The Dark One (21 page)

Her morning spent in worry, then Franklin's near attack on Rosalind, left her emotions raw. Her eyes stung with tears. “Excuse me for caring what happens to you,” she said, and then she marched to the adjoining door, walked through it, and slammed it shut.

Armond opened the door a second later and came storming into her room. “I will not excuse you. If I hadn't gone to confront Chapman immediately upon my return home, he would have hit you, Rosalind. He might have done worse to you. Don't you realize you're not just dealing with a bully? You're dealing with a murderer?”

Rosalind's heart thudded against her chest. “How do you know? I mean for certain? What happened last night?”

“My Lord?” Hawkins called from the next room. “I've brought the basin. Shall I attend you?”

Without answering her, Armond left and returned to his room. Rosalind followed him, pausing at the adjoining door as Armond stripped off his wrinkled coat and soiled shirt. She gasped when she realized he had several small bleeding cuts on his neck and hands. What had happened to him? She couldn't stand not knowing, but Hawkins had dipped a cloth in the washbasin and looked as if he would tend to Armond's cuts.

She doubted that Armond would discuss what happened last night with her in front of Hawkins. Rosalind
decided to take matters into her own hands. She approached the steward.

“Please allow me to see to my husband,” she said to the man.

Hawkins turned an inquisitive look toward Armond.

“It's all right, Hawkins,” Armond said. “Rosalind can clean me up.”

“Very well.”

As soon as Hawkins handed Rosalind the damp cloth and left the room, she turned to Armond. “How did you get cut? And where were you all night? How do you know that Franklin is in fact responsible for killing women?”

Armond was still trying to bring his emotions under control. He was good at that, but he'd never been faced with the challenges he'd been given since Rosalind came into his life. Control was easy, he realized, responsibility was easy, when a man didn't care. Suddenly he cared.

“I was forced to hurl myself through an upstairs window earlier, then had to jump to the ground below.”

Rosalind blinked up at him. “I'm surprised you didn't kill yourself, or at least cause yourself serious injury.”

That bothered Armond as well. He'd had no choice but to hurl himself through the window sealed shut by years of cleaning neglect, but once he had, he'd rolled off the roof and landed on the ground with his knees bent, in a crouching position that should have broken his legs. It had seemed natural, the jumping. The landing was . . . unnatural. Noting that Rosalind waited for him to elaborate on last night's events and that she had to stand on her tiptoes in order to reach the cuts on his neck, he steered them toward the bed, where they could both sit.

“Why did you have to hurl yourself through a window, Armond? Please tell me what happened.”

The cloth stung against his cuts. His mind raced with
everything that had occurred the previous evening, and this morning when he'd awakened in a strange place with a dead woman. Where to begin? He began at the beginning. But later, he wondered how much to tell Rosalind.

Did he tell her that he thought Chapman had chosen a woman who resembled Rosalind as some sort of warped symbolism? Did he tell her that he thought her stepbrother planned to kill her and implicate him in the murder, as he'd done with the prostitute? Or was he wrong about that? Chapman had planned for him to be discovered this morning.

“My God,” Rosalind whispered. “I can hardly believe—I mean, he could have just as easily killed you, Armond. You were unconscious; why didn't he?”

Armond suddenly realized something that hadn't occurred to him. “It was a trap,” he said. “He knew I would start to follow him. The thieves were hired men. I remember now one of them saying they would rob me because they might as well get more in the bargain.”

He felt for the knot on the back of his head, maybe just to assure himself he was on the right track. He had a suspicion about something else as well.

“It's become a game to him,” he explained to Rosalind. “He's turned murder into a game.”

She shivered and in her deep violet eyes he saw her terror. Armond was so angry at Rosalind for confronting Chapman about his whereabouts and placing herself in danger that he hadn't stopped to think about how much courage it had taken her to go next door. She'd faced a man she was terrified of, for him.

