A Seduction at Christmas (11 page)

He leaned over to the groom. “Peter, there is a man lurking in the park. Don’t look. You’ll see him eventually. He isn’t that bright. I want you to keep your eye on him. I believe he is going to follow me. You stay close to him wherever he goes. I’ll want a report at your first opportunity.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Peter said, pulling on his cap.

Pleased, Nick reined Jack around and set off down the road to learn what he could about Belkins’s death.

But first, he was going to stop by Covent Gardens and speak to Miss Grace McEachin. Yes, he’d pass on the warning but his true mission was to satisfy his curiosity about Fee. He’d not delay such a visit a moment longer no matter how many Irish murderers were on his trail.

Three hundred thousand pounds had recently been spent to rebuild the Royal Opera House at
Covent Garden after it had burned down in a fire the year before. Nick had attended the opening celebration in September and kept a box here although he didn’t go to the theater often. His time was better spent at the gaming tables that kept the family fortunes alive. Instead, his uncles and other family members used the box.

However, his mother also rarely went to the theater. That seemed curious for a woman who grew up on the stage, although she took great pains to distance herself from her common background—and hence, her reaction this morning to Fee.

Nick frowned. He and his mother were not close. It was hard to have any sort of relationship with such a difficult woman, although he did care for her. She was his mother.

In truth, she spent as much time at the gaming tables as he did and always had. More than once he’d had to settle her debts, but lately they had risen to a ridiculous amount. Six weeks ago, he’d warned her it would have to stop. She couldn’t continue to be so careless. He would cut her off, and she knew he meant it.

At the stage door, he gave the porter Grace McEachin’s name and pressed a guinea in the man’s hand.

“Should I tell Mrs. McEachin who is calling for her, my lord?” He used the term “Mrs.” because
in the theater many women pretended a dead husband. It was a protection of sorts, and sometimes there truly was a dead husband—or a live one whom she had escaped to seek her fortune.

“Tell her Fiona Lachlan wishes to speak to her,” Nick answered.

The porter didn’t even bat an eye at the name Nick used but pocketed his money and went in search of the dancer.

The back stage was a decidedly inelegant space in contrast to the lavish theater on the other side of the curtain. Here, pulleys, ropes, curtains, and props took up a good portion of the space, leaving narrow paths for the humans who created the magic on stage.

A few minutes later, the porter returned with a lovely woman with curling black hair, porcelain skin, and vivid blue eyes dark with concern.

She recognized Nick. Her step slowed. She stopped. He knew she debated whether to run or not.

“I’d like to speak to you a moment in private,” Nick said without introduction. He moved toward a fake wall assuming she’d follow. She hesitated a moment, crossed her arms in indecision, and then joined him.

“What has happened to Fiona?” she demanded, her low angry voice carrying the lilt of Scotland.
“I swear, Your Grace, if you have hurt her I shall carve your heart out myself.”

“You Scots are a blood-thirsty lot,” Nick commented. “And I assure you, Fee is fine. She’s under my protection right now.”

This information did not mollify Miss McEachin. She flew at him with her fists.
“What have you done to her?”

She was a petite woman and he had no problem deflecting her blows. He caught her wrists. “Nothing. I’ve done nothing to her. She is safe and she is well.”

“You haven’t touched her, have you?” she demanded, her concern that of a loving sister. “She’s not like me.”

Nick gave a small laugh. “Miss McEachin, when would I have had time? Since I’ve met Fee we’ve been too busy trying to stay alive to think to seduction.”

Miss McEachin glared at him as if divining the truth of his statement. She pulled on her wrists. He let her go. She moved a step away from him, distrust still etched in every line of her face. “But you’d like to,” she said at last. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I’m here because she asked me to see you,” he said, uncertain whether he was offended by her charge…or guilty of it. “The Irishmen who attacked us last night broke down Annie Jenkins’s
door this morning. Fiona,” he said, making a point of using her full name, “was afraid you might attempt to visit her and she didn’t want you caught up in this.”

Her brows came together in concern. “I thought they wanted you.”

“They do, but that hasn’t stopped them from killing others. Hester Bowen died last night when a shot aimed at me hit her instead. I also suspect they have murdered an acquaintance of mine. To be safe, I have Fee with me.”

“And you don’t know what all of this is about?”

Nick couldn’t help a cynical smile. “Other than someone wants me dead, no. But I will find out.”

Some of the tension left Miss McEachin’s body. “Then she’s safest with you.”

“I believe so.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. He could leave now. The message had been delivered…but he wanted more.

He was rewarded when she said in a quiet, thoughtful voice, “You must be careful with her. She’s not as hard as she pretends.”

