Meet Me at Midnight (23 page)

He clamped his jaw shut over his angry retort as her voice broke and she disappeared through the door, slamming it closed behind her. Damnation. He’d been about to make love to a beautiful woman who, despite his boorishness, had evidently decided she cared for him at least a little. And he had all but called
her
a fool.

Perhaps the argument would make her realize, though, that he hadn’t just come up with his list of suspects overnight. For two years he’d been pondering, and seeking information where he could. Not all the fingers pointed at Marley; if they did, Marley would be dead or imprisoned by now. He’d seen enough, though, to want a much closer look. The evidence wasn’t anything like the string of coincidences Victoria had used to conjure Astin Hovarth, of all people.

Grumbling, he climbed back into his large, empty bed and yanked up the covers. A squawk made him look up, to where Mungo Park perched in his favorite spot at the peak of the headboard.

“‘Now, Sin. I want you inside me,’” the bird mimicked.

“Oh, shut up,” Sin returned, and buried his head beneath the sheets.

First thing in the morning, Victoria sat down and made a list. The page had two columns: friends she could trust to keep their silence, and friends who would carry tales of anything she said to the rest of London. When she finished it, the list was alarmingly one-sided. For someone who claimed to dislike gossip,
she’d certainly managed to acquire a great many chatty friends.

As she reread the trustworthy names, she crossed out Sinclair Grafton, his three spy friends, and his valet. They wouldn’t carry tales, but based on Sin’s reaction last night, neither were they going to allow her to continue her own investigation of the Earl of Kingsfeld.

She then sent a note to her friend Emma Grenville, inquiring if there might be any records at Miss Grenville’s Academy that would indicate whether Lady Jane Netherby had attended or not. Emma’s aunt, Miss Grenville, had kept meticulous records, including the names of any visitors or unusual occurrences. She knew that because she’d once seen her own file, practically two inches thick. It should appease Sinclair to see that she was investigating in an extremely safe—and useless—manner.

That done, she gave the missive to Milo and strolled into the downstairs office. Sin would be at Parliament this morning, so she didn’t have to worry about him discovering her. According to Jenny, Roman had left on an errand as well, so for the moment Grafton House was spy-free. Nearly.

Closing the office door, she slowly took in the room. A slight shiver ran down her spine. A man had died, violently, in this room. If he had known the killer, he might also have known his life was in danger. Why this room? Why that night? Some clue must remain.

Though Sinclair had already looked through the desk for incriminating letters or notes, the killer would have had the first opportunity to do so. And from her experience, people did not necessarily keep private in
formation in public places. Her husband had no doubt considered that already, as well, but it was a large room. He might have missed something—particularly if he was searching for different evidence than she was.

She started with the bookshelf beside the door. No dust clung to the shelves or the books, but she doubted any of the servants had moved or opened anything.

Most of the books were law tomes or listings of property and taxes and trade charters. Thomas had taken his duties in the House of Lords very seriously, but she already knew that about him. One by one she took down the books, flipped through the pages looking for any notes or markings the late Marquis of Althorpe might have made, and then replaced them again.

If his death had surprised Thomas as much as it had his family, he probably wouldn’t have hidden anything away. As intelligent as she’d known him to be, though, she couldn’t believe that he would have been completely astonished that night. He might have put something aside, just in case.

Two hours later, as she removed Culpeper’s
Herbal Guide
from the shelf beside the window and flipped the heavy book open, several sheets of yellowed paper fluttered down to the carpet.

For a long moment she just stood looking at them. Her tired back, smudged fingers, and wounded feelings all ceased to matter. Thomas Grafton had left this for someone to find, and she had found it.

“Steady,” she whispered, gathering her skirts and sinking to the floor. “It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. She realized that almost imme
diately. Writing filled the three pages, meticulous writing couched in legal terms and accompanied by notations and statistics. Words here and there had been scratched out and replaced with others, while nearly indecipherable notes lined the margins and inched in to overlap the main text.

The office door clicked and opened. “Victoria, what are you—”

Sin stopped, taking in the sight of her seated on the floor with Culpeper open beside her and the pages clutched in her hands. She raised them toward him. “I think I found something,” she said, her voice unsteady.

He strode over to her and knelt down. “What is it?” he asked sharply, taking the papers from her.

“I think it’s a proposal,” she said, watching his intense expression as he scanned through the pages. “Something about trade and France.”

Sinclair nodded. “An early draft of one. Where did you find it?”

“In the middle of the Culpeper.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why in the world would Thomas hide a parliamentary treatise in an herbal guide?”

“So no one would find it?” she suggested.

He met her gaze. “Don’t read more into it than you see. It is an early draft. He might have been marking his place in the book.”

