CHAPTER TWO
TEN MINUTES LATER, SHE wasn’t so sure she should be pleased. They walked along the dark sidewalks with only the street lamps to illuminate their path. He asked her several questions about the neighborhood, about Coleraine’s mistresses, but he never answered her questions. She was getting closer and closer to her home without learning anything useful. Finally in frustration, she asked, “Are you certain he won’t get away with murder just because he’s a nob?”
“No.” His tone was curt. The silence fell down between them like a rock wall.
Perhaps she should offer a quid pro quo exchange of questions and answers—except that would reveal she was a reporter and it might result in her having to let go of his arm, an arm that felt solid and muscular under her hand, but also made strange tingles run through her body. “I’m starting to think you don’t believe he did it. Do you suspect someone else?”
He didn’t answer, and the question had obviously put up his back. Her mind blanked as she tried to figure out what to ask that wouldn’t upset him or insult him. She tried again. “Do you think it was moonless the night Mrs. Redding was murdered, too?”
“According to my almanac it was,” he answered.
A miracle. He’d actually answered a question. One she could have easily answered for herself, now that she knew what night the murder occurred. She breathed out heavily.
A couple of men going the other direction on the sidewalk narrowed the available space. Harlow took a step closer to her and her breast brushed against his arm. The most ludicrous bursts of tingles shot through her.
At the end of the street, Harlow turned, but before she realized his intent to cross the street, it happened again. Just a quick graze of the outer curve of her breast against his sleeve and a torrent of sensation ran through her. Her breath hiccuped.
How odd. With all the layers of clothes they wore, she shouldn’t even notice the touch—except she did.
She tried it again just to be certain the rush of sensation that stole her breath really was happening due to the contact between them. A scientific experiment as it were. The contact was exquisite and a little burst of tingles drew her nipples tight and shot to the private place between her legs. His muscles jumped under her hand and only prompted an echo of pleasure to shimmer through her again.
Oh dear Lord, she was attracted to this man—and she had to quit playing with fire before he thought she really was a loose woman or a prostitute. She swallowed hard, hoping he hadn’t noticed her struggle between sanity and sensation.
Apparently her traitorous flesh now decided—independent of her rational decision to avoid being dependent on a man who could leave a woman destitute at the change in tide—that there might be benefits to a man’s companionship.
She shoved down the odd response, which was only happening because she was pretending to be a woman looking for marriage with the right man. That was the last thing she was looking for. Her mother’s marriage had been a disaster—well it hadn’t even been a marriage when you got right down to it. Henry would rather avoid the empty promises.
She was only with the inspector to get new leads. If she stuck with him long enough surely he’d say something she could quote in her next article.
She gave herself a mental shake. They’d walked most of a block and she hadn’t said anything. Nor had he. Questions—she was supposed to be asking questions.
Her thoughts were swirling around the tense and melting way the brushes against her breast made her feel. “Do you know if all the women who have lived in that house are alive and well?”
“How long have you lived in the neighborhood?” There he went again, ignoring her question about Lord Coleraine’s sordid history of mistresses in that house.
If he could tell her the other women hadn’t disappeared, maybe there was reason to wonder if Coleraine was guilty. But his wife was missing, several of his mistresses had vanished without a trace, and certainly his father had been a miserable excuse for a human being. “All my life.”
He slowed, looked down at her, and met her eyes. It was the first time since they’d left the pub that she had his full attention. Up until now, he’d seemed more interested in their surroundings than her. “So you know the neighborhood well.”
“Yes. My mother used to own that house.” She pointed to a small house three doors down and across the street from Coleraine’s blighted house.
“Used to?” he echoed faintly.
“She’s passed on.” Their mother had never been the same after Rachel died and she finally let her life slip out of her hands as if she’d just been waiting for her remaining daughter to be old enough to fend for herself. Henry had tried to keep the house, but the upkeep and the servants were more than she could afford on her wages alone. “I sold her house a year ago.”
“I’m sorry.” His brows drew together. “But where do you live now?”
“I let a room in a house around the corner.” So much simpler to pay for a single room and half board. “If you want to question the earl’s servants, I can wait.”
