus on the pick-pockets, Luke. Terrence Sayers is a deep concern of everyone, you know that,” he warned his colleague quietly.

“I know,” Luke replied crisply. “But right now we have a missing corpse. The body of a man who had been murdered this morning because he was still warm when I dragged him out of that river. Not only that but we also have a missing woman too. The pick-pockets were here. They were pestering the woman when I found them. I chased them across the park when the woman screamed.”

“As far as I know they don’t kill. They just pick-pocket,” Barnaby warned. “Although they are violent, as far as we are aware they haven’t been known to kill.”

“The pick-pockets I saw wouldn’t be able to do such a thing. They were barely old enough to reach my chest. They wouldn’t have the power, or the motive.” Luke described the youngest pick-pocket he had chased, and very nearly captured.

“Yet they outran you,” Barnaby coughed around a smile.

“That damned woman screamed,” Luke protested. He knew his friend was baiting him but was too busy battling his temper to pay much attention.

“Were the pick-pockets a diversion to allow the killer to get away? Was the woman working with them do you think?” Luke’s eyes met Barnaby’s. “Until we can unravel this then we have to assume that all the incidents are linked. The woman has to be connected to the body in some way, and one or either of them has to be linked to the pick-pockets. We can’t just ignore the possibility. We were the only ones in the park this morning, aside from the person in the woods who I chased out onto the high street.”

“And lost,” Barnaby added.

“Look, I got snarled up by a barrow man,” Luke protested.

“I am just jesting,” Barnaby soothed. Secretly he wondered what else had happened to get Luke so riled but knew that now was not the time to ask. Luke was usually one of the calmest members of the Star Elite. To see him so rattled was a testament to just how difficult his morning had been, and just how much it annoyed him to lose not one but three people.

“Given that the pick-pockets, Poppy, and the dead man, were the only people here this morning, we have to assume they are all connected. It is deuced odd for all of you to be out and about so early in the morning. You know you were here for a good reason. They can’t have been. For a body to turn up in a park that was unreasonably busy – well – we cannot dismiss a connection just because we can’t make sense of it yet. They were in the area at the time that a body turns up. That in its own right is suspicious enough, especially with all the assaults around here that have been reported of late. If they are innocents in all of this why were they stalking around the park so early in the morning? It isn’t the time that pick-pockets usually wander the parks. Not when most people are still abed in any case. Nor is it usually the time when single ladies take a walk unchaperoned. No, they were all here for a reason. We just don’t know whether that reason is either the dead body, or the woman, or even the man in the trees.”