One Touch of Scandal (7 page)

“You!” cried Lady Abigail, lifting her head from the divan. “They wanted you, Grace. They seem to imagine you can help them answer questions. Can you credit it? Questions! The vile man had a whole folio full of bits of paper—and was none too pleased to be told you were still out. Indeed, I thought him
suspicious.
”

“You thought he was suspicious of me?” asked Grace. “Or you were suspicious of him?”

“Both!” cried Lady Abigail, struggling to sit up. “Oh, dear heaven! The room is still spinning! Fetch me my hartshorn.”

Grace found it, then fussed and frittered over the old woman for a time, easing her back down again. Miriam came in to help, refilling Lady Abigail's restorative cordial, this time tipping the brandy bottle over it for the lightest splash.

It was time, Grace realized, to go back to Paris—whether it felt like home or not. She had been born in London, in this very house, and had lived parts of her early childhood in both France and Spain, but never had Grace felt truly settled until Algeria. And her last trip to Paris—to take her father home to die—had been an especially unhappy one.

But an unwed lady was at something of a loss in North Africa, and she had had to go
somewhere.
To belong somewhere. To be either fish or fowl—and Grace had hardly cared which. But now Ethan was dead, and the England of her childhood no longer felt so welcoming.

When the dust had settled, and her aunt's cordial was nearly finished, Grace pulled a chair nearer the chaise. “Now this policeman, Aunt Abigail,” she said quietly, “do you recall his name?”

“Oh, heavens no!” She snapped her fingers repeatedly at Miriam. The girl darted off to fetch a footed silver salver still holding an ivory calling card. Which was rather odd. One would not have imagined common policemen to have calling cards.

“Are you quite sure, Aunt Abigail, that he was a policeman?”

“He might as well have been!” Abigail declared.

The wave of fatigue that Lord Ruthveyn had managed
to assuage swamped in around Grace again. Resigned, she took the card.

Royden Napier.

“I fear, Aunt Abigail, that he is not a policeman,” she said quietly.

“Well, I did not mean he wore a uniform!” Lady Abigail sniffed, folding her hands together. “I told him to leave those blue-coated creatures in the street. But his attitude—well, I dared not refuse him. So I let him in, though I vow, I paid him little heed.”

“I am sorry you did not,” said Grace dryly. “You might take some comfort, Aunt Abigail, in knowing that your caller was just a step or two removed from the Home Secretary himself.”

“The Home Secretary? Whatever can you mean?”

Grace laid the card back on the salver, facedown. “Mr. Napier,” she said softly, “is the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard.”

And just possibly,
she inwardly added,
my nemesis.

I
t required no gift of prescience the following day to discover the residence of the late Ethan Holding. The morning's haze was waning a bit, and though all the massive white monoliths facing Belgrave Square looked rather alike, the black-clad mutes in sashes and weepers who materialized from the gloom at the foot of Holding's steps were the only visions the Marquess of Ruthveyn required.

He went up the stairs, his footsteps hollow and disembodied in the fog. With an air of haughty condescension, he produced his card, dropped his title, and soon found himself escorted through a soaring two-story entrance hall made mostly of white marble, and into another vast, opulently furnished chamber called—ironically, one hoped—the small parlor. Ruthveyn looked about in be
musement, finding it all a little nouveau riche for his taste, though the gilt pier glasses between the windows had been obscured by black crepe, the ormolu mantel clock lay silent, and all the draperies were drawn, in deference to the deceased.

“What a remarkable room,” he commented.

Halfway out the door, the butler cut him an odd glance. “Mr. Holding himself designed it,” he said neutrally, “when he bought the house three years ago.”

“I see,” Ruthveyn murmured, looking about. “Where, pray, did he live before?”

“At Rotherhithe,” said the servant, “in a family home near the shipyards.”

“Ah.” He could see why a man might wish to relocate. With its dockyards, shipyards, and warehouses, Rotherhithe was, for the most part, a working-class part of town.

Ruthveyn was just in the process of pretending to admire the gilt frieze that encircled what looked like a solid gold ceiling medallion when the echo of voices in the vaulted entrance hall caught his ear. He glanced through the open double doors to see a tall, handsome woman with a pile of dark red hair coming down the lower staircase on the arm of a lanky, balding gentleman. A brace of footmen followed, bearing various portmanteaus and bandboxes between them.

“Have them set everything here, Josiah,” she ordered the gentleman, “until the carriage comes back around,” she ordered. “I shall be but a moment.”

Miss Fenella Crane, who looked to be in her midthirties, swept into the room dressed as if for travel. She had already drawn on her gloves, Ruthveyn was relieved to see, and, as with Mademoiselle Gauthier, wore a black hat and veil. It did not, however, entirely obscure her gaze,
and he could feel her curiosity burning through him like molten iron. Curiosity, and something more.

Ruthveyn opened himself quite willingly to it, and felt a certain wariness and anger thrumming through the room—understandable given the very ugly thing that had just happened here. Her eyes, he saw, were rimmed with red as if from crying. He stepped forward and bowed, praying the lady did not think to ask precisely how well he'd known the deceased Mr. Holding.

