The Water Nymph (10 page)

Crispin’s preoccupation vanished. He listened with deep attention as the constable asked Constantia and Basil if they had been at home to see Sophie go out the night of Richard Tottle’s murder, an attention that was piqued by Basil’s reaction to the question, which included a complete loss of color and a series of strange choking noises. Basil appeared to be so overcome that it was Constantia who answered the constable, Constantia who explained that she and her stepson had been at home together that night, trying to select a new painting by Lyle, the famous artist, and had been too busy to notice anything going on outside. Basil was quite a connoisseur with a wonderful eye for beauty, Constantia leaned forward to confide—giving both the constable and Crispin a lovely view of her connoisseur-worthy décolletage—and she would not dare make a decision without him.

The constable, whose eyes had grown huge, said, “If you would like, ma’am, I can stay here with you and protect Your Ladyships.” He rushed to correct himself, “I mean, Ladyship.”

Constantia smiled warmly at him. “You are too kind, Constable—”

“Call me Ralph, ma’am,” the constable put in, blushing.

“You are too kind, Ralph,” Constantia said charmingly, “but I am sure I need no special protection.”

Using all the ingenuity at his disposal, Ralph tried to argue but lost, and, with great reluctance, left. Crispin had just risen to do likewise, despite the protesting grip on his hand that suggested his company was not as dispensable as Ralph’s, when Basil caught his attention outright.

“I think you should have accepted his offer of protection, Tia. I am the justice of the peace of this parish, you know, and I am far more knowledgeable about crime than you are. If Miss Champion killed once, she very well might come after you. You know I suspected all along that she had something to do with Father’s death.”

“Basil, do not say such things!” Constantia commanded him. “Miss Champion is not a murderer.”

“Anyone could become a murderer for an estate the size of Father’s,” Basil said, his cheeks flushed with indignation.

“But, Basil, she gave it all back,” Constantia told him.

Crispin, standing, was watching this exchange as if it were a championship game of tennis.

“Hardly. She only gave us what was ours by right.” Basil now looked up at Crispin. “You see, my father left this house, his estate in Newcastle, and his entire company, Leverage Holdings, to Sophie Champion. And he left us nothing.”

“And then,” Constantia picked up, “Miss Champion gave me Grosgrain Place and Basil the Newcastle property, Peacock Hall. What is more, she settled an annuity on each of us that far exceeds our wants.”

“Bosh,” Basil put in, throwing his hands in the air and becoming pinker. “I am telling you, Tia, it was a cover. She used her generosity to keep us from asking questions about the will. She was blackmailing father, there is no doubt in my mind. How else would you explain the thousand pounds a month he paid her while he was alive? I think she learned of the terms of his will, learned that she would get everything, and killed him off.”

“Basil, you are being wretched,” Constantia sobbed. “I am sure Miss Champion did nothing of the kind.”

Crispin had momentarily lost interest in the clock. “Tell me, Basil, do you have any grounds for thinking that she murdered your father? Were you here the day he died? Did you hear Sophie quarrel with him? Or did you see her go out?”

Basil’s face slowly turned from pink to white. “No,” he answered haltingly. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I—”

“—was right here, with me,” Constantia explained, turning to Crispin. “Basil and I almost always have breakfast together, and we were still at table when the constables arrived with the—the—” she faltered, “dreadful news. It is all right, Basil, you can tell Crispin. He is not one to believe that a stepmother and stepson breakfasting together is scandalous.”

Basil sighed with relief and addressed Crispin. “What Tia says is true. We were here, in her dressing room, taking breakfast together. And, as you can see,” he went on, clearly in the pink again, “there are no windows that look out over the stables or Hen House. We could not possibly have seen anything.”

“I, for one, am sure that there was nothing to see,” Constantia announced, leaning forward and letting her dressing gown slip open again as if to remedy the lack of visual stimuli.

The display was wasted on Crispin, whose attention had returned to the hands of the clock, but found an appreciative audience in Ralph, who chose that moment to reenter the chamber.

“I beg your pardon, Your Ladyships,” he said, performing a series of bows made awkward by the fixed direction of his gaze. “I just wanted to tell you that you need not fear any longer.”

