Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
A Vow Tested
Ihad come to hate the morning room.
It faced east across Grosvenor Square, which meant that at half past nine, with the July sun at a certain angle, I couldn’t sit at my writing desk without seeing the front of Steele House.
For three weeks I’d replied to correspondence. I’d inked through menus with Cook. I’d discussed linens with Mrs. Bateman. I had done every small useful thing a woman of my station does at a writing desk in the morning, and I’d done it all without looking at his door.
This morning I had looked.
Just as Honeycutt brought my coffee, a hackney had drawn up in front of Steele House.
A gentleman had descended from it. Nicky.
After he disappeared into Steele House, I’d sat with my hand on the coffee pot and told myself that if I didn’t move within the next five seconds I would never forgive myself.
I hadn’t moved.
Steele and I had grown close during our investigations.
Close enough for friendship to turn into something more.
We’d kissed. More than kissed. Touched. And Society had noticed.
The Queen feared if we continued along those lines, we would cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed, and she would force us to marry.
That was the last thing either of us wanted.
So she’d strongly suggested Steele and I stay away from each other.
On the train ride back from Windsor, I’d argued that we did not need to do such a thing. That we could control ourselves. But Steele had capitulated to the Queen’s wishes and said we would need to follow her advice. Furious, I’d told him I despised him. I’d meant it. I still did.
I also still loved him. A damnable thing that.
As difficult as it was, I’d kept my distance through three balls and a musicale at which Nicky had been present. His resemblance to Steele had nearly undone me. I’d stayed away while the season wore its way out, looking for him in every room. But he was never there.
It would pass. That’s what I told myself. It would pass.
Petunia arrived without knocking. “Rosie, Fox says the tortoise has gone again.”
“Fox ought not to have left the conservatory door open.” Where his tortoise was kept.
“Fox says he didn’t. Fox says it was Laurel’s fault.”
“Laurel doesn’t visit the conservatory.” She favored the library more than any other room.
Petunia perched on the arm of my chair. “That’s what I said. She is too sensible. And then Fox said I was a silly baby. That’s when I hit him.”
“Poppet.”
“Only on the arm. It didn’t hurt. Not really.” She didn’t appear the least contrite.
I kissed the top of her head. “Go and tell Mr. Honeycutt about the tortoise. He will find it.”
She beamed a smile. “Mr. Honeycutt is the best.”
“He is indeed.”
When the door closed behind her, I returned to my correspondence but found I couldn’t read a word.
As half past nine passed into ten, I forced myself to do the work. I wrote three replies and somehow managed not to look at Steele House. A small victory.
At a quarter past, a sound came from the hall.
A sound I was not used to hearing in my own house.
Voices, low and male, more than one, none belonging to a member of my family or any regular visitor.
Boots on marble. Honeycutt’s “if you will please wait” in a tone I hadn’t heard Honeycutt use in years.
I was on my feet before I knew why.
I reached the hall in time to see Honeycutt come through from the entrance, his face flushed. “Milady.” He kept his voice pitched for me alone. “Chief Inspector Dodson from Scotland Yard and two constables. He asks to see His Lordship.”
Dodson. An inspector I’d dealt with before. The encounters had not been pleasant. “On what business?”
“He would not say.”
Cosmos was in the greenhouse. He’d been there since first light, engaged in something involving a fern from the Malay Peninsula whose spores, he had explained over breakfast, were either lethally poisonous or entirely harmless and he would know by noon.
I’d told him to be careful. He’d laughed and said he had been doing this for fifteen years and hadn’t killed himself yet. And now Dodson was here asking for him.
The Scotland Yard Inspector stood just inside the front door with his hat in his hands—tall, hawkish with gray at his temples, and an unsettling gaze that belied his polite demeanor.
"Lady Rosalynd."
"Inspector."
"Forgive the hour. I have asked your butler to send for His Lordship. The matter is urgent."
"May I ask the matter?"
He permitted himself a small pause, a man savoring a dish before he passed it along. "A body has been found, my lady, at Kew Gardens. There are circumstances which make it necessary that I speak to His Lordship directly."
“You may speak to me."
"I cannot—"
“Inspector. If there is something to be said about a body at Kew, you may say it to me, or you may say it to him in my presence, but you will not stand in my hall and tell me nothing.”
Honeycutt cleared his throat. “His Lordship is coming in from the greenhouse now, milady.”