He shook his head. “I’ve already spoken with them.”
She drew to a stop. “Then why are you here in front of his house?”
“Do you always ask so many questions?” He looked down at her, which made her tingly.
“Yes.” She tossed around explanations in her head and finally settled on a partial truth. “I like to understand what happened and why. I’m a very curious sort. Too curious, I’m told.”
He gave a soft snort.
“And I wonder if I should have done more when I suspected...” She bit her lip.
“Suspected what?” asked Harlow, his expression intent.
“That the women who stayed in that house were just disappearing. They always seemed...like easy prey.” Women who expected to be mistreated and thought it their lot. Women who were cowed by the men in their lives. Women like her mother. And—if she was honest—like her sister.
His gaze on her made her warm and she struggled to explain why she hadn’t raised a bigger fuss, hadn’t tried harder to befriend Jane Redding, hadn’t tried a third time to report Kathy missing. She looked off into the darkness. She was probably the only one who suspected murder—until Jane Redding’s body showed up. “Everyone in the neighborhood was glad the current earl had cleaned up the house, got rid of the prostitutes bringing their trade there, but this earl is far worse than his father.”
Harlow tilted his head watching her. She could practically see his thoughts clicking. He let out a deep breath. “Do you think there were many people about on the street after midnight?”
Midnight? She shook her head and gestured toward the deserted street. “Not on a work eve. Most people in this area have jobs. They get up early, so they aren’t out late. I would say there is little traffic after ten, except for the earl coming and going at odd hours. But as you can see even on a Saturday there are not many about this late.”
He nodded.
“Was Mrs. Redding killed at midnight?”
“Between midnight and four when her son’s screaming woke the maids downstairs. She nursed him around midnight and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.”
Finally, a detail she could use. “When was the last time anyone saw Coleraine?”
“He left around ten.”
“He could easily have returned to do the deed after he knew the servants would be sleeping.” Which made it a cold and calculating thing, but, no doubt, the earl was intelligent enough to know he couldn’t get away with murder if the servants witnessed it.
“That is one possibility.” Harlow shrugged. He knew more, but the wall had come up again.
Her concern that others might have been victims had provided the first chink. She’d do best to pursue that angle. “What about the women who lived in the house before Mrs. Redding? Kathy? Before her was Lucy Inglis and I think the first woman the earl had staying there was Violet Fenton. Although there were others who usually didn’t stay more than a day or two—a month at the most.”
“In between the others?”
She shook her head. “Not always. I think at one time there were four women staying there. But just for one night.”
“Do others in the neighborhood know about these women?”
“They would have seen them. I probably paid more attention than most.” Because of Rachel. Her cheeks heated, but she tried to shrug with nonchalance.
His mouth flattened, the corners pulling down. He probably thought she was a Nosy Nelly.
“I would really like to know that Kathy is all right, and my worries are greatly exaggerated.”
She hadn’t tracked down any of the women who’d stayed with Coleraine. She didn’t have the resources to search the breadth of England, but she had spent hours pouring over registers and asking all kinds of people questions. But the inspector might have access to more records.
Their steps slowed as they neared the house where it had all taken place. A shiver ran down Henry’s spine.
“Damn,” muttered Harlow. “He’s early.”
Walking toward them from the opposite end of the street was a man all in black. Black was a common color, but the earl always wore black, as if he belonged in the shadows—which were uncommonly dark on this moonless night.
In one quick move, the inspector swung her into a recessed doorway.
Her breath left her in a jagged shudder.
Inspector Harlow’s hands slid along her jaw and tilted her face up. “If he thinks we’re a couple, maybe he won’t notice me,” he whispered.
The gap between their faces dissipated until his last words brushed across her lips. Little fairy sparks scurried over her skin, settled into the bottom of her stomach, and danced madly. She couldn’t think what to do—to turn her head or jerk away. So she stood there stupidly, his breath wafting across her lips.
The inspector’s eyes dropped to her mouth. His nostrils flared. Then his lips were against hers and the fairy sparks became whirlwind fires and dizzying heat. His kiss was gentle one second, coaxing and encouraging. Then it was a wild pressing thing. My God, he was doing wicked things to her—taking the kiss to a magical place. She clung to him to keep her upright on the high heels that had gone wobbly.
