A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (6 page)

Four

The next day, there was a message waiting for him at the Yard. Kitty’s roommate remembered a necklace that Kitty never took off. It had not been found with the body. It was a thin trail, but he didn’t need a werewolf to follow it.

He started a tour of the pawn shops, looking for a necklace that fitted its description—a bead of polished blue stone on a sterling chain that tarnished too easily. It had belonged to Kitty’s grandmother. At the third shop he entered, Royston froze in startled recognition at an item in the case in the front, among other dreams lost or stolen or bartered for bitter reality. Not Kitty’s necklace, but a pendant watch he hadn’t seen in over a decade. It had been his mother’s favorite possession, the only thing she had from his father. He could still see her stroking it fondly with one work-roughened finger, a wistful smile on her face. The watch had disappeared the night she was killed, taken by the man who had violated her and then slit her throat as though she were an animal in the slaughterhouse.
 

Royston’s voice shook when he asked the clerk if he could see the watch more closely. At another time, he might have been embarrassed, but at the moment, too many other emotions clamored for attention.
 

The inspector working his mother’s case had searched diligently through all the pawn shops for the watch. Royston had seen both the dedication and the exhaustion in his face and suspected the man had done the job himself, largely on his own time, as the Yard had too few resources and none to spare for an unmarried mother with no family and no money.
 

When the watch hadn't turned up, the inspector concluded, and Royston privately agreed, that the killer had kept it as a trophy.

After all these years, it couldn’t be.

It wasn’t. The watch was very nearly identical to the one his mother had carried, but it lacked the engraving that had been on the back, a sprig of rosemary and the words
For Remembrance.
He studied the watch, but there was no sign that an engraving had been removed.

Many watches resembled his mother’s. The case was affecting him. He handed the watch back to the pawn broker and asked about Kitty’s necklace. It had not been brought to that shop, nor the next, nor the one after that.

***

It had taken Catherine less than a week to assemble the information she needed. Less than a week to consider her course, to strangle her guilt, to stiffen her resolve by reminding herself over and over what could happen to Richard if Jones carried through his threat. She paced the library, trying to ignore the pricking of her conscience. Damn, she had
liked
the man.
 

He might not betray them. Everything she had learned about him reinforced her initial impression of him as a kind and fair man, a man who believed in his job but who also understood that sometimes the law was not synonymous with justice.

But he had threatened her. More to the point, he had threatened Richard. She knew too well what could happen to a werewolf who dared to court an unafflicted human. One of her test subjects had dared as much and been found out. A mob had dragged him out of his bed one night and stoned him to death.

She had lost both of her parents to consumption less than a year before alchemy discovered a cure. She had been sixteen, and she remembered the desperate pain of having her whole world torn from her. She pressed her lips together. She would not live through it again.

***

 
In her glamoured guise she waited impatiently in the rented Brook Street rooms that comprised the offices of Mr. Charles Foster, experimental alchemist and occasional consultant to the London police. Inspector Jones was—she checked her pocket watch—nearly five minutes late. Damn the man, would he hurry up so she could get this over with? If it hadn't been for the telegram he had sent to Richard yesterday, she might have stayed her hand after all. But the inspector had asked for a private meeting with her love. Clearly he did not intend to let the matter drop.

She paced the room, wooden floorboards creaking under her tread. The oak desk had seen better days—her great-grandfather’s days, to be exact. The couch still smelled faintly of the storage attic. She could have afforded much better, of course, but when she first started the ruse she did not want anyone wondering how an obscure alchemist could come up with such funds in the early days of his career. Now it pleased her to pay for the rooms entirely out of her alter ego’s earnings. Even though her work with werewolves was experimental and largely pro bono, Scotland Yard paid well enough for the occasional consultation, and the medical doctors sometimes referred paying clients to her with ailments they could not cure. Mr. Charles Foster was now a self-sufficient man.

She heard footsteps approaching on the stair and restrained herself from opening the door before he knocked. Showing anxiety would give up too much advantage.

The knock came, polite but firm. She opened the door and ushered the Inspector in. He was quite ordinary, this man who held the power to destroy her life and her fiancé’s. Short but well-built. Hair the color of the sun on a wheat field, eyes like the sky over that same field, and an open, pleasant face. If circumstances were different, she would find an excuse to have him more often to tea and to make Jane come to the table. It was about time Jane had a young man of her own.

Wishing for different circumstances had never helped before, and it wasn’t going to help now. Richard would do nothing in his own defense. It was up to her to protect them both.

“Your telegram asked me to come here to discuss the blood analysis,” Jones said. “But this isn’t about the blood analysis. Is it?”

“I haven’t called you here about any case you’re working on officially, no,” Catherine admitted. “And it has nothing to do with alchemical analysis. But it does have something to do with blood. Or perhaps I should say ‘bloodlines’.”

His shoulders stiffened at her words, but he said nothing.

“One doesn’t need to be a police inspector to do a little detective work,” she continued.
 

He raised his chin, defiant. “If you are referring to the illegitimacy of my birth, it is hardly a detection to boast of. That I am a bastard is common knowledge. Even were it not, a simple examination of public records would reveal the truth. I mean no harm to yourself or to Mr. Bandon, but if you feel the need to counter an attack that hasn’t happened, you would do well to find a better weapon. That one has grown dull with overuse.”

He could no more help being born a bastard than she could help being born a woman and had to be just as weary of having it used against him. She regretted having to use the blade of bastardry against him, regretted more that she was about to twist that blade a little more.

