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Authors: Caroline Richards

BOOK: The Darkest Sin
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He leaned close, inhaling her scent, watching her tense, the porcelain of her skin pale with alarm and disbelief. He was so ready to touch her, taste her, all in a feeble attempt to lose himself in a physical maelstrom that could never hope to blot out the past. But he balanced this dangerous temptation by giving her one last chance to withdraw from him.
He threw down the challenge like a gauntlet. “You do not wish to become my lover, do you?”
“Your lover?” She mouthed the words, understanding frozen on her face, the pupils of her eyes dilating.
He knew what it would be like. To run his hands from the silk of her cheeks to the slim column of her throat and downward over the planes and curves of her shoulders and waist, across her ribs and then up again to cup her breasts. To test himself, to torture the slight remnants,
nay dregs,
of his remaining conscience, he mentally traced her body through the layers of her clothing, deliberately leaving every button and fastening intact, watching the panic rise in her eyes like an oncoming storm.
It was enough. He didn't have to move or touch her because she had already started to pull away. His gaze still holding hers, he was aware of the tension building inside her, beneath her prim cloak and the plain lace at her slender throat.
He knew the dangerous allure of the game he played. He wondered with a cool dispassion whether he really wanted Rowena Woolcott to flee, to disappear once more. Then again, the choice was not his to make. She already stood at the door limned in the dim light, a wraith picking up her narrow skirts, slipping away.
Rushford simply watched her go.
 
The echo of marble and stone was the only sound in the cavernous British Museum. The murmurings of crowds and respectful whispers of groups had long disappeared after the great museum closed its doors for another day, leaving behind hallways and rooms groaning with the treasures of the ancient and modern world.
And as with all treasures, most came with a grievous price. The Rosetta Stone, almost four feet in height and one foot thick, rested in its glass sarcophagus, one thousand and seven hundred pounds of granite, in silent, erudite splendor. The ancient Egyptian artifact carved in the Ptolemaic era had provided three translations of a single passage, two in Egyptian scripts and one in the classical Greek of the country's elite rulers.
Two men stood in the shadows, contemplating the heavy stone with its hieroglyphic inscriptions, their expressions guarded. The taller of the two, barrel chested with hands clasped behind his back, pursed his lips with dissatisfaction.
“It rankles, it surely does.” His statement hung in the cool air, as though everything depended on the next few moments.
“What rankles precisely?”
“That this discovery has been here on public display at the British Museum since 1802. For over forty years,” the barrel chested man murmured before adding as an afterthought, “Of course, there's another reason our friend insists on the Stone's return to France.”
The man by his side raised a dark brow. His was a spare build, compact and athletic, his dark hair brushed back from a high forehead, his linen and demeanor impeccable. “I, for one, am not fooled,” he said with a courteous nod toward his companion. “He wants the Stone in his personal possession.” His English was faultless, save for the faintest trace of French accent. “Patriotic pride does not come into it. The fact that Napoleon's scientists and scholars first discovered the Stone in 1799 makes little difference to him, Lowther.”
Giles Lowther smiled thinly. “You, Sebastian, are mistaken. It makes all the difference to him—although not for the patriotic reasons you may believe.” The assertion floated into the night, illuminated only by two candelabra left behind by a watchman who had been duly rewarded. The two men took the time to consider their master's motivations while affecting to read the inscriptions painted in white below the Stone: “Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801” on the left side and “Presented by King George III” on the right. Despite the curt description, the historical details were bloody. Both Lowther and Sebastian knew full well that after Napoleon returned from Egypt to France, his troops and scientists remained behind with their discovery, holding off British and Ottoman attacks for a further eighteen months. The French scholars swore they would prefer to burn their discoveries rather than turn them over to the hated enemy.
“Our friend,” continued Sebastian, gesturing with an elegant motion to the artifact behind glass, “claims that the Stone was seized by the British from where it had been hidden in the back streets of Alexandria and then found its way to Britain aboard the captured French frigate HMS
Egyptienne
.”