“Miss Crane, my apologies,” he said smoothly. “As your butler warned, I can see you are on your way back out again.”

She gave a stiff nod, but did not, thank God, extend her hand. “Yes, I'm sorry,” she acknowledged.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, but have we met?”

“We have not.” His was the sort of face people remembered, he knew.

“I am honored, of course,” she went on, sounding something less. “But I'm afraid my cousin Josiah Crane is escorting me back to the Lesters'. We're expected by teatime.”

“Then permit me to promptly offer my deepest sympathy, ma'am,” he returned. “Your brother was a fine gentleman, and—”

“Stepbrother,” she interjected.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ethan was my stepbrother,” she corrected, something catching in her throat. “Though I loved him no less for it.”

“Ah,” said Ruthveyn. “My apologies.”

“None are necessary,” she said. “We always laughed at how the different names confused people. Now what, sir, may I do for you before I go? I am staying elsewhere, you see, until this frightful business is settled. Even poor
Ethan's”—here her voice gave—“poor Ethan's corpse cannot be laid out until tomorrow.”

“I am so sorry,” he said again. “Your butler did explain you'd come merely to collect some things.”

“A very few things,” she said a little tightly. “The police have been most unaccommodating. They seem to imagine one of us killed poor Ethan.”

Ruthveyn lifted one eyebrow. “How appalling.”

“Not to mention preposterous,” said the lady. “No one here meant Ethan any harm. Indeed, he was beloved by all.”

Ruthveyn rather doubted a man became the financial success Ethan Holding had been by being beloved by all, but he refrained from saying so. “You have excellent servants, then?” he asked. “You trust them?”

“They are like family to me,” said Miss Crane.

“I am pleased to hear it,” Ruthveyn remarked.

“I can't think why,” said Miss Crane with a wan smile, “when we just met.”

“One of your staff has been referred to me as a possible employee,” he explained. “A Miss Grace Gauthier who, I believe, was in your family's employ until quite recently?”

“Grace?” Miss Crane's voice softened, her eyebrows drawing into a fretful knot. “Oh, dear. I never thought…”

“That she might be leaving you?” he supplied. “I have two nephews, you see—hellions, the both of them—and I need someone quite competent.”

Miss Crane hesitated, the air thrumming with uncertainty. “Well, she is excellent,” the lady finally said. “The girls adore her. And Ethan respected her greatly.”

“One of my servants had heard that the children might be removing to the country?”

“Yes,” said Miss Crane. “Their late mother's sister,
Mrs. Lester, wants them quite desperately, for she has only boys. Indeed, we are all staying there at present.”

Ruthveyn did not like her use of the word
desperate.
Desperate people did desperate things. “Has Mrs. Lester a governess?” he asked.

“Oh, the very best,” said Miss Crane. “A girl from Berne. I am told Swiss governesses are all the rage, if a little dear. But Mr. Lester always insists his wife have everything she desires.”

Ruthveyn managed a rueful smile. “I should settle for a merely competent governess.” He paused to scrub a hand pensively around his chin. “But one really does hate to use an agency. One can never be quite sure…”

Miss Crane took the bait. “Oh, quite so,” she agreed. “One cannot know
what
one might end up with.”

“So there is no question of Mademoiselle Gauthier's returning to your family's service?” Ruthveyn pressed.

Miss Crane looked sad. “I think it unlikely,” she replied. “Though I shall miss them all dreadfully, Grace included.”

“If it does not seem presumptuous, ma'am, would you give me Mademoiselle Gauthier's direction?”

“But of course.” Miss Crane went at once to a small mahogany bureau and dropped the front. “Grace is staying with her aunt in Marylebone,” she continued, extracting a sheet of letter paper and scratching something on it. “I shall just give you a note of introduction.”

“How thoughtful,” he said.

In a trice the note was written, fanned in the air, and folded. Deftly, Ruthveyn took it from Miss Crane's fingers with his left hand, careful not to touch her.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then, recalling his true objective, he drew a deep breath and offered his right hand.

As was entirely natural, Miss Crane laid her fingers in his. Ruthveyn forced himself to hold them and to gaze into her eyes; wide, blue and unblinking behind the veil that hid nothing now. Despite the thin glove that separated them, he felt an abrupt jolt of consciousness, as if he had just been jerked from a deep and languorous sleep, to a white cold reality. It was the sudden, sickening sensation of having looked too long at something horrific. The edges of his vision darkened, then became painfully bright again, warning of what was to come.

As a young man making his way through the northern reaches of Hindustan, he had once glanced across a narrow mountain pass just as a snow leopard pounced to tear a rabbit to bits, spattering brilliant ruby drops across the snow, chilling in its beauty. The horror came to him again now. Not just the spattered blood against the blinding white but a tangled fan of dark red. Shredded black bombazine. A feminine hand splayed bloodless and limp.

Good God.

Ruthveyn dragged in a deep breath and resisted the urge to shut his eyes to the horror, for he knew it would do no good. He did not see with his eyes.