“I know.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t. You are like everyone else. So judgmental. But she’s Quality, Your Grace. She was bred and groomed to
marry a man such as yourself. Her father was one of the most respected magistrates in Scotland. A true and honest man.”

Here is what he’d really come to Covent Garden for—information about Fee.

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“He was murdered,” she said with a bitter smile. “He stood up to the landowners who wanted to clear their property of the crofters and clansmen who had been loyal to them for centuries. In the Highlands, he is revered as a hero. His son, Fiona’s brother, became a rebel against the Crown and had to run to America. Fiona was left alone. Life is not good for a woman alone. Bad things happen.”

“Such as?”

She shook her head. “It’s not for me to say. Fiona will tell you, if she has mind to.”

“Why didn’t her brother take his sister with him?” Nick would have. He wouldn’t have left her behind.

“He offered. Fiona refused to go. She’s a stubborn one, or have you not discovered that already?”

“Will you gloat if I admit I’ve learned that fact—repeatedly?”

Her manner changed to one of friendly commiseration. “I know she can be a trial, but in truth,
Your Grace, she is one of the kindest, most loyal women I know. The man who wins her heart will be blessed.”

Nick smiled. “Is your opinion of me changing, Miss McEachin?”

“No, Your Grace,” she said without hesitation. “I know your reputation with women. You don’t deserve Fiona. However, I also know your reputation for pistols and swords. You’ll protect her for no other reason than the challenge of it.”

Her words hit him wrong. “Just for the challenge?” he repeated, letting her know she had offended him. “No more, no less?”

But Grace McEachin was not intimidated. “Does it matter—?” she started, and then stopped as if struck by a new realization. “Wait. You are angry at what I said.”

“What man of honor wouldn’t be—”

“It’s more than that,” she said, cutting him off. “You
like
her. You may actually be fond of her.”

Fond?
Such a light word for what he actually felt. He took a step toward the door.

Miss McEachin followed. “Could the heart of the Duke of Holburn, a rake who has lived in the bowels of hell, actually be falling in love with my friend Fiona Lachlan?”

There was that word again. Love.

“Don’t be foolish, Miss McEachin. I don’t have a heart.”

“And I’m thinking you might be wrong, Your Grace,” she said.

No,
Nick wanted to say, a strong, forceful word, but the denial stuck in his throat.

She smiled with knowledge borne of experience. “You can’t escape Fate, Your Grace. You may already be trapped.”

He turned and left the theater, feeling as if the hounds of hell were chasing him in her statement.

N
othing attracted company like tragedy.

The Belkins’s townhouse was mobbed, the street outside it jammed with coaches and horses. People waited to enter the house while others gathered in front discussing the sudden loss of one of their number. It wasn’t officially a wake, but rather the initial gathering of family, friends, and the curious.

More than a few lifted their eyebrows in surprise at Nick’s arrival. He wasn’t known for obeying the niceties. As he gave the butler his hat and his name, several mothers waiting in the entrance hall herded their daughters away from him.

Of course, those same daughters craned their necks for a better look.

Lady Belkins was a short, horse-faced woman with prematurely graying hair and crying didn’t become her. She held court in her sitting room, a tragic, red-eyed figure whose life had changed overnight. She’d been one of the top heiresses of her Season years ago. Nick was fairly certain Belkins had blown through her fortune and he wondered what she would do now. He wasn’t the only one in town who’d held Belkins’s markers, although at least he wouldn’t call them in. Belkins had already paid a terrible price, one his wife shouldn’t have to pay.

Nick took a moment to murmur his condolences to the distraught widow and then moved into a side room, where he found a place to stand, giving him a view of the hallway and the receiving rooms. He took a punch cup off the tray of a passing servant and listened to the conversations around him, marveling at the two distinct sides to Belkins’s life. Here was the one of respectability. And then there was the other, the life that included Hester Bowen, gambling, and possibly Andres Ramigio.

Then again, Nick couldn’t criticize. His life was the same. A pretense of duty and honor and a reality of doing as he damned pleased.

He heard his mother’s voice and was surprised she was still here. He caught sight of her in the hallway, which was absolutely a crush of people. She was standing close to the wall, speaking earnestly to a woman who could have been the same age. The black pheasant feathers on his mother’s hat bowed and jerked with her animated head movements.

Nick wondered what had his father seen in this woman? She was silly, vain, and manipulative. His father had given her everything, including naming her his duchess and yet, Nick always had the sense that it hadn’t been enough.

Over to his right, two of Belkins’s relatives were lamenting his death at such a young age…and Nick was taken back to the time of his own father’s funeral. They had said such things about his father, too.

Nick had been ten and away at school when his father had died. Docket had come for him, and Docket had been the one to explain that his father had been found dead on the library floor. No one knew what had happened. He’d returned from a ride, gone to his desk to see to some papers and apparently had fallen where he stood.