Lowther's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “All superfluous detail,” he said enigmatically. “What is more important is that he would like to continue the work Champollion began over two decades ago.” It was acknowledged that the orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion was credited as the principal translator of the Rosetta Stone.
Sebastian sniffed his derision. “And what did we learn from the twenty paragraphs? In essence that the Stone speaks of a tax amnesty given to the temple priests of the day, restoring the tax privileges that they had traditionally enjoyed in more ancient times. Hardly the stuff of legend.” His voice trailed away as he glanced sharply at Lowther.
Lowther smiled starkly. “Or so we are led to believe.”
“There is more, then?”
“Why else would our friend be so keen to have it in his possession?”
Sebastian tapped a finger impatiently against the glass. His dark eyes were shadowed. “Therein lies the challenge. The situation may prove exceedingly untidy.”
“Only because you failed the first time,” Lowther said, each word hard as diamonds.
“What is past, is past.” He gave a Gallic shrug, “We move on.”
“Indeed,” said Lowther, a hand at his chin, contemplating what seemed to be an imaginary army arrayed in front of him. “Our next moves must be more strategic. That being said, the actress's demise was a necessity—a tactic—as she knew too much.”
Sebastian nodded. “And of course the method of dispatch was meant to be a reminder.”
“Our friend delights in symmetry after all.” Fire and water, thought Lowther.
“Yet how can we be sure that the drowning will elicit Rushford's interest?”
“It will,” reassured Lowther. “Because he was besotted with the Duchess of Taunton. Her death, and his guilt, eat at his soul.”
Guilt and passion, thought Sebastian to himself, a powerful, eternally useful combination of emotions. “The Duchess was lamentably unstable. That she flaunted their affair with no thought to propriety or her position—” He paused. “It was not expected.”
They both stared at the huge tablet in silence, aware that they had only a few more moments before they must exit the museum. Then Lowther said, “Our friend demands results. A fortnight is all he is willing to give.”
“Always impatient.” It was a careful observation. Neither man wished to elaborate further because the mention of their mutual friend, the impossibly reclusive and powerful Montagu Faron, always brought with it a measure of fear. And for good reason. Faron was never without his leather mask, shielding the world from the facial tremors that overtook him with unexpected ferocity. And yet, the man was seemingly indestructible, having escaped certain death by fire only one year earlier. And now with scars from the flames all over his body, there were whispers that the great man of science and reason had made a pact with the devil.
“Revenge drives him and his relentless timetable,” continued Lowther finally, giving Sebastian the smallest of frowns. “The business with the Woolcotts has never been resolved to his satisfaction, and therein lies the crux of the matter. That tiresome chit, Julia Woolcott, and her new husband, Strathmore, are responsible for more than they know. Good thing that they are far away in Africa, beyond reach for the moment. At least Rowena Woolcott's death slaked some of his thirst for vengeance.”
Sebastian's eyes strayed back to the Stone. “I have heard it said that Faron's childhood
amour,
Meredith Woolcott, was behind the tragedy that haunts him to this day. That she was responsible for destroying what many consider one of the world's finest minds.” He turned to hold Lowther's gaze, raising one eyebrow. “Although I wonder if that explanation is mere apocryphal legend.”
Lowther, who perhaps knew Faron best, both the scientist and the legend, pretended to ignore the question. “We can speculate for hours on end, but for what purpose? I should recommend that we focus upon the matter at hand.” He gestured dramatically to the heavy stone behind the glass. “Returning the Rosetta Stone to its proper home.”
“France,” intoned Sebastian.
Lowther shook his head. “More specifically, Clair de Lune.” He referred to Faron's vast estate outside Paris. “Do what you must. And rapidly.”
“Don't I always?” asked Sebastian, quick as a snake. He placed a hand on Lowther's shoulder, aware that the familiarity made the other man recoil a little.
Bon,
he thought. No more discussion was required. The two men returned to stare at the silent and ancient Rosetta Stone, its import shimmering in the empty caverns of the British Museum.