“He’s gone inside,” muttered Harlow against her lips.
How could he pay attention to what Coleraine was doing when a major fairy dust and pixie war was waging in her nether regions? She opened her eyes to see him staring at her, a hint of amusement around the edges of his dark eyes.
“Oh.” She meant to duck her head, but he was still holding it with the palms of his hands against her cheek and jaw.
He stroked his fingers to the back of her neck.
She couldn’t bring herself to look away, but she was staring at him as if senseless.
His lips met hers again and she completely lost her mind.
*~*~*
His pulse pounding, Barnabas leaned down trying to get closer to Henry. Her lips were plump and red and so sweet under his. Once he tasted them, he didn’t want to stop. Her skin was like satin and the brush of her hair was like the softest of goose down. She let him deepen the kiss without protest.
In spite of sitting with prostitutes, the slightest of hesitations in her response and the shocked widening of her eyes indicated she wasn’t experienced, and that enchanted him.
In deference to her innocence, he should end the kiss now, but heat rose in his body. He slid his hands to her back to bring her closer.
She made a sound of protest and twisted her head away. She leaned back looking toward the earl’s trysting house. “If his mistress is dead, what is he doing here?”
Damn. Barnabas pulled back a little and closed his eyes, trying to regain control of his faculties. He was kissing a woman on the street, kissing her as if he would go down on bended knee in the next minute. Hell, he barely knew her. And he’d walked her home to pick her brain, not to plunder her mouth. “You want to talk about the earl right now?”
“Isn’t that why we’re here? Or why you’re here?” She ducked out of his hold and stepped back on the walkway.
“Well.” He drew in a deep breath. At least she knew why she was here. He’d moved onto other reasons for being here. Her curves, her scent, her taste. What was wrong with him? “Yes.”
In spite of the cold air of the evening, the tips of his ears were hot. Kissing a woman, a potential witness, was the last thing he should do. Nor was she a woman he expected to be attracted to.
She was a pushy thing—inviting herself to sit with him. But her nervous determination to approach him to learn about her friend had made him willing to overlook her subterfuge about being in the pub to meet a friend. Something about her made him want to forget the investigation, which wasn’t like him at all.
He just couldn’t seem to look away from her. She’d drawn back the corners of her lips, and deep dimples pulled in her full cheeks. The shadow under the lace on her ample chest tempted him like a ribbon-tied gift that just wanted unwrapping. Not to mention her dark hair was soft, smooth, and straight in spite of the awful bunches of curls in front of her ears that she’d first sported. But as the curls softened and fell, he wanted to thread his fingers through them.
At the pub, he’d been about to ask her direction so he could question her further to see if she knew more useful information about Jane Redding, the earl, or his household, when she dropped the broadest of hints about walking her home. He’d decided he might as well get what knowledge he could out of her. And he’d have her address for future reference.
Yet, he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of her. He had been trying to learn what she might know without revealing too much about his investigation until she brushed the side of her ample breast against his arm—for the third time—and he’d started thinking about kissing her. He’d grabbed the first lame excuse he could think of to see if she’d let him.
It didn’t matter if Coleraine saw him investigating. That was what the man had asked him to do.
She drifted toward the earl’s house and then glanced over her shoulder. “Strange that he is here now. Did you know he was coming?”
Barnabas exhaled. She seemed more interested in the earl than in him. His neck tensed. Watching all the women come and go from his house over the years spoke of more than a neighborly interest in Coleraine’s affairs. “So much for avoiding him like he has the plague.”
“I wasn’t guiding our steps.” She met his gaze for a minute and then hers slid away.
That hesitation and shyness in a woman who didn’t seem to have a shy bone in her body made his insides squishy and his outside harder. Usually he wasn’t thinking about his insides when he was with a woman. He shook off the odd sensation. “You never told me exactly where you live. I counted on you directing me which way to go when we were close.”
Barnabas put his hands behind his back to keep from wrapping them around her. He didn’t want to take her home, but he should.
