Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
The Vow Undone
For three weeks I had built my days around not touching her. Around not being close enough to do so. In the time it took to cross the entrance hall, I undid the work of those weeks.
Her hands, when I took them, were cold. In July. “Come. Let’s go to my study so you can explain.” In private and in comfort, not in my entrance hall.
She took a faltering step. Afraid she would collapse entirely, I braced her against me and helped her up the stairs and into my study where I led her to the settee. Touching her was a pleasure I had forbidden myself. It felt like coming home.
Milford stood at the study door, a worried look on his face. “How can I assist, Your Grace?”
I nodded to the cabinet where the spirits were kept. “Please pour some brandy for Lady Rosalynd.”
Milford poured a generous portion into a snifter, brought it to Rosalynd, and left, closing the study door behind him.
Rosalynd did not drink but simply held the glass in her hands. Her hair had come down on one side. Dust, or chalk, marked her hem. But it was Rosalynd herself who worried me. I’d never seen her in such a state.
I took the glass from her shaking hands and brought it to her lips. “Drink. It will make you feel better.”
She took a sip. Then another. Slowly, thankfully, color returned to her face.
I took the space next to her on the settee and chafed her hands to bring warmth and life back into them. “That’s better. Now tell me. Who took Cosmos?”
She drew a shaky breath. “Scotland Yard.”
Scotland Yard was less alarming than what I’d feared. “Why did they take him?”
“A body was found at Kew Gardens. Inspector Dodson came to our door, with two constables behind him and a folded cloth in his pocket. And inside the cloth—” Her breath hitched. “Cosmos’s pistol. The one our father gave him. The one I took from his desk.”
“Where was it found?” It needed to be verified.
“Next to the body.” Her voice trembled. “When Cosmos couldn’t account for its disappearance, Dodson asked Cosmos to accompany him to Scotland Yard.
” A tear rolled down her cheek, which she angrily brushed away.
“I should have told him, Steele. I should have told him I took it. And that it was taken from me.”
By a masked man during the Thames investigation. “Did Cosmos ask you about the pistol in Dodson’s presence?”
She shook her head. “He glanced at me. That was all. But he knew. He had to know.”
Cosmos was intelligent enough to suspect Rosalynd had taken the pistol, but he did not, in fact, know. That would work to his advantage.
“It was a good thing you didn’t tell him, Rosalynd. He can honestly say he doesn’t know how it came to be missing from where he kept it.”
“Who else would take it but me?”
“He can claim that someone broke into his study.”
“But no one did! I took it. And the masked man took it from me during the Thames investigation. He has had it since the river. He told me as much himself, in my own ballroom at the masquerade ball, with his hand at my waist and a smile on his face.” Her voice held.
That was the worst of it—that it held. “And now he has set it down beside a corpse and handed my brother to the Yard.”
She had told me the pistol’s history months ago. And now the man who had taken it had chosen to use it. He’d planned this during the last three weeks while I’d hunted him in the dark. While I’d chased a ghost. The knowledge sat in my chest like a swallowed coal.
I could not give her any of my covert investigation. To tell her I had been hunting the masked man was to tell her why I had gone to Windsor and ended us, and that every cold and deliberate thing I had done since June had been done to keep her far from this man. So I said none of it.
She set down the glass, and a resolute expression rolled over her face. “I will go to Dodson and tell him I took the pistol, and that it was taken from me.”
“He will never believe you, Rosalynd. He’ll think you invented the tale out of whole cloth to save your brother.”
“But it’s the truth!”
“It doesn’t matter. When he asks for the name of the man who took it, what will you say? That a masked man took it? A man whose name you don’t know? All you will succeed in doing is ruining your good name. Because Dodson will use it against you.”
“This is all on me, Steele! I did this!”
“You did not put a body at Kew Gardens.”
“I gave him the means—”
“You were robbed. By a man who has made a long study of taking what is not his.” I crouched to her level.
“Listen to me. He chose to kill someone with that pistol because it belonged to Cosmos. Had it not been the pistol, it would have been some other thing—a man like that never wants for instruments. The guilt you are reaching for is the exact article he requires of you, because a woman occupied in hating herself is a woman who makes mistakes. Do not hand it to him.”
She held my gaze. “You speak as though you know him.”
The coal turned over in my chest. “I know the kind.” I walked away before she could make more of it.
“There is a little time. Dodson did not lay a charge. No magistrate hangs a case on a peer over a pistol alone. He will want the dead man bound to your brother—a quarrel, a debt, a reason. I’ll find out who the dead man is, and if he has any connection to your brother. ”
“How will you do that?”
“I have my resources.”
“Graves?”
The inspector in charge of the opera house murder, who was now assisting me in enquiries into the masked man. But that was something she did not need to know. “Leave it to me, Rosalynd. As a matter of fact, leave the entire investigation to me.”
Her eyes sparked. “Do you honestly think I’m going to allow you to investigate this on your own without my involvement?”
I knew she wouldn’t agree with my suggestion, but she could not be involved in this investigation. I needed to keep her safe. So, I played the only ace left to me. “Have you forgotten Her Majesty asked us to sever our connection?”
She rushed to her feet. “Of course I haven’t forgotten.
But this is my brother and his life we’re talking about.
I’ll be damned if I don’t investigate this murder right along with you.
Once it is over, we can resume our ridiculous charade.
” She jabbed a finger into my chest. “Don't you dare freeze me out.”
The vibrant essence of her was back, the one I hadn’t stopped thinking about. “Even if you are forced to marry a man you have come to despise? That’s what you said on the train from Windsor.” It had hurt, that, though it had been entirely deserved.
She hitched up her chin. “It won’t come to that, Steele.
” She turned her back to me and began to pace.
“We need to learn the name of the murder victim. You’ve already thought of that.
Can’t do anything until we know it.” She turned back to me.
“Once you know, put Finch on it. Have him find out everything about the man. And then send me the details. I’ll see if there is any connection to Cosmos. ”
“Anything else?”
She stepped toward me and thrust out her chin. "Yes. Go to the devil."
I brushed a finger along her jaw. “I’ll gladly go if you come along with me.”
She batted away my hand. “Don’t touch me. That leads to…other things, and I’d just as soon not be chained to you for the rest of my life.”
Apparently, she was perfectly entitled to prod me like an errant schoolboy. Touching her in return, however, was quite beyond the pale. Fighting back a grin, I inclined my head. “As you wish, my lady.”
She gave me one last withering look, turned smartly on her heel, and swept from the study. A minute later, I heard the front door close.
For a moment, I stood in the silence she left behind, feeling the happiest I had felt in the last three weeks. But then reality asserted itself, and I rang for Milford. “Have the carriage brought round.” There was no time to lose.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
As the carriage rattled toward Scotland Yard, the shape of the thing finally began to assemble itself. The masked man had not planted Cosmos's pistol beside a body merely to ruin him.
Cosmos had never been the object. He had been the bait.
The pistol guaranteed that Rosalynd would involve herself in the investigation. He knew she would move heaven and earth to clear her brother's name.
Cosmos was not the prize.
The prize was Rosalynd.