Chapter 4
T
he past few years had not been kind to East London. The docks had spread east along the Thames, and crowded housing brought epidemics of crime and disease. Mrs. Banks's shanty reeked of decomposing flesh and remnants of fear. Located on the far side of Shoreditch, the abysmal dwelling was the final destination of those who had never been cherished in life and even less so in death. For a fee, she would collect the flotsam and jetsam of fate before the weekly arrangements were made for deposit in a pauper's grave, where twenty-five shillings would buy an open maw to be filled forty feet and thirty corpses deep.
Mrs. Banks had left Rushford alone for the moment, scuttling outside to argue, in a voice rattling with ague, with the char woman. The well-deserved exhortations rained over the woman's cowering head for overcharging on a bundle of wood, dropped hastily at the doorstep earlier that morning.
Inside the narrow building, a dim light barely illuminated dark corners filled with towers of cracked china, glass vases, and the occasional tarnished candlestick or oil lamp. These items were the elastic currency in which Mrs. Banks often chose to trade with those too poor to produce the shillings required to finish off what ill fate had begun. Rushford stood at the foot of a scarred wooden table, looking down at what was barely recognizable as a human form. The rumors had been correct, he thought.
A bloated mess
. He resisted the urge to pull the sheet over the suppurating mass sprawled on the table and topped garishly with a heap of golden curls. The stench was overwhelming, but he forced himself, in a kind of self-enforced punishment, to withstand it.
His eyes lingered on the tangle of hair draped over the bruised throat, his vision blurring as he remembered another body and another time. His Kate. Who, they claimed, had taken her own life by wading into the Thames, her pockets freighted down with stones. Only Rushford knew otherwise.
His mind spun back in time. It had been early spring, sometime before dawn, in the Duchess of Taunton's husband's home, adjacent to Apsley House. Rushford had fought his way into the grand pile, far past caring about the wild rumors, the shocked outrage, and even colder stares of the Earl, who should have been wild with grief. The stench had been just as overpowering then, of white calla lilies, their powdery scent invading every crevice of the mausoleum that the Duchess had never called home.
Kate lay lost on the big bed, staring unseeing into the distance, beyond the high-ceilinged room where they had prepared her for burial for the following morning. Incredulous, he had leaned in close, stroking her cheek, the flesh already cold as stone. Half expecting some response from the still form, he continued caressing her face, feeling the fine bone beneath the blue skin like the map of a familiar territory. Her eyes were open and clouded, the brown indistinct and muddy as the waters in which she had drowned.
He had gripped her hand, the small fingers like stiff twigs. Perhaps he said something, whispered near her cold and parted lips, but she no longer responded to him, her frame still against the pillows, straining against a death that came too soon. For what seemed like hours, although it must have been mere minutes, he continued to sit in the silence she had left behind, waiting for a breath that would never come.
Mrs. Banks's shrill voice, charged with outrage, pierced the fetid air, displacing the scent of lilies with the heavy fugue of decomposition. Rushford placed his left hand to his eyes, but it was as though his right hand still held Kate's. He smiled grimly at his folly, his gaze lifting to the lone begrimed window overlooking a narrow alley. For an instant, he thought that he wasn't quite alone, half expecting a face at the window. In two strides, he was at the dust-streaked casement, peering into the alley. Nothing.
He hesitated for an instant before returning to the bloated form beneath the soiled sheet. He didn't like what he saw. There was a cruel symmetry here. Death by drowning. Another woman whose unexpected and violent demise had been quite deliberately brought to his attention. His eyes moved along the length of the table, and back up to the face that remained unrecognizable. The vivid blue silk and rich lace of the woman's garment poked out from beneath the gray sheet, incongruous details that hinted at a greater story.
Rushford scrubbed a hand down his face. He had all but promised Archer that he would make this pilgrimage to Shoreditch. To accomplish what exactly, he wasn't entirely certain. Perhaps he'd hoped to scare away the demons that regularly bedeviled him.