She put her hands on her hips and stared up at the windows of Coleraine’s house. “He usually puts his women in the front bedroom. I don’t think he ever goes to the house if he doesn’t have a woman there. Leastwise not after he cleaned out the house. Do you think he already has another mistress and that is why he killed Redding?”
There was something off about the way his kissing companion spoke, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. He studied her, looking for a clue, but his attention wandered to the way she seemed to curve everywhere. “He doesn’t have a new mistress.”
Damn, he shouldn’t have told her that. But it was a good theory, one he’d looked into, but found no associations with other women. Still Henry had raised several good questions. He’d have to investigate these other women now. Make certain they were alive.
“Then why is he here? Returning to the scene of his crime to relive it or...” Her voice tapered off. Her brows flattened and drew together. “Or because he’s racked by guilt?”
How would he get her to give him that dewy soft expression she’d given him when he’d ended the first kiss—the look that even now made his blood roar through his veins? “He checks on the baby.”
“Oh.” The thoughts running through her head played out on her face, which he found enchanting. After a series of puzzled frowns, she said, “That’s odd. What man concerns himself with an infant?”
“You make it sound as though none of us have hearts,” he commented mildly. He returned to her side and threw an arm over her shoulders to move her along.
“Even if such mythical creatures exist, I doubt Coleraine is one of them.” She stared at the earl’s house. “Especially since it’s not his baby.”
A jolt ran through him. He hadn’t thought to question the parentage of the child. Jane Redding had been living in Coleraine’s house when she’d given birth. “Isn’t it?”
“I...” She looked uneasy. “I suppose it could be if she was his...uh paramour months before she moved in.”
That was interesting.
“Did he say it was his natural child?” she asked.
“I haven’t asked.”
“You have questioned him, haven’t you?”
Several times, but he wasn’t in the business of satisfying a concerned citizen’s curiosity. Average citizens would share what they knew with anyone, including the press. The less information that ended up in the papers, the better equipped he was to interrogate a suspect to see if he knew details that weren’t common knowledge. He’d said too much already, but he might be able to use the question of the child’s paternity to advantage when he next questioned the earl. “You do ask good questions.”
“Which you avoid answering,” she muttered.
“I’m usually the one doing the asking, and I wouldn’t speculate if I didn’t know the answer. Now where do you live?” He needed to get her home, so he could get to work.
Her shoulders slumped just the slightest bit—probably as much as her corset would allow. Did she want to spend more time with him? His thoughts went careening off into a fresh desire to taste her lips and get her voluptuous form nestled in tight against his. The idea of taking her home flattened him.
“Why did you come here tonight if not to talk to him or his servants?” she asked.
“I wanted to see what kind of visibility the murderer dealt with when he disposed of the body.” He shouldn’t have said that much. Although he couldn’t imagine that tidbit could damage him.
She bounced under his arm. She turned toward him, her eyes bright. “Oh, may I come with you?”
His pulse leapt. But what woman wanted to explore the details of dumping a body in a sewer? If he wanted to pursue her, detailing the depravities he dealt with wasn’t the thing to persuade her to be with him. He generally tried to shield women from the harsh realities of murder. “No.”
“You’ll need me to play Redding if you’re going to retrace the earl’s footsteps.”
His breath stole away. “The killer’s footsteps,” he corrected as he stared down at her. Who was this woman? “I don’t need you to stand in for the victim.”
She turned on him and looked up at him beseechingly. “I know I might not be, uh, the same size as Redding, but you are much the same size as Coleraine, if a little sturdier.”
His jaw went slack. She was determined to play a murder victim. That she wanted to help showed how much she must care about her friend and fear that Kathy Carter had met the same fate as Jane Redding. Not to mention she might have just insulted him. “Sturdier?”
Which wasn’t what he meant to say at all.
“Your shoulders are broader I think. Not that I’ve had occasion to measure the earl’s shoulders, but just going by appearance...” Her voice trailed away. She looked to the side and then added, “If I can do anything to help you catch the earl, I would.”
His jaw tightened. Just like the newspapers, she assumed Coleraine was guilty. Investigating a murder with the guilt already assigned led to working with blinders and missing evidence to the contrary of one’s theories. He wouldn’t work that way. “Don’t assume he is guilty.”
“Of course he’s guilty.”