Cosmos arrived in his shirtsleeves, his hair pushed back, a smear of soil on his chin. He took in the constables, the Inspector, me. He wiped his hand on the rag in his pocket.
“Inspector.”
“My lord.”
“What has happened?”
Dodson reached into his breast pocket and drew out a folded square of cloth, which he laid carefully on the hall table and opened it. Within was a pistol.
I have never fainted in my life, and I did not faint then. But I put my hand on the edge of the hall table because I had come very near to doing so.
What Dodson held was Cosmos's pistol. A gift from our father on his twenty-first birthday.
He had kept it carefully in its case, in a desk drawer in his study.
I had taken it without asking, because asking would have required an explanation I had not wished to give.
And then, during a previous investigation, it had been taken from me.
I had never told Cosmos. I had never told the police. I had only told Steele.
Thankfully, Dodson was watching Cosmos, not me. “Do you recognize this weapon, my lord?”
Cosmos looked down at it. A line appeared between his eyebrows. “It appears to be the pistol I kept in my study. That’s where it should be.”
“When did you last see it, my lord?”
Cosmos gazed at me, a question in his eyes, but did not say a word to me. “I cannot be certain,” I heard him say as if from a distance. “Months, certainly. It’s something I treasure, not something I regularly use.”
Dodson nodded once. He refolded the cloth over the pistol.
“My lord. I must ask you to come with me to Scotland Yard.”
“Why?”
“A body was found at Kew Gardens. This pistol was found nearby.”
Cosmos grew pale. “You don’t think—I would never.”
“No charge has been laid, my lord. You are being asked to assist us with the investigation. Certain questions need to be asked regarding the circumstances surrounding the man’s death.”
“What’s the man’s name?”
“All in good time.”
Cosmos’s shoulders slumped. “Allow me to change.”
“Of course.”
Cosmos climbed the stairs without looking at me again. He walked the way he always walked, unhurried, methodical. He had known me all my life. He knew I had taken the pistol. But he hadn’t said a word.
Dodson turned to me. “I am sorry, Lady Rosalynd.”
“Are you really?” Somehow I doubted it. He was getting a thrill out of hauling my brother to Scotland Yard for questioning.
“Yes, milady. I am.”
I didn’t believe him.
A quarter of an hour later, Cosmos came down the stairs in a black coat, fresh shirt, and polished shoes.
Following Dodson’s lead, he stepped into the carriage waiting outside.
As I watched it move off in the summer sun, I stood in the open doorway of Rosehaven House without moving for what might have been a minute or an hour.
Honeycutt’s concerned voice came from somewhere behind me. “Shall we fetch someone, milady? The family’s solicitor, perhaps?”
Leave it to Honeycutt to keep a cool head. I turned toward him. “No. Don’t fetch anyone. Don’t tell anyone, until I return.”
I was already walking. Out of the door, down the front steps, into the square.
No bonnet. No gloves. The sun hot on the back of my neck.
I crossed the square directly, not bothering with the gravel paths.
A gentleman with a dog stopped and stared.
An older woman in a carriage turned her head to follow me as the carriage passed.
By evening it would be in three drawing rooms. By morning, in thirty. I did not care.
For three weeks, I had stayed away from Steele because that’s what the Queen had advised, because that’s what Steele had determined was for the best. Well, that was about to change.
I had borrowed Cosmos’s pistol, the one our father had gifted to him, and then I had let it be taken from me. But now Scotland Yard had taken my brother to be interrogated on a matter of a murder seemingly committed with his pistol. The penalty for murder was death.
I had no choice. There was only one man who could help. I climbed the steps of Steele House and rang the bell.
Milford opened the door. “Lady Rosalynd,” a note of surprise in his voice.
“Good morning, Milford. Is His Grace—?” I couldn’t complete the sentence.
Milford’s face changed. As my legs stopped working, he caught me by the elbow and drew me inside, steadying me against the wall before he turned to a footman.
“James, go fetch His Grace.”
James wasted no time following Milford’s command.
“His Grace is coming, milady.”
“Milford…” I couldn’t stop shaking.
“He is coming, milady,” he said again. “You have only to wait.”
I heard Steele’s footsteps above me, heard the catch in them before he rushed down the stairs and reached me. “What’s wrong?”
“They have taken Cosmos.”