At the thought of demons, he decided that he didn't want or need to think about Rowena Woolcott for the moment. Their encounter the past night had taken on the shape of a shadowed delusion, yet another ghost come back to haunt him. Fortunately for him, a ghost that was summarily exorcised. He recalled her widening eyes, her shocked expression, moments before she had slipped away from him. This time for good, he hoped, despite his clamoring instincts that told him differently.
He was a man who couldn't afford to believe in happenstance or coincidence. Yet, he convinced himself, there was nothing else behind Rowena Woolcott, in her blindness, finding her way back to him again. The broadsheets had been full of the Cruikshank murders and the name of Lord James Lyndon Rushford, the narrative holding out tenuous hope to a young woman intent on finding answers.
He should feel guilty for turning her away. But he knew with unshakeable conviction that Rowena was safer without him. He had done as much as he could, as he'd learned in the bitterest way possible. Kate's cold face and unseeing eyes still mocked him.
Behind him, Mrs. Banks's shrill words penetrated the dampness, a wet cold that seemed impervious to the bright sunshine cutting through the small windows of the one room with floors so warped by time and humidity, it was like walking the deck of a rolling ship. She was still arguing with the char woman and had reserves of acrimony to spare, giving Rushford the time he needed to work unobserved.
Mrs. Banks had already stripped the body of anything of worth, including jewels and gold teeth. Even the remaining bits of lace that might have survived their owner's fate would not last long. A woman who believed in neither heaven nor hell, Mrs. Banks had faith only in what she could test with her teeth or barter the next day for a bag of grain or bottle of gin. To confirm his suspicions, Rushford glanced at the corpse's hands; the once plump fingers were empty of rings. The hands rested against the sodden fullness of the silk skirts, the flounces filled out with stones.
“Mrs. Banks. May I speak with you a moment,” he said, turning on his heel toward the low entrance of the shanty. He hoped it was not already too late. Unbelievably, the rank air of the narrow alleyway outside Mrs. Banks's establishment was welcome relief. She stood with hands on her bony hips, shaking a fist at the retreating back of the char woman.
“Thievin' doxy.” The epithet was more spittle than words. She turned her raisin eyes upon Rushford, shrewdness emanating from every begrimed pore. “Ye've had enough time in there. Now what else is there ye be wantin', guvnor?”
Rushford saw no need for subtlety. “Whatever jewels were on the body. I shall pay handsomely.”
Mrs. Banks snorted in feigned disbelief, knowing it was best to play coy for a few minutes at least. “I be beggin' yer pardon, guvnor. I would do no sech thing as takin' jewels from a body barely cold.”
Rushford stared down at his boots, the ground dusty beneath his feet, allowing what seemed an interminable amount of time pass by while Mrs. Banks continued with her denials. “How much?” he asked finally, abruptly.
Mrs. Banks grunted something in reply before disappearing for a few moments into the narrow building. Returning promptly, she held out a dirty handkerchief to Rushford in one gnarled hand.
Without undoing the knot to take note of the contents, he repeated, “How much?”
“Ten guineas.”
“Done.” Rushford pulled out the coins from his jacket pocket. Glancing down the narrow street and then up into a sliver of blue sky revealed by the narrow buildings, he added, “Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?”
“For a price, guvnor.”
Rushford returned his gaze to Mrs. Banks. “I shouldn't have it any other way.”
Mrs. Banks grunted. “There was a gentleman here last evenin'.”
“Go on.”
“A Frenchie by the looks and sounds of 'im. Medium height, scrawny I'd say; 'air black as a raven's wing.”
Rushford's gut tightened.
Coincidence
was a word used when one couldn't see the levers and the pulleys. “And what was he about?”
Mrs. Banks shrugged. “He didn' say, not that I was expectin' 'im to. Jest wantin' to let you know you didn' get 'ere first, guvnor.” She clucked her tongue against a series of missing teeth. “Not the type to disturb the body. Too squeamish like.”
“And had you already stripped the body by that point?” Rushford asked bluntly.
Mrs. Banks nodded. “He left after five minutes. No more.”
