Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Mr Stanton had bought pastries.
French ones, arranged in a box beside the coffee pot, as though breakfast with a woman in an evening gown were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Emma lifted the lid to find warm brioche, almond macaroons dusted in sugar, and little apricot tarts glistening like jewels.
No one had ever brought her breakfast from a bakery.
He looked up from his morning copy of The Sentinel, and her heart gave an inconvenient thump.
Dark eyes met hers as he folded the paper.
“Bellingham’s murder is in today’s edition.
With his body in the morgue, I had no choice but to print it.
By noon, Bow Street will be drowning in rumours and false sightings. ”
“And every rogue in London will be pestering Lady Bellingham, offering information for a fee.” She sounded like a journalist, not a woman who’d spent half the night reliving his kiss. “She might refuse to see us today.”
“She won’t when she knows her son left you a note.
” His gaze dipped below her chin, lingering on the creased silk of her bodice.
He cleared his throat and gestured to the box on the dining table.
“Help yourself to the pastries. I bought them for you. Charlotte should be here soon with some clothes.”
The sooner, the better. She felt practically naked without a fichu.
She helped herself to an apricot tart, and Mr Stanton poured them both more coffee. It had the look of a perfect domestic arrangement. The sort of sedate marriage Melinda championed. So why did she imagine him lifting her onto the table and licking sugar off her lips?
Charlotte arrived with a small portmanteau, a tight smile, and the quiet confidence of a woman who’d never spent the night in an unmarried man’s bed.
Charlotte declined Mr Stanton’s offer of coffee. “I can’t stay. I’ve packed enough for four days. By then, you’ll have some idea what you plan to do next.”
Her groom placed the luggage on the floor, then left. Charlotte’s gaze moved from Emma’s gown to the pastry box, then to Mr Stanton in his shirtsleeves and the tight dark waistcoat he favoured.
Emma felt the full weight of that silent assessment. “Leaving the theatre may seem reckless, but I’m convinced someone in my box drugged my wine.”
The thought had come to her while she lay in Mr Stanton’s bed, listening to him move about the apartment. The creak of floorboards. The rustle of linen. A woman would need a heart of stone not to imagine what came next. But that did not explain the sudden dizzy spell at the theatre.
Mr Stanton set aside his newspaper. “Howden held your glass long enough to add a few drops of laudanum or even henbane.”
Possible, yet he wasn’t the only suspect.
“My sister insisted on pouring and ushered the attendant from the box.” It was odd, but of late she had begun to question everything Melinda said and did. “I also drank from Mrs Ashcombe’s flask. She encouraged me to take a nip in preparation for the phantom bat.”
“The drunken aunt visiting from Lewes,” he said to Charlotte.
The lady frowned. “I heard she took to the bottle after the death of her brother and hasn’t been in her right mind since.”
Emma agreed. “By all accounts, she gets quite confused. She said her brother refused to watch the play, yet he died before it was written.”
Mr Stanton’s hand stilled on the coffee pot. “Was she drunk? After you left, she stumbled back into the box and tripped over the chair leg.”
“She did have rum in her flask. Melinda said she helped at a hospital during the Napoleonic Wars and must have seen some terrible sights. She gossips with the servants, too. She asked how was she supposed to know what went on in her own family when the men made a profession of keeping secrets.”
Mr Stanton’s eyes sharpened. He had a bloodhound’s gift for catching the wrong note in any story. “The men? Howden has no living male relatives.”
Charlotte confirmed as much. “Which explains Lord Howden’s eagerness to marry. A man in his position has a duty to produce an heir.”
Emma remembered the hollow ache of last night’s little performance. A passionless marriage would be colder than the moors, and far harder to escape.
Her gaze rose to Mr Stanton. She doubted the fires of hell had the heat of his mouth.
He set down the coffee pot. “If Mrs Ashcombe believes there are men in the family keeping secrets, we need to speak to her before Howden decides she’s too confused to receive visitors.”
“We can hardly make a house call. And with Lord Howden having an alibi for the murder, there’s no reason for Bow Street to question them.”
“I’m told the new magistrate is fair and doesn’t pander to the aristocracy,” Mr Stanton said. “Stroud’s the youngest man to serve at Bow Street.”
Charlotte’s gloved hand closed over the chair rail. “Stroud? Not Marcus Stroud?”
Mr Stanton nodded. “You know him? Of course, he hails from your part of the world, a village near Salisbury.”
