CHAPTER THIRTY
IN THE LORD’S CHAMBER of Parliament where Coleraine was being tried for the murder of Jane Redding, all had been proceeding like the destructive sweep of a monstrous tidal wave. Or justice. Until now.
Pandemonium reigned. People were trying to flee, bottling up in the doorway. Others were shouting, and others had dropped to the ground, hiding. The acrid smell of gunpowder and a puff of smoke hung in the air.
Barnabas had to fight the mass exodus. First, he went to Coleraine where he lay on the floor. His new wife was at his side. Dr. McCabe and his companion were tending him. They’d opened his shirt. An ugly wound in his chest frothed with blood and bubbles. The doctor covered it with a handkerchief that quickly turned red. Barnabas’s throat clogged.
He spun around and tried to find the shooter. Of course how he’d do that when he hadn’t seen the shot fired, he didn’t know. Henry swam against the tide of people trying to flee the chamber. “It was Mr. Fenton. I saw him, but I couldn’t get to him.”
She had been in the gallery watching the trial—reporting on the trial. “I should have shot him when he stood up.”
The shooter had fled. It made sense that he’d taken a shot at his former wife in the witness box. Coleraine had leapt a railing, shouted for Violet to get down, and had taken the bullet meant for his former mistress. All eyes had been on Coleraine and Mrs. Fenton as she confessed to having an affair with Coleraine after he’d rescued her from a beating that nearly killed her. Coleraine had been the only one to see the man pull his gun.
Was this what the girl, Siobhan, had meant in that Coleraine wouldn’t die from hanging? That he would be mortally wounded before he could be convicted?
Because it certainly seemed likely he would be convicted. The public stood outside and cried for his execution daily. They’d pelted the former Miss Hall, now the earl’s wife, with garbage when she’d visited him at the tower. The lords were grim faced as they listened to the witnesses, and Barnabas still didn’t know if Coleraine was guilty. All he’d done was eliminate even more suspects.
It had been only four weeks since he left for Ireland to arrest the earl, but it felt like years had passed on one hand. On the other hand, it seemed like the blink of an eye.
He pulled Henry into his arms and held her. The only nights he slept were the nights he’d convinced her to stay at his house, which wasn’t often enough. She’d ignored his proposals, saying they’d talk when the trial was done.
She pushed free of his arms. “Is he all right?”
Barnabas shook his head. “No.”
Henry went pale.
“The doctors are tending him. We can’t do anything to help him. Come with me. I need to let the others know who it was.”
“I questioned that man,” Henry said.
“Yes, and that is why you should stop reporting.”
She scowled at him and said, “I have a story to write and a deadline to meet.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He shouldn’t have said anything about her reporting. It was the one subject where they couldn’t see eye to eye. If she would just give it up, everything would be perfect.
“Henry, please be careful.”
But he was talking to air because she was already on her way out of the chamber.
*~*~*
Henry stared at the door of the earl’s house. It had been three days since he was shot, and by all accounts he lingered at death’s door. A great many reporters were camped along the square waiting for news of his death. She was waiting like the rest of the vultures. The waiting for death was uncomfortable, but it was a part of reporting that had to be done.
Only Henry was knocking on the back doors of the other houses in the neighborhood to get what news she could, while the other reporters camped out in front. One man had even set up a camera, although what he expected to capture eluded Henry.
It wasn’t like the day in the cave when she and Barnabas had helped an Irish photographer set up his tripod in the cave to take a photograph of Lady Coleraine’s bones. The local constable had come and shook his head, as well as Dr. McCabe, who confirmed the cause of death after Barnabas showed him the nicked rib. The doctor agreed to look more closely at the bones to determine if there were other injuries that could be seen in the remains.
Then she had helped Barnabas gather the pieces, putting all the tiny bones of a hand in one cardboard box and another for the other. They’d gone as slowly as they dared, and tried to keep as much order to the recovery as they could. All the while, they’d kept an eye on the tide.
Barnabas had set a stick in the sandy shore and the minute the water touched it, they left the cave to return hours later to finish their grim work. Underneath the body they’d found tiny scraps of material, rust stains that might once have been hairpins, and a few strands of dark hair.