“Mm. Did he have an interest in”—she looked at the open Culpeper—“in figwort, for treating purulent wounds?”

Scowling, Sin read the pages through more slowly. “Not likely.”

“Sinclair—”

“This calls for a cessation of trade with France and
a divestiture of all French holdings by the English nobility, to ‘set an example for the world, and most especially, for Bonaparte.’” He glanced at her again. “You know, Astin showed me part of a proposal he and Thomas were working on together. He said Marley was none too happy with either of them about it.”

Victoria resisted the urge to begin another argument. The object was to find a killer, not to argue over whose acquaintance was less trustworthy. “Was it the same proposal?”

“I don’t know. The page had had port spilled on it. By Marley. It was completely illegible.”

Pressing her lips together, Victoria debated for several long seconds whether to say anything or not. He’d told her not to read more into something than she saw; neither, though, could she turn a blind eye toward something she did see. “Why did Lord Kingsfeld keep the page, then?” she asked softly.

Sin’s jaw ground shut. “What?”

“Lord Kingsfeld told me himself that he discards useless objects,” she said quickly, before he could tell her she was stupid and wrong. “Why, then, would he keep a completely illegible piece of paper for more than two years? And why would he know precisely where to find it when he needed to show it to you?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. “Before we meander farther along this path,” he said flatly, “we have to determine what became of this proposal. We already know that it didn’t pass. I’ll go through the House records to see when it was defeated by Parliament. That will be the determining factor of its significance.”

Standing, he retrieved the Culpeper and returned it
to its place on the bookshelf. Then he held his hand down to her.

She grasped his fingers. “Sinclair, I don’t mean to hurt—”

“You made a point,” he said gruffly, pulling her effortlessly to her feet. “Just how good a point remains to be seen.”

S
he was up to something. Sin looked sideways at Victoria as he drove their phaeton past Rotten Row in Hyde Park.

For three days she’d been calm and quiet, barely speaking of the investigation except to inquire whether he’d learned anything new. And she was sharing his bed again, thank God, with a passion and enthusiasm that left him breathless. If there was one thing Victoria Grafton wasn’t, it was shy.

And that was the crux of the problem. It had taken only one conversation to realize that his impetuous bride didn’t shirk from anything, and certainly not for the simple reason that he’d told her to. Therefore, she was still pursuing her hunch about the Earl of Kingsfeld. She just wasn’t telling him about it.

He brought the phaeton around to join the crush of vehicles, riders, and pedestrians meandering through the park. The ritual of afternoon socializing seemed absurd, particularly with the park so crowded that no one could possibly manage a meaningful conversation. It did have one benefit, though: it kept Victoria in his sight and out of trouble for at least an hour.

“I wrote to my friend Emma Grenville,” she said unexpectedly, her gaze on the hordes filling the sun-dappled park. “Unfortunately, all she could tell me was that Lady Jane Netherby did not attend Miss Grenville’s Academy.”

“It was a good idea anyway,” he replied, perfectly willing to encourage any harmless venues of investigation. “And now we know where she wasn’t.”

“Have you heard anything from Bates?”

Sinclair shook his head. “I don’t expect him back for another few days. I hope he’ll at least be able to tell me whether Lady Jane had any gentleman callers and who they might have been.”

“My parents have invited us to dinner this evening.”

“They have?”

“Yes. Apparently your pretending to be a gentleman has fooled them completely.”

A touch of acid—finally. And though he scowled at the commentary, he actually felt more at ease. This Victoria, he knew how to deal with. “All right. What did I do now?”

She still wouldn’t look at him. “Nothing. Shall I accept the invitation?”

“Not if you don’t want to dine with them.”

“I’ll make our excuses, then. I just thought you might wish to interrogate them or something.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Victoria, what’s wrong?”

Vixen fidgeted for a moment, then sat back and faced him. “What are you going to do when this is over?”

“I’m going to meet with my solicitor, who thinks I’m a complete nodcock, and look over some of the estate books.”

“I mean, what are you going to do once you’ve caught Thomas’s killer?”

He held her gaze, trying to decipher the real question in her violet eyes. “I’m supposed to be a nobleman. We don’t do much of anything, do we?”

The expression on her face didn’t change, but she might as well have shouted her annoyance to the heavens. “Make what you will of your position, Sinclair. If you intend to sit and drink and wager all day, I…”

“You might have to find somewhere else to be,” he finished for her. “I admire your confidence in your ability to change the world, but mankind is quite a bit more rotten than you realize.”

“Just what did you see, Sinclair, that made you so cynical?”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“Why not?” she burst out, flushing. “I think I’m strong enough to take whatever ill news about my fellows you might have discovered.”