“Fear what?” Basil demanded, not overpleased by Ralph’s attentions to his stepmother.

“Fear the murderer, ma’am,” Ralph told Constantia’s cleavage. “Sophie Champion. We got her locked up in Newgate. No cause for alarm anymore.”

The sound of Crispin’s pocket watch snapping closed jolted Ralph’s eyes from the appreciation of female form.

“I beg your pardon, Constantia,” Crispin said with one of his enchanting smiles, “but I really must be off. An appointment in the city,” he elaborated vaguely. One promise to spend an entire evening with Constantia sometime soon, three professions of reluctance, and two apologies later, Crispin finally managed to take his leave. He was charming. He was witty. He was seething with a cold rage whose equal he had never experienced.

No one observing him would have guessed that he was bothered by anything more weighty than whether to have his new breeches cut tight or lose over the knee, but Fortuna knew her master well, and he had barely lifted her reins when she took off at a dangerous gallop. He urged her on as fast as she could go toward Pickering Hall, narrowly spinning around corners, his sense of malaise more intense with each hoof-fall, his jaw more tightly clenched. His pocket watch showed eleven-thirty when he arrived in the stable yard and leapt to the ground. He took the stairs to Lawrence’s office two at a time, burst through the door without knocking, and stood defiantly in front of his friend.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

Lawrence leaned around him to address the four other men in the room. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse us. Sandal seems to be having a fit.”

“Damn you, Lawrence.” Crispin pounded on his desk as the other men tripped over themselves fleeing. “Where is she? I must see her right away.” Something in his friend’s face struck Crispin then, and he drew back as if he had been punched. “What have you done with her, Lawrence?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. She is perfectly safe,” Lawrence assured him with a strange smile.

Before Lawrence could take another breath, Crispin was around the desk, pinning him to his chair. “Where is she, Lawrence?”

Lawrence hesitated for a moment before replying, simply, “Newgate.”

Crispin shook his head. “You bloody bastard,” he muttered. Then, without another word, he released his friend and began moving toward the door.

“Crispin,” Lawrence called imperatively after him, rising from behind his desk. “I had no choice. I could not refuse.”

Crispin swung around just before reaching the door and snorted. “I never could have believed that our friendship was nothing more to you than another asset to be bartered with. What you meant to say is, you could not refuse their offer. What did they give you? Scotland?”

Lawrence came toward him. “What they gave me does not matter. The point is that they got here an hour before you did. They must have suspected you would come this way, and they were ready. As soon as you entered my house, you were trapped. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”

“You could have warned us when we arrived,” Crispin pointed out with deceptive calm. “You could have had Christopher tell us before we came in.”

“Don’t you understand, Crispin? They were watching me as closely as they were watching you. I did not have a chance to tell Christopher or Kit or anyone anything. There was even a guard with a pistol pointed at us the entire time we were talking on the landing, and they told me that if I made any sign to you at all, they would shoot.”

Crispin regarded his friend through narrowed eyes and said sarcastically, “After all we have been through together, I certainly would not expect you to risk being grazed by a bullet for me.”

“Not me, you idiot. They said if I made any sign, they would shoot Sophie.”

For a moment Crispin’s face went completely rigid, and Lawrence could imagine the deadly scene his friend was picturing. But there was no point in dwelling on that, and no time.

“Disguises,” Lawrence said finally, deliberately puncturing Crispin’s train of thought.

“Disguises?”

“We are going to have to wear disguises when we break her out,” Lawrence explained, then rushed to add, “assuming you will let me help you. Disguises so that they do not know who rescued Sophie. After all, we, or you, don’t want anyone to know where Sophie is hiding this time.”

“No,” Crispin confirmed, “we certainly don’t.”

The table clock in Lawrence’s office began to chime twelve as two bearded sailors rode out of the Pickering Hall stable yard, much more comfortable on their mounts than seafaring men usually were. Heedless of this or the fact that they were being watched, they spurred their horses on and galloped furiously toward Newgate.