They’d ended up staying in Ireland a week. By then they’d learned that Coleraine’s trial had been moved to the House of Lords—he was a peer after all—so they had twenty-one days to get him back to London before the trial would start.
Coleraine had surprised them by marrying his new housekeeper in a quiet ceremony the day before they left. When they returned to London, it was with an entourage. The new Lady Coleraine, his bastard son and his mother, and several others accompanied them.
In fact, it had been Lady Coleraine who’d given Barnabas the addresses of the women who’d been called to testify, although she and Barnabas had enough information from the post master to know what cities to search in for the women by then.
At the Avondale residence, a carriage pulled around to the front. Henry moved up the street to watch from where none of the other reporters would question what she was doing.
The older girl and a maid descended the steps, glanced to each side furtively, and quickly climbed inside the carriage. The carriage rolled down the street, the driver keeping his face straight ahead and ignoring anything the reporters called out.
When the carriage rolled past, the girl’s face appeared in the window and she stared at Henry. Her mouth fell open.
Falling into a trot behind, Henry followed.
“Where are you off to?” called a reporter from The Times.
“Nature calls,” answered Henry.
He gave her a skeptical look and followed her.
“It isn’t as though I can do what you do,” she retorted. Her heart sped. If she had an opportunity to question Miss Avondale, she didn’t want another reporter there.
“You’d think you could just have the Coleraines let you use their water closet. You stayed with them after all.”
She ignored him and walked faster.
He stayed on her heels. “I guess not being able to piss anywhere is one disadvantage to being a female, but then being able to fuck the inspector for information has to make up for it.”
She winced, and hoped like hell the occupants of the carriage couldn’t hear them. But then she couldn’t leave something like that alone. In a low voice she said, “I don’t sleep with him for information. I get my information by asking questions. Maybe if you did your own investigating, you wouldn’t have to steal from my stories.”
That gave him pause, but he didn’t stop following her until she ducked into the first place she could find with facilities and then skipped out the back, hoping she hadn’t lost the carriage when she emerged from the alley.
But the carriage was stopped and Miss Avondale was leaning out of the door looking behind it.
“Miss Avondale, may I have a moment of your time?” Henry called.
The maid squinted at her as if she could keep her away with just a look.
“You were with the inspector when he called at my aunt’s house, weren’t you?” said Miss Avondale.
“I was,” confirmed Henry.
“His assistant?”
“Miss Brown,” she said and hoped she didn’t go to hell. She wasn’t really lying, but she wouldn’t jeopardize learning what Miss Avondale had to say by making it clear she was a reporter.
“Get in,” commanded the girl.
Henry did as bid.
“I don’t have much time. I offered to go to the chemist to pick up some of Mother Bailey’s Quieting syrup for the baby.” She grimaced and rapped the wall for the carriage to continue. “He’s colicky.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Up close it almost appeared that Miss Avondale was the colicky one. Her eyes were swollen and the bottom of her nose had raw spots, as if it had seen too much of a handkerchief. She’d been crying a lot recently.
“I have to do the right thing, even though I hate her.”
Henry was lost. “Hate who?”
“Tessa.” Miss Avondale’s eyes filled with moisture. “He was supposed to marry me when I was old enough. I wanted to save him.”
“Lord Coleraine?” Henry blurted out in astonishment.
Miss Avondale gave her a sour look. The maid looked as though she’d rather be anywhere else on earth.
“He has a son who is older than you,” Henry said gently. “Who looks very like him.”
Miss Avondale looked startled. Then turned red. In a whisper she said, “He’s not legitimate.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” Henry apologized.
Illegitimate to nobs was unacceptable, except Coleraine treated his bastard half-siblings very much as part of the family, gave them the run of the house, supported them, cared about them. Just as he acknowledged his son and welcomed him warmly when he saw him.
“What did you want to tell me?” Henry prodded.
“I saw his lordship that night. The night Inspector Harlow asked about,” Miss Avondale said.
“The night before you left for your aunt’s house?” Henry’s heart nearly stopped. She held her breath for fear of what the girl would say next.
“I used to watch for him to come home. He would go to his office, pour himself a drink, and lean his chair back to look up at my window.” Her mouth tightened and she took a couple of shaky breaths. “But I guess he was looking at Cousin Tessa’s window.”