“Shh,” he murmured, unable to stop himself from reaching out to stroke her soft cheek with the back of his fingers. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” Her slender fingers lifted and twined with his.

“I find a…peculiar comfort in your faith, Victoria.”

“My faith?”

Sin nodded. “Your faith, and your compassion. I don’t want to destroy that in you. It’s…important to me.”

For a moment she remained silent. “That’s a very nice thing you just said,” she finally whispered, teary-eyed and smiling.

“It’s the truth. And since I’m making confessions,
when this is finished I suppose I’m going to manage Thomas’s estates and business holdings and try not to make an ass of myself in Parliament.”

“But they aren’t your brother’s estates any longer,” she countered. “They’re yours. And so is the seat in the House of Lords, and Grafton House, and…”

“And what?”

“And me.”

His heart thudded. It made sense. She thought he’d married her so he could continue his investigation, and in part he had. Once the investigation was finished, the equation would change. Distracting her wouldn’t work any longer, because he would have nothing to distract her from—except the realization that she’d married someone who only knew how to be a spy and a subversive thorn in an enemy government’s side. With no enemy government to undermine, he could swiftly become very unpopular with his own.

“What do you want when this is finished?” he asked slowly.

She gave a small smile. “The same thing I’ve always wanted: to be useful.”

“You’re useful to me,” he said, more because he hated that sad look in her eyes than because he wanted to make another attempt to explain how important she was becoming to him—how she centered and balanced him and managed to make him think he actually had a chance at being a passable Lord Althorpe.

Victoria wrinkled her nose. “While I’m happy to hear that, it’s not precisely what I had in—”

“
Seenclair! Mon amour!
”

“Oh, good God,” he muttered, yanking up on the reins to keep from running down the young blond woman who rose from the grass nearby and dashed
out onto the pathway. “Miss L’Anjou. How are you?”

“
Maintenant, je suis splendide!
” she cooed, while her companions, seated on picnic blankets several yards from the riding trail, looked on with interest. Most were young men, of course; Sophie L’Anjou seemed to acquire a set of them wherever she traveled. “
Comment vas tu? Je t’manque, mon amour
.”

He cleared his throat, not daring to look at Victoria, though he didn’t need to see her face to sense her sudden keen fascination with the conversation. It would have been too much to hope that she didn’t speak French. “I’m quite well, thank you, Miss L’Anjou.”

“
Qui est la femme?
”

Victoria leaned closer to him. “She wants to know who I am, Sinclair,” she murmured, her tone honeyed with deep humor.

At least the encounter amused her. But if he knew anything, it was that a man did not introduce his bride to his former mistress.

Neither, though, could he ignore her. Sophie would run after the phaeton, screeching and bellowing at the top of her opera-trained lungs, until he answered her. “Miss L’Anjou, Lady Althorpe. Victoria, Miss L’Anjou, a renowned opera singer in Paris.”

“Good afternoon,” the Vixen said politely. “We saw your performance the other evening. It was splendid—I envy you your talent.”

Sophie looked up at Victoria on her high perch, then bobbed a curtsy. “
Merci
, my lady. My Seenclair often attends my performances, and he sends me flowers when he cannot.”

Well, this was obviously going to get ugly
. “I have
already explained to Lady Althorpe that you and I are old acquaintances.”

Obviously not satisfied with that description, Sophie remained rooted by the phaeton, right where he would have to run her down if he attempted an escape. The line of vehicles behind them began to stack up, increasing the size of their audience.

“I am pleased to hear this,” the singer continued in her halting, heavily accented English. “How do you know my Seen, Lady Althorpe?”

Before he could open his mouth, Victoria leaned forward to look past him at Sophie. “Sinclair is my husband,” she said in a low voice.

Any attempt at subtlety was lost on Sophie. The blond woman’s eyes widened. “What? Seen, you are married?”

“Only just,” he replied, trying to make light of it.

“But this is not possible. You said you would never marry, Seenclair.
Jamais
.”

“Things change, Miss L’Anjou,” he said, looking at her steadily. “People change, and circumstances change.”

“You do not change. I know this. You are making a joke with me,
oui
?”

“No.”

To his surprise, Victoria laid a hand on his arm. “Sinclair probably didn’t have a chance to tell you. He unexpectedly inherited a title and some property, and his family insisted that he marry.”

The lie was blatant, but even so the anger in Sophie’s eyes lessened. That was his Victoria, helping the downtrodden and making them feel more comfortable, even at her own expense.

“I see,” Sophie said stiffly, backing away. “How
unfortunate that you have lost your freedom, Seen—I know how important it was to you.”