His gaze moved over her beautiful features. She could have been the woman lying next to him this morning. Dead. He reached out to touch her lips, trace the shape of them, touch her cheek, just to feel the heat beneath her
skin that told him she was alive. He brushed her long hair back over her shoulder. Then he saw it.

“What is that on your neck?”

Her hand immediately went to the spot. She rubbed it for a moment. “I'm not sure. It appears to be a bite.”

He brushed her hand aside and looked closer. “A bite from what?”

When she didn't answer and he pulled back to look at her, pink crept into her cheeks. “I believe from you.”

It was just beginning to grow dark when Armond found himself at Covent Garden again. Chapman had taunted him with proving that he'd killed the woman last night, and Armond thought he knew a way to do so. Since it was earlier than it had been last night when he'd been at this exact location, there were more women walking the area. He was searching for one in particular. Molly had been her name.

He spotted her a ways down the street, moving slowly in his direction, her hips swaying and, again, her leg on display. Armond urged his mount toward her. When he drew up beside her, she stopped and eyed him boldly.

“Couldn't be my luck that you're looking for companionship, love,” she said. “Not a fine-looking man like yourself.”

Armond dismounted, holding the reins of his horse while the woman sauntered closer to him. “Molly? Is that your name?”

The woman drew up. “How'd you know that?” Her gaze narrowed, and she looked him up and down again. “Haven't had dealings with you before. I'd remember you, love.”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

The woman made a snorting noise. “Don't have time for questions. I'm a working woman.”

“I'll pay you for your time,” Armond offered, then reached beneath his coat and removed his new money purse, since his had been stolen the night before.

The woman shrugged. “Suppose talking is easier than lying on my back, although wouldn't mind lying on my back for you. Might even pay you to let me run my fingers through those gorgeous blond locks of yours.”

The woman's offer didn't tempt him. Not even a little. “Last night, there was a woman standing with you on this corner. A brunette wearing a red dress. Thin.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Why men are interested in that bag of bones when I've got nice plump curves, I don't understand.”

“The woman has been murdered.”

He expected a reaction from Molly. Just not the one he got. She laughed. “Then I suppose it's her corpse coming up the street there.”

Armond turned in the direction Molly had looked. A woman strolled toward them. A brunette wearing the same red dress she'd worn the previous night.

“Hey, Lily, you're supposed to be dead. What you doing walking my corner?” Molly called to the woman.

The woman, Lily, sauntered up to them. She looked Armond up and down as Molly had done. “Who says I'm supposed to be dead?”

Armond was thrown off guard by the development “I saw you leave last night with a man driving a phaeton.”

“Bastard,” Lily muttered. “Drove me around in his buggy is all he did, brought me back here, and made me get out. Didn't even pay me for my time.”

Another trick? If Chapman had known Armond had been following him, he'd also known that he could have elicited the whore, Molly, to tell the inspectors that
Chapman was the last man the dead prostitute had been seen with. Chapman had lured him into a trap, had brought this woman back and chosen another to kill and put into bed beside him. It seemed like a lot of work for one man, one man playing a deadly game.

“I am obviously mistaken,” Armond said to the ladies. “Sorry to bother you.” He removed a few coins and gave them to each woman.

“Sure you're not up for some sport, love?” Molly asked him. “Wouldn't mind earning the coin you just gave me.”

“Thank you, but no, maybe another time,” he added, just to spare her feelings. He was thinking of Rosalind now, and how he wanted to hurry home to her. He'd told Hawkins to fetch his pistol and have it handy while he was gone. He'd told the steward to shoot any man who stepped foot in the house, except Armond, of course. Hawkins had replied, “It would be my pleasure, my Lord.”

The ride home gave Armond time to think. Chapman had gone to a lot of trouble to frame him for murder. Besides marrying Rosalind, what did the man have against him? Marrying off his stepsister to Penmore for a high bride's price and the release of his debts against the man was no longer an option . . . unless Rosalind was a widow.