“It is Sophie Champion,” a slender young woman with dark eyes and auburn hair who had a faint perfume of cloves stated unequivocally. “I never forget a smell, and it smells like her.”

“But Sophie Champion is no criminal,” a small, rosy-cheeked lady put in. “She’d never be in prison because she’d never do anything wrong. Ask her about it, Helena.”

The young woman nodded at the rosy-cheeked one and then looked pointedly at Sophie. “What do you have to say to this charge, Miss Champion?”

For a moment, Sophie could only blink. She had been so devastated by Octavia’s note that she had not paid attention when the guards moved her from one cell to another, had not even noticed the six other women crowded into the small space. But now they were arrayed around her, staring at her, waiting for her answer. “I do not know,” she said finally. “I did not do anything wrong, I swear to that, but I have been a fool. Someone is trying to make it look as if I murdered a man, and I am letting him do it.”

“Why?” Helena, who appeared to be the leader of the group, asked. “Everyone knows you are as smart as ten men. Why are you letting him get away with it? Why not just turn the tables on him, like you did when Sir Argyle tried to seduce you and instead found himself in bed with a porcupine and unable to walk for a month after?”

“Or like you did when you rescued Emme Butterich from being kidnapped by marking the coins with powder so you knew who’d got it and where they went?” contributed the rosy-cheeked lady.

“Or even when you gave sweet Letitia Roth a dowry so she could marry that handsome Edgar Gordon despite her father’s gambling all the family’s money away,” a woman with a deep voice put in.

“I heard that they are expecting a baby,” rosy cheeks told Sophie. “Isn’t that delightful?”

Sophie nodded, completely overcome by what she was hearing. She had no idea that anyone outside of the residents of Hen House and those whom she had helped knew about her work, or even cared. But the women continued to talk around her, this one recollecting the young girl Sophie had saved from being sold by her brothers, this other the woman to whom Sophie had given a plow horse so that she could salvage the farm that her drunken husband had allowed to go fallow. The cell had begun to sound like an aviary of chirping birds as each woman competed to tell the story of the friend, relative, or neighbor who had been helped by Sophie Champion, until suddenly the hinges on the metal door squealed and two guards pushed in. They were both tall, and they were both wearing the black cloth masks reserved for the hangman’s assistants.

“Sophie Champion,” one of the guards rumbled, and the women fell silent. “Sophie Champion, please step forward.”

“I am Sophie Champion,” Helena announced with a toss of her head, before Sophie could say anything.

“No,” Sophie said, first to Helena, with gratitude, then, in a different tone, to the guards. “No, I am Sophie Champion.”

“Which is it?” the guard asked, turning to his companion, who did not speak but merely pointed at Sophie.

Taking his cue, the first guard moved toward her, but was stopped by a wall of women. “What do you want?” Helena asked protectively. “What are you going to do to her?”

“Aw, don’t be jealous,” the guard said, moving one hand toward his crotch. “There’s plenty for all of you, once we get Miss Champion out.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” the rosy-cheeked lady announced. “She’s staying here with us.”

“Ain’t that sweet,” the guard addressed his colleague. “They want to watch. It’s too bad we can’t oblige them.”

As he spoke, he moved closer to the female cordon. “You got until the count of three to get out of my way, you hags,” he announced.

“Do not worry, ladies,” Sophie said, gently pushing herself to the front of their ranks. “I doubt this oaf can count beyond two.”

“You didn’t tell me she was a witty one,” the guard said to his taciturn companion. “I never had much use for the witty ones.”

“Just get on with it,” the other guard barked, speaking for the first time. “The sooner we leave here the better.”

Sophie could not see the face beneath the black mask, but she heard the voice, and her blood ran cold. She knew it was impossible for him to have found her, knew her memory had to be playing tricks on her, and yet, it sounded exactly like the voice. His voice. The voice of her nightmares. Her stomach curled, her head began to pound, and her throat closed up, clogged with a thousand gagged screams. She could not breathe, could not see, could not think.

Sophie had almost no recollection of what came next. She remembered shouting and clawing and punching, but in the end it did no good. He got her anyway, got her despite her most valiant efforts, just as he said he would. That was her last clear thought upon hearing the voice, and her first thought upon waking, hours later, in an unfamiliar bed, aching, alone, and naked.