The memories made Nick uncomfortable. He wasn’t a man given to introspection. He saw no purpose for it. But for the first time, thinking back
to those days with the rational mind of a man and not a boy, Nick wondered if perhaps his father had been disappointed in his own marriage. Like everyone else, he’d assumed the unequal class distinction had meant his parents had been wildly in love. Had love turned sour? His parents had not had more children.

A male voice close by said, “I heard he was found face down in the road. Hit his head on a rock. His horse was found running loose in the park.”

Nick glanced over and saw the speaker was Sir Lionel Hemly, who was holding court with two other gentlemen he didn’t know.

“Which park?” one of the gentlemen asked.

“I’m not certain,” Sir Lionel answered. “Of course the mystery is what was Belkins doing out that early in the morning. It was not a fashionable hour for a ride.”

“He could have been coming in,” one of his companions said and the men laughed, knowing what he meant.

“Still, it’s deuced bad business,” Sir Lionel concluded. He reached for the punch tray a servant carried, set down his empty glass and took a fresh one. “’Tis a somber note for the Christmas season, eh? He’s left his family with nothing. His wife may have to move back in with her family.”

It was what Nick had suspected. Belkins had
been a done up. He’d offered to arrange the meeting with Andres Ramigio in exchange for his markers because he had no money. At the time, Nick had been so excited at the mention of Ramigio he hadn’t considered an important question—how had Belkins known the man? Or that Nick had wanted him? It wasn’t a matter Nick mentioned outside his immediate family. Other than his uncles and his cousin Richard, he doubted if anyone else knew.

Belkins’s death could have been an accident, but Nick didn’t believe so. The numbers of dead from last night were piling high.

He wasn’t about to be next. The time had come to be bold.

Mourners were still entering Belkins’s front door. Few were leaving, since this impromptu wake gave everyone the opportunity to visit.

Nick wandered down the hall, giving his punch glass to a passing servant. Most London town-houses were laid out in the same manner. There was a front set of stairs for guests, and a back set for family and servants. Nick found the back stairs and quietly climbed them, thinking he’d pretend to be searching for the water closet if a family member or a servant came across him.

If there was one person who might have knowl
edge of where Belkins had been last night, it would be his valet.

Nick wasn’t certain which room was the master’s suite. He opened two of the doors in the hallway before he found himself in a larger bedroom than the others. He stepped inside and gave a start when he saw a body, fully dressed in riding clothes and lying on the bed as if asleep.

He started to back out of the room until he realized the man was Belkins himself. His body had been laid out here to be dressed.

Later, per custom, the family would probably retire the body to the receiving room or the dining room for the viewing.

However, right now, the room was quiet. It was just Nick and Belkins.

Shutting the door behind him, Nick moved to the bedside for closer inspection. Belkins was apparently wearing the same clothes he’d had on at the time of his death. The boots were scuffed but the jacket and shirt were clean. The muscles of his face were rigid and there was still a very faint hint of color to his complexion. Coins had been placed over his eyes and a bandage wrapped around his head where there were still the marks of an ugly bruise.

Nick wanted to know what was under the bandage. He knew he must move fast lest he be caught
poking and prodding the body.
That
would do nothing to enhance his reputation.

The bandage had probably been tightly bound when it was first applied, but because the body was dead, the swelling had gone down. Nick could ease the bandage enough to see that the center of Belkins’s forehead was caved in, the bruising a sign of blood around the injury. Perhaps the man could have fallen off his horse and hit his head hard on the ground—but then his clothes would be dirty.

Or more likely, some one had bashed in the head good and hard. Nick wondered if the back of His Lordship’s jacket and breeches were as clean as the front? He doubted it.

Belkins had been murdered. The family could believe what they wished, but Nick would not ignore the fact Belkins had been too good of a horseman to have fallen head first off his mount—

“I beg your pardon, sir?” a clipped voice asked from the other side of the room.

He’d been caught.

Thinking fast, Nick slumped his shoulders as if in grief. He turned to meet the valet who walked into the bedroom from a changing room. Nick hadn’t even heard the man moving.

The valet was roughly Nick’s age, and half his height. His eyes were red-rimmed from grief and he held a black scarf in his hand.

“I’m the Duke of Holburn,” Nick said in what he hoped was a stricken voice. “I had to see him. We were friends. We were supposed to have dined together last night. I can’t believe he is dead.”

“It is tragic, Your Grace,” the valet said.

“Yes,” Nick said, lingering over the word before saying, “Belkins never showed for dinner. Didn’t even send word.” Being wise in the way of servants, even the most loyal ones, he reached into his coat pocket and removed some folded pound notes. “His plans must have changed. I don’t suppose you knew what they were?”