Charlotte tightened her grip on the chair. “He left Wiltshire? Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
“Lord Berridge told me, and Stroud has only recently accepted the appointment,” Mr Stanton said.
“He means to remain in London permanently?”
“I believe so. But I’ll not trust him until we’ve gathered more information.” He looked at Emma with the composure of a man who hadn’t had his mouth on hers eight hours ago. “Howden’s aunt can join the queue. Lady Bellingham first, then Long Ditton.”
Emma wished they were already on the road to Long Ditton. Melinda hadn’t come hammering on Mr Stanton’s door, which was either a warning or a blessing. Either Abigail had held her tongue, or her sister was quietly sharpening her weapons.
They left The Sentinel during a delivery, moving alongside men carrying reams of paper and rolling barrels of whale oil. Rowton looked uncomfortable atop his perch and blamed it on the wide brim of his new hat.
How many times must she say sorry? Evidently, one more than she had managed, judging by the stiff set of Rowton’s shoulders.
Mr Stanton handed her into the carriage, then climbed in after her and drew the blinds, plunging them into sudden darkness.
“He hates me,” she said.
“Yes, most probably.”
“You’re supposed to reassure me.”
“I’m not Howden. I’ll not tiptoe around you. Besides, you prefer it when I’m direct.”
She preferred it when he faked that husky voice, said wicked things he pretended not to mean and forgot to keep his distance. When his mouth moved over hers and she thought she might die from the pleasure.
Most of all, she preferred the version of him that slipped through when he wasn’t trying so hard to be the devil everyone expected.
“There’s a way to soften the truth, sir.”
He sat back, legs spread wide, filling the space. “Is there? Is that what you want, Miss Vane? A man who treats you like a child, not a woman?”
“No. I want you to treat me like a woman.” A woman who needed daily lessons in passion to drive the point home. “But there’s a difference between honesty and taking pleasure in being insufferable.”
“You didn’t find me so insufferable last night.”
Heat crept up her throat. He’d been magnificent last night, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. “You were pretending to be my husband.”
“A role I carried out with admirable dedication.”
“A role you’ll have no need to play again.”
“With you, Miss Vane, I’ve stopped ruling anything out.”
Drat the man. Now he’d made her believe the impossible. That he might want her, and the intimacy he claimed to despise.
“Well, I dare say you’re right. My mother liked wearing a nightdress in the rain.” She’d often watched her dance about the garden, catching the drops on her tongue. “Madness might be in the blood.”
His gaze moved over her, a caress she felt beneath her skin. “Is it madness to find pleasure where others complain?”
She smiled. “No. Some might consider it enchanting.”
“I know I do.”
Her stomach fluttered absurdly. No man had ever looked at her as though her oddities were virtues instead of flaws. For one reckless moment, she understood how women fell in love.
Not that she would ever fall in love with Mr Stanton. Caring for a man who wanted a bachelor’s life would be a lesson in disappointment. Charlotte had made that perfectly clear. Mr Stanton had sworn never to marry. Yet she still found herself wondering why.
For the rest of the journey, they spoke of pastries and Charlotte’s half-boots being a tad tight at the toes. Safe things. Things that didn’t tighten the air or play havoc with her pulse.
As the carriage drew up in Brewer Street, they found the butler throwing a pail of water over the feet of a man on the steps.
“If I see you here again, I shall send for a constable.” The butler waved his fist and called for the maid to fetch another bucket.
“That looks like Cooper from The Herald,” Mr Stanton said, his attention fixed on the man stumbling over his own feet. “Do you have the note Bellingham left for you?”
“Yes, in my reticule.” In Charlotte’s reticule, to be precise, along with a dagger in a jewelled sheath.
“You’ll need to lead.”
He didn’t ask if she was capable. Didn’t give a list of instructions. He simply trusted her to get the job done.
How intriguing.
The butler eyed them from the doorway, wearing the weary look of a man who had turned away half of London that morning. “Not today.”
She introduced herself before he could reach for another bucket. “I expect Lady Bellingham is resting, but it’s vital I see her at once.” She raised her hand before he could object. “Mr Bellingham left me a note. Show it to your mistress, and I’m certain she’ll welcome me in.”
The butler smirked as though he’d heard better excuses.
“He mentioned his sister,” she said. A genteel lady gone missing and not a word in the papers. Everyone would presume she’d eloped. “And asked me to find her.”
The butler’s eyebrows twitched. He snatched the note and told them to wait on the doorstep.
“You did take a copy of that address in Long Ditton?” she said, though it was likely a small place with only one mill.