Probably could not endure the stench, thought Rushford. He pulled out another two guineas. “Thank you, Mrs. Banks. Most helpful as always.”
Pocketing the handkerchiefed bundle, he walked toward Molton Street, not bothering to glance over his shoulder, aware that he was, once again, being followed. He kept a deliberate pace, wending his way outside the warren of streets before ducking into the last tavern on Blackall Street. All but deserted midmorning, Rushford found a table in the back of the low-ceilinged room. In a few moments, he had untied the bundle given to him by Mrs. Banks, holding the remnants of a life in his hand. Three gold teeth, a filigreed silver bracelet, and a man's signet ring, the gold winking dully in the dimness. The crest was familiar. A capital G, festooned with laurel leaves.
Suspicion flared as suddenly as his thirst for a brandy. Rushford signaled the sleepy publican from his slumbers behind the length of a sticky counter. His mind was already planning an evening of gambling at Crockford's, where the company of Lord Ambrose Galveston beckoned. In the interim, he thought, eyeing the low doorway of the tavern, he would await Rowena Woolcott's arrival.
 
The heavy pall of ale in the air and sawdust underfoot did little to dispel Rowena's growing unease. Pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders despite the warmth of the tavern, she ignored the stares of the publican who was in the process of filling a tumbler with spirits and glowering at her with unconcealed dislike. Unaccompanied women had no place in a drinking establishment. Convention, Rowena reflected desperately, had less place in her life than ever before.
After a short and sleepless night at her lodgings on Holburn Street, she had risen early to return to the town house on Belgravia Square, observing Rushford from what was now a familiar place in the mews. He had uncharacteristically chosen to hail a hansom cab rather than walk to his regular boxing club rendezvous, which he kept as regularly as a cleric did his Sunday sermons. Rowena quickly followed suit, quelling the reservations uppermost in her mind.
You do not wish to become my lover.
Rushford's intimidation, meant to strike fear into her heart, drummed stubbornly in the background of her thoughts, the implications scalding. Yet, she conceded with suppressed panic, the prospect made a kind of wild sense.
She had alighted from the hansom at the far end of the narrow streets that leaned in upon themselves like collapsing bookshelves. Watching from a distance, she had seen Rushford duck into a low entranceway from where a stick figure of an older woman had emerged, shaking her fist threateningly. The street had been all but deserted as Rowena followed a serpentine of alleys that wound their way to the back of the narrow building and a window dark with soot.
Her eyes had taken a few moments to penetrate the grime and adjust to the room's dimness. She could still hear the rush of blood in her head when she first saw the corpse, a hellish blue-green of mottled skin and rotted silk, and Rushford standing beside it, lost in thought, his eyes flat and expressionless. Her skin crawled. Absorbing the scene a moment longer than was wise, she had been left with the implausible impression that, for at least one instant when Rushford had looked up at the window, almost meeting her gaze, his expression had changed from one of cold objectivity to intense longing. Impossible, she thought, as her mind attempted to make sense of what she saw.
Pulling back from the window, she waited outside, around the corner of a tavern, losing herself in the neighborhood of pickpockets, thieves, and prostitutes slowly awakening to the demands of the day. Behind the torn awning of the tavern, she observed another abbreviated conversation between Rushford and the old woman, watching as he took a dirty bundle from her hands. Rowena waited until he nodded curtly and began walking away, following behind him a discreet distance. In short order, his broad back was absorbed by the thickening crowd until at the last moment, he ducked into an entranceway.
Rowena quickly retraced her steps toward the old woman, whom she discovered still standing, one hand on her bony hips, the other counting the coins Rushford had given her. Without looking up, she said, “What you be wantin' with Miz. Banks, eh?” The old woman spat on the ground, before surveying Rowena with immediate suspicion. “We don't be needin' any good works here. Too late for all that. Me customers are all dead.” Men of the cloth, dour-faced women intent on good deeds—she had no use for either. Last time a rector had tried to close her down, he'd been arguing for proper burial for paupers. Wasn't that precisely what she provided?

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