Tomorrow Armond would see his lawyers and make certain that Rosalind was protected, at least financially, in the event of his death. His brothers, he hoped, would see to her physical protection should anything happen to him. While he was about business, he'd check on something else. He'd see how hard it would be to find out which properties around London were for rent or purchase.

What Armond wouldn't think about was the way he had leaped from a second-floor window earlier and how
he'd landed upon his feet . . . like an animal. What he wouldn't think about was the way the men who had attacked him last night had become frightened right before the one behind him had clobbered him over the head. What he wouldn't think about were the strange bite mark on his wife's lovely neck.

Rosalind was in the parlor, trying to read a book, when she heard the front door open, saw Hawkins, who'd stationed himself at the parlor door, pull a pistol from beneath his coat, then relax.

“Good evening, Your Lordship.” Hawkins tucked the pistol back beneath his coat. “Lady Wulf is here in the parlor. Shall I bring you something?”

Armond walked into the parlor. “A brandy would be nice. Would you care for one, Rosalind?”

Besides champagne on a few occasions, Rosalind had never tasted spirits. She'd had an eventful day, the same as Armond, who now wore the strains of the day upon his handsome face.

“I believe I will have one,” she said to Hawkins. The man nodded and went on his way.

Armond slumped into a velvet chair across from her. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Chapman covered his tracks from last night well.”

Rosalind laid her book aside. A cozy fire burned in the hearth, and she'd kicked off her slippers, tucking her feet beneath her on the settee. “What happened when you went to Covent Garden? Did you see the woman Franklin first approached last night?”

He nodded. “Yes, and I also spoke with the dead woman.”

“What?”

Armond sighed wearily. “At some point, Chapman took the woman back to Covent Garden, dropped her off,
and went somewhere else, where he solicited another brunette, murdered her, then took her to a deserted house and left her on a dirty mattress beside me.”

Rosalind straightened on the settee. His story was extraordinary. “It sounds like a lot of trouble for one man,” she said.

Armond ran a hand through his hair. “My thoughts exactly,” he agreed.

Hawkins arrived with two glasses of amber liquid on a serving tray. He set the tray on the table closest to Rosalind and left the room again.

Armond rose, lifted a glass, handed it to Rosalind, and took his own glass. He glanced at the book she'd put aside.

“I hope you don't mind,” she said. “I visited your study. Hawkins said you had a nice collection of books and I wanted something to help me pass the time.”

Her husband shrugged. “You have free run of the house, Rosalind.”

“So, what do you do now?” She took a sip of the warm brandy and nearly choked. Armond smiled at her. “It burns,” she said once she managed to catch her breath again.

“It warms,” he corrected her, seating himself beside her on the settee. “I have a couple of things I plan to do tomorrow. I don't like leaving you here alone. Not with Chapman only next door.”

“Oh.” Rosalind suddenly remembered something. She reached for the invitation she'd stuck in her book. “The dowager has invited me to tea tomorrow. Lady Amelia was here and said she'd also received an invitation, which of course was sent out weeks ago.”

“Lady Amelia?”

“Lady Amelia Sinclair,” Rosalind explained. “The Duke of Ravenhill's daughter. She's my friend.” Either the
brandy warmed her or just simply being able to say she had a friend did.

“The pretty blonde with the big blue eyes,” Armond commented. “Yes, I know who she is.”

Something very close to the color of green reared its ugly head. “You do?”

“I noticed her at the LeGrandes' soiree and asked the dowager who she was.”

“You noticed her?” Rosalind unclenched her hand from around the stem of her glass and took another sip of brandy.

He smiled. “Only because she was talking to you,” he answered. “At the time, I wanted to know who it was you were trying to impress the night of the Greenleys' ball, but of course now I know that you weren't trying to impress anyone.”

“Oh.” Rosalind felt a warm flush of pleasure. She swirled the liquor around in her glass. She decided she liked brandy.

Armond suddenly leaned close to her. “Have I told you that I want you today?”

She had just taken another drink and nearly choked again. Now that she supposed they had matters of murder and society out of the way, he was back to seduction. And he was very good at it.