“I’m making do. If you’ll excuse us, though, we are expected elsewhere.”

“Perhaps I will see you in London again before I return to Paris.”

Not if he could manage to avoid her. She knew too much about his black deeds on the Continent, and not enough about his motives for behaving as he had. There were some things about himself that he didn’t want Victoria to know. “Perhaps we will,” he said noncommittally and urged the team into a trot.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Victoria faced him. “So. Tell me, Seenclair, do you—”

“Victoria, I’m sorry,” he interrupted. “I hope you weren’t embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed. I just wanted to know whether you broke her heart on purpose.”

“I didn’t break her heart,” he countered. “I don’t doubt Sophie has one, but it’s buried so far beneath her hunger for fame and notoriety and young, wealthy men, I doubt it has much room to beat.”

“But you…were with her, weren’t you?”

Sin scowled. “I needed her to trust me. There was nothing more to it than that.”

“I’m sorry for that, then.”

“For God’s sake, what are
you
sorry for, Victoria?” he returned, with more heat than he intended.

“For what you had to go through. Returning to England under normal circumstances would have been difficult enough. Add to that a murder and inheriting a marquisdom, and it must—”

“I am not one of your lost lambs, Vixen. I chose to do what I did. Believe me, Thomas was ready to pur
chase me a captain’s commission in the army if I’d wanted it. I didn’t.”

She searched his eyes, but if she was looking for a chink in his armor, he wished her luck. He didn’t think he had any, any longer.

“You didn’t kill him, you know,” she said quietly.

Apparently he did have at least one chink remaining. And of course she’d shoved a sword right through it and into his heart. “No, I don’t know that,” he retorted. “If his murder had anything to do with that proposal you found, I might very well have had something to do with it. Thomas wanted the war prevented, and then he wanted it over with—because I was right in the middle of it.”

Victoria didn’t look the least bit put off by his fierceness. Instead, she adopted a thoughtful, serious look, which amused and annoyed him at the same time.

“Proceed,” he prompted her. If she hadn’t yet run out of pieces of wisdom to share with him, he could damned well use one or two at the moment.

“It’s just that I didn’t know your brother well, but he seemed like a very intelligent, thoughtful man. How can you be sure he wouldn’t have done the exact same thing whether you joined the War Office or not?”

For a long moment, Sin just looked at her. Too many conflicting thoughts roiled around in his brain for him to sort out exactly what he wanted to say. Finally he let his breath out in a long, slow sigh. “Let me get something straight,” he said. “I introduce you to one of my former mistresses, and you’re more concerned that I feel guilty for my brother’s death.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, to be honest, I already suspected you knew Sophie L’Anjou better than you
indicated. She wasn’t much of a surprise.”

Sin lifted an eyebrow. “She wasn’t?”

“No. That night at the opera, you were blushing.”

The phaeton stopped short. “I do
not
blush.”

With a grin, she took the reins from his hands and flicked them at the team. “Well, I knew something was going on, didn’t I?”

Good God. He hadn’t realized he was so obvious. It was quite sad, really. And so was the way he’d come to rely on her for his humanity. For his sanity, it sometimes seemed.

He liked talking to her about things other than the murder—he liked her perception and her intelligence and her much warmer view of the world around them. Yet he still knew so little about her. It would take a lifetime to figure her out; he hoped she would give him the chance.

“What’s your favorite thing to do?” he asked.

Victoria blinked. “What?”

“What do you like to do?”

“Why?”

Sinclair took a breath. He couldn’t blame her for being suspicious; he never seemed to ask something without having some sort of ulterior motive. “Because I’m curious. I’m trying to behave like a husband, and learn about my wife.”

Her expression became more thoughtful. “I’m not entirely sure that’s what husbands do.”

Aha
. He’d surprised her. “We both know how lacking I am in husbanding skills.”

Victoria chuckled, blushing prettily. “You’re not so very lacking.”

“My thanks. Now, indulge me: what do you like to do?”

“Oh, my,” she whispered, and the carriage careened toward the shrubbery.

Sin snatched the reins back from her and returned the vehicle to the roadway. “Driving isn’t one of your pastimes, is it?”

Victoria stuck her tongue out at him. “When I’m in the country I like to ride,” she said, apparently becoming fascinated with the scenery again, as she did when she was embarrassed about something. “My mother always said I was a hoyden because I hated the broken-down old mare they kept trying to give me. I would make the groom ride her, and take his, instead.”

He made a mental note to provide her with a spirited—but good-tempered—mount at Althorpe. If his Vixen wanted to ride, then she would ride. “What else?”

“My causes, of course,” she continued, glancing sideways at him.