What woke Sophie were the echoes of footsteps endlessly pacing a marble floor. Judging by the sound, they were not in the room with her, but even so, she dared not open her eyes. She was scared, more scared than she could ever recall being. Her only hope, she knew, was to escape from him, and as soon as possible. But she felt paralyzed, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

She was willing herself to open her eyes and at least survey her new prison when she heard the pacing cease and footsteps enter her chamber. By the time he reached the bed, she was lying on her side, to all appearances in a deep slumber.

“I know you’re not sleeping,” an unexpected voice said. “I can tell by your breathing. You are really a wretched dissembler.”

Sophie’s eyes flew open, and when they confirmed what her ears had told her, that she was, somehow, being addressed by the Earl of Sandal, her first emotions were a mixture of relief and a strange kind of joy that he cared enough about her to rescue her. But these gave way, almost instantly, to confusion, and then, to anger.

“You bastard,” she said, sitting up and pulling the wine-colored coverlet up with her.

Crispin concealed his immense satisfaction at seeing her alert and apparently unchanged under an abbreviated shake of his head. “I really wish you would come up with a more original line. Even ‘you slug’ was better.”

Sophie ignored his sally at wit. “Where is he?”

“That is hardly an improvement,” Crispin said with resignation.

“Satan’s knockers, answer me. Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your boss. Your colleague. Whatever he is to you. The man who dragged me from the prison.”

“That was me,” Crispin said, pointing a finger at his chest as he seated himself on the edge of the bed. “Although I would not say ‘dragged.’ I more carried you.”

“You are lying,” Sophie said without equivocation.

“Ask any of the other women we freed with you,” Crispin challenged, trying to subdue the strange emotion within him. “Helena is still at Hen House, and I can send for her if you persist in thinking me a liar.”

Sophie ignored his offer. “You expect me to believe that you rescued all those women, and me, single-handedly?”

“No. Lawrence was there too.”

“Lawrence?” Sophie asked with a mixture of disbelief and outrage. “You and Lawrence dressed as the hangman’s assistants and—”

“No,” Crispin interrupted, “those were the other men. Lawrence and I were dressed as sailors.”

“Who were they? The others, the ones dressed as hangmen?”

Crispin looked at her with puzzlement. “I’m afraid I did not wait for them to regain consciousness to learn their names. One of them was bald under his hood, and the other one had dark brown hair.”

“Are you sure?” Sophie queried. “Brown hair?”

Crispin was unsettled by the intensity of her interest. “Why? Were you expecting someone in particular?” When Sophie did not answer, he went on. “Next time I will pay more attention to the men I have to knock down in order to get you out of prison.”

“There will not be a next time,” Sophie said positively.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I will not make the mistake of trusting you or your friends again, Lord Sandal. Is this what you consider fun? Luring women into your clutches by having them arrested and then playing dress-up to free them?”

Crispin did not like it, but he understood her anger. Although he could not imagine what she must have endured in the dark prison cell the night before, he had been seized by the same rage when he had learned of Sophie’s imprisonment. “Lawrence had no choice yesterday. The Queen’s guards arrived an hour before we did. They must have guessed we would go there. As soon as we went to Pickering Hall, we were trapped. They threatened to shoot you if Lawrence tried to warn us.”

Sophie began to have doubts. The man from her nightmares was neither bald nor dark-haired. It was possible, entirely possible, that she had mistaken the voice, that she had only thought she heard it because she had been dreaming about it. Possible, she repeated, but not likely.

She decided to cling to her disbelief. “That is a very clever story you and your colleagues have concocted. I suppose you think I should thank you. Very convenient, you being there to save me again. But I will not fall for it this time.”

“Miss Champion, I promise that no one has concocted anything.”

“Why should I believe you?” she demanded, her eyes flashing.

“Because it is true,” he said simply. Because I almost exploded with anger when I saw you in prison—Crispin continued in his head—and admiration when I saw you fighting the guards. Because you did not need me to save you. Because I wish you had. Because I—

Crispin cleared his throat, clearing away these thoughts. “I understand that you must be upset, but you are safe now.”