The valet’s shrewd eyes narrowed on the money. Since his employer had died, the man knew he’d soon be without a position. One had to be practical, even in the face of death.

“He stayed in last night,” the valet said, taking the money.

Nick peeled off several of the notes and laid them on the bed beside Belkins’s body. “Did he stay in all night? Or receive a message that would have called him away? After all, he wasn’t found here.”

“There was a message,” the valet said.

Nick placed another note on top of the others. “When did it arrive?”

“Earlier in the day yesterday, before my lord woke.” That spoiled the theory Nick had been
developing that someone had called Belkins out of bed.

“Was he expecting it?” Nick asked.

The valet nodded. “Although it upset him.”

Nick’s interest quickened. “Did you by chance read it?”

The valet stiffened. “I don’t do that sort of thing, Your Grace,” he announced. “Lord Belkins burned the letter.”

Damn,
Nick thought.

But then the valet unbent enough to confide, “However, I did manage to catch a glimpse of what it said.”

Nick placed the money left in his hand on the bed. The valet picked up the bills and pocketed them before saying, “The writer said he’d received His Lordship’s message about the Swan.”

“Who signed the letter?” Nick questioned, his heart pounding with excitement.

“I didn’t have enough time to make sense of it, but the name was Spanish.”

“Andres Ramigio or the Barón de Vasconia?”

The valet nodded. “I saw the word Andres.”

Nick received this news with mixed emotions. He’d really not wanted to believe Ramigio a killer…although he didn’t know him well. After all, they’d spent one night carousing and enjoying
each other’s company. That wasn’t a character recommendation—and yet, the two of them had bonded immediately. Nick had thought himself a fairly good judge of character. That was the reason the theft of his ring made him so angry. “And Belkins burned the note?”

“Yes, I watched him do it.”

Damn the bad luck.
Nick would have liked to have seen the message for himself. “Did you see who delivered it?”

“I didn’t. But a footman said it was handed over by one of the street lads.”

Nick could have chased down a description but he knew it would be impossible to find the lad who had delivered the note. London’s streets were filled with boys who would run an errand for a half penny.

He looked at the body on the bed. The poor bastard had paid the ultimate price for betraying a friend. “But why would he have done that? What motivated him to send me to that inn?”

“Money,” the valet answered before Nick realized he’d spoken aloud. “His lordship was to be paid handsomely to arrange a meeting with you. There was a line in the note telling him he would be paid if all went well at the Swan. I couldn’t read if the letter said where and when His Lord
ship would receive his money. However I suspect he left early to collect it.”

“Why do you believe that?”

“I overheard him mention to Lady Belkins that he would give her pin money this morning. She wasn’t happy. She wanted it last night and he said he couldn’t pay it until the morning.”

God bless the servants. “Any idea when he left this morning?”

“Around four. That’s when the groom said he came for his horse. He walked into the stables, gave Billy a shake, and ordered him to saddle his Nell up.”

And after that?
Nick released a sound of exasperation. The trail had gone cold.

At that moment, the door opened. A maid entered. “My lady would like—” she started and then stopped seeing Nick in the room. “Oh, I beg pardon.”

Nick patted Belkins’s arm. It was stiff. Nick turned and walked out of the room, his mind full with this new information. He took the back stairs again and found the crowd of callers in the hallway had thinned considerably.

His mother was still there. He caught sight of her in the dining room. He was moving toward her to mention he was leaving when he realized
she was talking to his uncles, Lord Brandt and Lord Maven.

It was too late to avoid them. They’d seen him.

His mother appeared relieved at his presence. “I told you Holburn was here,” she informed the uncles in a carrying voice so Nick knew his presence was expected. She welcomed him with a big, motherly smile.

His uncles were twins and alike in almost every way. They dressed in somber, austere clothing. They were of the same height, almost as tall as Nick, and their expressions were ones of cheerless gloom. Life was a serious matter to them and they did not understand Nick or his frivolous mother.

“Gentlemen,” Nick greeted them as he approached. Ignoring their bows of acknowledgment, he asked, “Mother, are you ready to leave?”

“Oh, yes,” she said waving her black handkerchief in front of her face. “Past ready. This all reminds me so much of the sadness surrounding your father’s passing. So tragic to lose a husband so young in life.” If she had said this to garner sympathy from her in-laws, she could have saved her breath. Nick’s uncles didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash over the mention of their brother’s death.

Nick supposed they would feel the same about his death as well.

Or perhaps they’d be more enthusiastic, since his uncle Brandt would inherit the title—and
there
was a motive for murder. Both Brandt and Maven had earned their own titles, but that didn’t mean they didn’t covet his.

It’s a disquieting thing to consider the idea that one’s relatives might consider murdering him. It had been a random thought but it started to take shape in his mind.