“Lord Ruthveyn?” Miss Crane's voice came from a distance. “Are you perfectly all right?”

Somehow, he found the presence of mind to bow elegantly over her hand. “Yes, and you have been too kind, ma'am,” he forced himself to say. “I have intruded upon your grief too long.”

He took his leave from the lady in haste, pausing only to introduce himself to Josiah Crane, who appeared to be a reserved, withdrawn sort of man. Crane muttered his thanks, but did not offer his hand, nor did Ruthveyn
solicit it. He instead hastened down the front stairs and back to his waiting carriage almost numbly, the ruse of Miss Crane's note crumpled tightly in his fist.

Had the vision been real? Or merely symbolic? Good God, he was dashed glad she'd kept her gloves on.

Still, a part of him wanted to go back. To warn her.

But warn her of what? And to what end? From past experience, Ruthveyn knew the hopelessness of it. His own failings followed him through life, weighing him down even as he lifted his hand and ordered his driver to roll on.

“Whitehall Place, Brogden,” he rasped. “And make haste.”

The route was both short and familiar, for this was hardly Ruthveyn's first visit to the administrative offices of the Metropolitan Police. The fog had nearly lifted, but the oppressive damp had not. As his carriage rumbled slowly through Westminster, impeded by the press of traffic, Ruthveyn watched the world beyond his window; the world that went about its everyday business in blithe ignorance of all but the present.

Perhaps he would be wise to learn to emulate that greater world—or perhaps simply retire to some cliffside cottage in Cornwall and avoid it entirely. Or go home to his mother's people and disappear into the mountains to study the ancient philosophies—and in that way, his sister Anisha often suggested, perhaps learn some method of controlling the Gift.

Indeed, he sometimes found himself wondering whether the
Fraternitas
—or the St. James Society, if one preferred its public face—served any real purpose at all with all their research and reading and dabbling in world affairs. Guardians, indeed! More and more, it seemed to Ruthveyn that only the troubles of the here and now were truly within anyone's control.

He thought again of Grace Gauthier, and strangely, of Anisha, both of whom seemed outwardly so strong. Yet each possessed an air of frailty Ruthveyn was not sure everyone could see. Only Grace, however, had accepted his offer of assistance, albeit reluctantly.

But at least her needs—her
immediate
needs—were clear-cut. Something a man could understand, and perhaps even make right. Anisha's were far less definable. Worse, the pallor of widowhood still clung to his sister, damping down what had once been her youthful vivacity. It saddened him—and his inability to help her was frustrating.

The carriage lurched suddenly into Whitehall, Brogden wedging them a little tactlessly between a dray laden with lumber and an ancient hansom cab. The dray's driver shook his fist, cursing Ruthveyn's coachman to the devil. And as if his temper had willed it, the low, gray skies that hung over London began to spill rain the size of robin's eggs, sending civil servants and cabinet ministers alike hastening from the pavements into archways and alleys. Then the spill turned to a roar, hammering down upon his brougham like a score of mad cobblers.

At the Admiralty, Ruthveyn pounded the roof hard enough to be heard beyond the torrent. His driver drew up before the Pay Office, and Ruthveyn yanked an umbrella from beneath his seat. This business in Scotland Yard would be quickly settled, he vowed, and he had no wish to then find himself stuck in a side street with every man Jack and farm cart vying for space in the thoroughfares.

With London's air fleetingly relieved of its sharp, sulfurous tang, Ruthveyn set a brisk pace along the pavement. At Number Four, he shoved his umbrella into the weathered oak rack by the door, then presented his card to the duty officer, who snapped to attention. Ruthveyn's
name—perhaps even his reputation—was doubtless well-known to him. He was shown up the stairs and offered the last empty seat in the antechamber of the assistant commissioner's office, where a pair of thin clerks in black frock coats perched like crows on fence posts at their tall desks, eyes glued to some mundane government task.

Impatiently, Ruthveyn sat. He could have demanded immediate attention, he considered. Indeed, he could probably have yanked open the heavy oaken door and ordered whoever was inside simply to leave. But his lordly disdain would be of little use to Mademoiselle Gauthier. While his influence, on the other hand, might be—though why he was troubling himself so thoroughly on her behalf was still unclear.

Perhaps because it seemed easier.

Easier than facing his own problems. Or Anisha's. Or even Luc's.

Good God.

Was it that simple? Was the beautiful Mademoiselle Gauthier nothing more than a distraction? With that question nagging at him, Ruthveyn settled into the stiff wooden chair, which sat squarely against the wall to the left of Napier's door. It was not the seat he would have chosen, for it was miserably designed, and Napier was not a man one wisely turned one's back on.

Ruthveyn settled in to observe the steady stream of officers, civil servants, and general human misery that tromped up and down the staircase and along the passageway. Few came to Scotland Yard of their own volition. After a time, his gaze fell upon his fellow supplicants: a ragged messenger boy with a hole in the toe of one boot who clutched an envelope as wide as his chest, and a pair
of funereal-faced, blue-coated sergeants who looked as if they expected Napier to give them a proper hiding with his riding crop.