“You do not understand anything,” Sophie nearly spat at him. How could he know the terror she had experienced? How could he comprehend the effect that voice had on her, even if she had only imagined its presence? How could he understand the terrible hollowness inside of her when she thought that he had betrayed her? “
You
understand. You who harry me, you who toy with me, you who rescue me one minute and summon the constables for me the next. What do you understand?” she demanded, punching her fists into the coverlet. “And why do you keep helping me and then dumping me in trouble?”

Damn she was stubborn.

And beautiful.

And dangerous.

Crispin’s tone was studiously cool as he said, “My intent is only the first part. The trouble is your own contribution.”

“Really?” Sophie sat forward, bringing their faces close together. “Did I suggest going to Lawrence’s house?” She was disappointed to see that the cankerworm did not even flinch.

“No,” Crispin replied slowly, reminding himself, in their proximity, that she was not to be trusted. Or admired. Or thrown onto the bed and made love to. “But you would have been arrested earlier if not for me.”

“Maybe,” Sophie sneered at him. “Or maybe I would not have been arrested at all. I certainly am not going to let myself be arrested again. Tell me where my clothes are so I can leave.”

“We had to dispose of your clothes. They had been overtaken by a family of fleas. Not to mention the way they looked.”

“How would you have looked if you’d spent the night in prison?” Sophie demanded fiercely, poking Crispin in the chest.

Crispin caught her finger. “I do not know. I would never find myself in prison.”

“You ought to.” Sophie leaned in closer. “It is cowardly to send me somewhere you would not go yourself.”

Crispin redoubled his efforts to stay cool and formal as their noses almost touched. “Your powers of reason overwhelm me. I did not send you to prison, Miss Champion, I freed you. At the possible expense of my life. And my reputation.”

At the word reputation Sophie growled and brought her face so close to his that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Why? Why did you bother? Was it so you could see me naked one last time?”

Her tone lashed Crispin, and he pulled away from her abruptly, letting go of her finger at the same time. “I promise you, Miss Champion, your naked body has not once crossed my mind.”

Sophie did not notice the tension in Crispin’s voice when he replied. She felt only the sting of his words, a sting underscored by his drawing away from her. She had not realized that they were so close, but when he moved, she felt his absence. “Good,” she affirmed forcefully, at the same time rising from the bed and taking the winecolored coverlet with her. “I am glad. And you will be glad to know that my naked body, while not crossing your mind, is crossing your threshold. This is the last you will see of me, or it, forever. I neither need nor desire your help. I’ll not wait around for the constables to arrive this time.” Having delivered this speech, she passed into his library and through the first door she saw, slamming it behind her.

Crispin made no move to follow her. It was not because, as a fugitive from justice completely nude but for a burgundy silk bedcover, he knew she had nowhere else to go. It was because he did not give a damn what happened to her. Because she was at the very least a liar and a threat to his sanity, and he would be better off with her gone.

And also because she had stalked right into his privy. He hoped she was enjoying it.

Bastard
, Sophie repeated to herself as she paced the diagonals of the small room.
Bastard slug cricket mealyworm stinkbug
. She was furious, furious at fate for landing her in this situation, and furious at herself for not being smart enough to escape it. It was not fair to make a dramatic exit and end up in the privy closet. It was a very nice privy, with a velvet-covered privy stool and an empty silver chamber pot and herbs on the floor to mask the odor and instructive paintings on the walls, but it was still a privy, it still smelled like a privy. And the only way out was the way she had come in, right past the no doubt gloating face of its owner.

She could just picture him out there, smirking, waiting for her to emerge so he could make some crack about how he could see that she neither needed nor desired his help, that she could get herself out of trouble on her own. He would taunt her until the constables came, then feign surprise when they clapped her in irons and took her away. She kicked the chamber pot across the room, wishing it were his head. Or hers. Clearly, she no longer needed hers, since it was not working. The women in the prison had been right, Sophie Champion would never have ended up in this situation. Sophie Champion would have been smarter than that.