She’d likely been influenced by a reporter’s suppositions. He’d seen public opinion whipped to a furor that led to a massive miscarriage of justice before. Damn newspapers would make this investigation hell for him if he didn’t keep a tight lid on the details. Reporters were hounding him all the time. When she’d approached him, his first thought was that some reporter had put her up to it to weasel information out of him. But she seemed quite concerned about her friend.
She let out an exasperated breath and waved her hands. “How many lives does that damn Coleraine have to destroy before he’s held accountable?”
He took a step back. That sounded personal.
She spoke quickly as if to cover up a lapse. “He probably m-murdered Kathy, too.”
“You don’t know that he did anything to your friend. But I will look into it.” Why had Henry forged a relationship with the mistress of an earl? She definitely intrigued him. She didn’t seem to care about social lines. After a lifetime of being told to honor class distinctions, unwritten rules, and formal etiquette, her egalitarian attitude was refreshing.
“The...newspapers are saying he’ll never be convicted because he’s an aristocrat. As if a nob can’t commit murder.”
He knew first-hand that being blue-blooded did not prevent a man from being a murderer. Perhaps she’d gone beyond egalitarian principles to an opposite prejudice against the privileged, which wouldn’t bode well for him. He said tightly, “No matter who the guilty party is, I’ll arrest him if and when I have proof.”
“Well, let’s get proof then.” Henry pointed to the middle of the street less than fifty feet from where they were standing. “I’m fairly certain there is a manhole just over there where he could have put the body in the sewer.”
So she didn’t know of the grate near the mews that could easily be lifted out of its seat and exposed an opening large enough a woman’s body could be dropped into the underground brick tunnels. At least that was one thing he knew that she didn’t. The grate was merely a hundred feet from where the murder happened. But he didn’t correct her assumption.
“So you knew she died on Monday night, then? Else wise why would you have taken the fence?”
Had he told her the murder happened on Monday night? “Yes.” His gut clenched. He moved alongside of her to collect her and steer her away.
“Safe to assume it wasn’t any clearer than this.” She leaned into him and the swell of her breast pressed against his sleeve. Again.
Fire flashed through his veins. His muscles jumped.
She gasped and jerked back as if his arm had done something wayward.
“Are you talking about the night?” Right now nothing was clear to him. At least not if she deliberately kept brushing against him. Either way his thoughts went spinning to getting her into a passionate embrace again.
“What else would I be talking about?” she said. “As dark as it is the killer must have been familiar with the neighborhood to get rid of her body the way he did.”
Or lucky. He couldn’t tell in the dim glow of the street lamps, but he rather thought she might be blushing. Well, a man could hope she was trying to indicate her willingness to kiss more. “How is it you are named Henry?”
Her lips pressed together and she stole a quick look at him.
He fought a smile and watched her.
“I was named for my father.” Her eyebrows flattened.
She either didn’t like her name or she didn’t like her father, but that was a mystery he’d have to solve later. “Short for something else or just Henry?”
“Short for something worse, so I prefer Henry.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm.
“Which way?” He put his hand over her delicate fingers.
“The quickest way to the back alley behind Coleraine’s house is this way.” She took a step in the direction she’d nodded toward.
He stopped. “I’m taking you home.”
She tugged on his arm. “Don’t. I shall just follow you to the alley. I am too curious now.”
He stared down at her. “Why would you want to go to the scene of a murder?”
She batted her eyelashes at him, badly. “To see you work.”
Then she tucked tighter against him, promising pleasures he doubted she would deliver. But what would it matter? They were close to the spot and it likely wouldn’t take him more than a quarter hour to assess whether anyone could have seen the murderer. She did ask relevant questions, when she wasn’t off on a tangent. And it would give him a chance to warn her off reporters. His only concern was that his powers of concentration would be diluted.
“Come on.” She tugged his arm and turned them back toward the side street that would lead to the alley behind the earl’s house.
He shook his head and let himself be tugged. “If I let you come with me, you can’t talk about this with anyone. Especially not anyone from a newspaper.”
“I won’t...talk,” she answered. She pulled his arm close and bounced enough his blood surged heavily. “To anyone.”