But whether it was his intention or not—and she rather thought it was not, his inquiries had the power to destroy Richard’s life. Already Richard, dear, sweet Richard, was talking about ending their engagement rather than risk dragging her down with him. After years spent despairing of ever finding a man she could even tolerate, she had found one she loved beyond all reason. She would not allow him to be destroyed for something he could no more help than she could help her sex or Jones the circumstances of his birth.

Richard’s parents had been in a unique position to hide their son’s condition from the world and had loved their son enough to do so. He would not be in danger of exposure now if not for that one night when he had risked revealing himself to save her from a horrible death.
 

“Tell me, Mr. Royston Jones, why did your mother want you to carry the name of the man who had dishonored her?”

“They were in love. They intended to marry as soon as he turned twenty-one and his inheritance was secured. It was only mischance that he was killed before that could happen.”

“She loved him, of that I’ve no doubt. He was, by all accounts, a most charming rogue." She took a deep breath, a part of her hating herself for what she was about to do. "Your mother was not his first conquest. That she was his last had more to do with the strength of a bullet than the strength of their love.”

His eyes narrowed, his brows furrowed. Anger, yes, but beneath that surprise and pain. This weapon was not so dull.

She heard Richard’s voice in her head, admonishing her. Gently remonstrating with her about how often she didn’t fully grasp the impact of her own words on others’ feelings. But thoughts of Richard, his inherent, easy kindness, only strengthened her resolve to continue despite the cold, queasy feeling that warned her that what she was doing was wrong. She opened the drawer of the battered old desk. Withdrew a sheaf of papers and dropped it on the desk before him.
 

“Lilly-Ann Martin was the first. A dairy maid on the summer estate. Jonathan Allen Royston was a bit of a prodigy. He couldn’t have been much more than fifteen at the time. Family paid her off, and she married a farmer willing to overlook the fact that his first-born wasn’t his, given the generous dowry. The next two ended up handing the child over to baby farms. The Royston family paid the fees, of course. Strangely, the children were never heard from again.”

Royston shook his head slowly, but the thinning of his lips belied that denial. She had seen his work history during her investigations. Better than most, Jones would know the horror of the baby farms.
 

“See for yourself,” Catherine said. “Odd that places like that keep records, but I suppose that they must be sure that those poor, desperate women are not falling behind in payments. And if anyone with the influence of, say, an alchemist known to work with the Yard, comes around demanding old records, why, easier to give them up than to risk more official scrutiny.”
 

His face paled, and he swallowed hard, keeping his calm with an obvious effort. She hated doing this to him, hated destroying the romantic illusion his mother had obviously built up around his origin, hated threatening him with the taint of a sordid past that was none of his fault. Hated being
that
kind of gentry.

For Richard. Only for Richard.
 

She could not let the Inspector see how much it cost her to do this. He must believe her without conscience and entirely capable of carrying out her threats. “The last woman he got pregnant was the governess to his much younger sister. But I’m sure you know all about that. No doubt the family made her the same offer, but she refused to put the child away, though it meant no respectable family would ever employ her again.”

Jones tilted his chin up, resolve hardening his eyes. “This is not such a great surprise as you might think. I researched my father, you see, after my mother died.” He had wanted to know more about the man his mother had loved, the man who gave him half of who he was. “I learned about his reputation. I knew that my mother hadn’t been the first.” Though he hadn’t known about the baby farms. “I know how he died.” Not killed by a highwayman, as his mother had told him, as the papers had said, but in another woman’s bed, killed by a jealous husband who had then taken his own life.
 

 
“I fail to see how any of this is relevant,” he continued. “I find it hard to believe you went to such trouble out of casual cruelty, but what other possible reason might you have?”

“Let me lay out your two options for you then. You can continue to pursue your odd theory that Mr. Bandon is a werewolf. I assure you that you will never prove as much, and will only cause yourself trouble for slandering a member of one of the oldest and most respected families.”
God, forgive me for what I must do.
She kept her expression cold. “Furthermore, I can ensure that very influential members of society will start asking why such a loose cannon of such questionable background is being allowed to represent London’s finest. The Commissioner will start feeling pressure to rectify the situation. You know how much he respects the opinions of his betters.”

Jones knew, of course he did. The tension in his jaw as he ground his back teeth betrayed as much.

Catherine steeled her heart and continued. “In addition, all the circumstances of your birth will make it through the rumor mills, and the remains of your mother’s reputation will be ground deeper into the mud. Instead of a tragic figure, ruined by a hopeless, secret love, the world will know her as a poor fool, only one of a string of lovers. Or worse, a loose and shameless woman who didn’t care if the man she lay with had other interests.”

“You mentioned two options,” he said.

“Your other option is to forget this silly notion of yours. We will forget you ever brought it up, and you get to continue in the field to which you are best suited—catching criminals. London needs you, Inspector Jones. Those poor girls need you. Don’t let them down over a battle you cannot win.”

“So it is true, what they say about well-bred gentlemen being like well-bred dogs," he said coldly. "They lack the vigor to defend themselves in a fair fight.”

She stopped herself from slapping him with an effort. Richard was ignorant of her efforts on his behalf and would be furious if he ever found out, but the detective had no way of knowing that.

“Believe what you will of us, Inspector Jones. I care not. The only thing that matters is how you conduct yourself. Have you come to a decision?”

***

Jones would not permit himself the luxury of rage. He had had practice at running a race at an unfair handicap. Sometimes he came in a nose ahead anyway. He considered his odds. A further tarnish on his name he could bear if he must. Though the deepening stain on his mother’s reputation would be harder, the lives of future victims weighed more heavily. But he could not allow himself to be removed from the case and from his office, removed entirely from any opportunity to protect those who had neither money nor power nor status to protect themselves.