“Her room is above Miss Avondale’s,” said the maid helpfully.
“I thought it was my window. I thought he knew I was watching him and he was just waiting until he could approach me.”
“Had you ever spoken with him?” Henry asked.
“I didn’t need to speak with him to know we were meant to be together.”
Poor girl had probably created a whole future out of a fantasy. But that was neither here nor there.
“Tell me what happened that night.” Henry tried for Barnabas’s reveal-nothing-but-congenial expression and probably failed. “What did you see?”
*~*~*
“They say you have to come now,” Murdock relayed.
Barnabas looked up from his desk with dread. Had Coleraine finally succumbed to his injury? Or was he about to make a deathbed confession and wanted to do it to Barnabas? Why else would he be told he needed to get to Mayfair as quickly as possible?
He took a police wagon that charged through the streets, whistles blowing to clear the way.
Holding on, he asked the nearest uniformed bobby, “What is this about?”
“Miss Brown.”
His chest tightened. Had something happened to Henry? “What about Miss Brown?”
“She insisted we fetch you at the double.”
“Is she all right?”
The bobby gave him a squinty look. “Wouldn’t know, sir.”
It took more than a quarter hour to make it to the square where the earl’s London house was and Barnabas’s heart was in his throat the whole time. He knew that word had circulated at the police force that he was courting the reporter, Henry Brown. If courting could be used. Some of the officers disapproved and let him know it. Others were laughing behind his back, suggesting he was being beguiled by her.
He jumped down as the conveyance rounded the corner, its blaring whistles silent.
A bobby walked up to him and said, “This way, Inspector.”
A gaggle of reporters swarmed him, shouting questions, but the bobbies held the reporters back.
Henry emerged from a carriage and stood on the street. “Take the medicine inside and tell your mistress that Miss Avondale had gone to bed crying again.”
“She’ll sack me.”
“If she wants to see Miss Avondale, she’ll be right here. If you bear any affection for the former Miss Hall...“
The maid nodded and went up the steps.
Henry beckoned Barnabas. “Tell him what you told me about seeing Coleraine that night.”
Barnabas looked in the carriage. Miss Avondale sat there.
She looked up at him and breathed out a sigh. “I saw him that night. I couldn’t sleep because I’d slept all day because I was ill. I can see his office from my bedroom. He went into his office near midnight, worked on some papers, poured himself a drink, and leaned back in his chair. He stayed there until half past two. I know I heard the clock chime and I think he heard his chime too because he sort of startled. He rubbed his face and stood up and stretched. He blew out the lamp and that is the last I saw him.”
So now Barnabas knew. The walk from Mayfair to Southwark was over an hour. An hour and a half if one’s pace was leisurely. It was impossible for Coleraine to have murdered Jane Redding, but was it too late to save him?
The least he could do was take her to the Lord Chancellor to ask what should be done.
He walked to the front door of the Avondale residence and informed the footman who opened the door that if Lord and Lady Avondale didn’t want to be arrested for perverting the cause of justice they would allow him to take their daughter before the Lord Chancellor to share her critical knowledge of the night of Jane Redding’s murder.
Henry hopped out of the carriage as Lord and Lady Avondale descended the stairs.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I have a story to write.”
“Come along, you’ll want to see how this turns out.”
She shook her head. “I know how it should turn out.”
“Come along, Henry.” He leaned down to speak into her ear. “I may need you to tell the Lord Chancellor that we both suspected Miss Avondale knew something long before today, but neither one of us was allowed to question her. Otherwise her relationship to Lady Coleraine will call everything she says into question.”
Henry looked up at him and gave a short succinct nod.
The result of the meeting wasn’t as fruitful as he’d hoped, but it wasn’t bad. The Lord Chancellor had said he would summon the MPs and address the issue with them.
Barnabas took Henry to her newspaper office and told her he’d pick her up in a few hours. He wanted to tell her to tread lightly, that she didn’t want to make it seem the Lords dismissing the case was a forgone conclusion, but he bit his tongue.
“Go on, say it,” Henry said before she descended from the cab he’d hired.
“What?” he asked.
“You don’t want me to write the article.”
He breathed in deeply. “Miss Avondale’s name will be all over every newspaper tomorrow. You don’t want the Lord Chancellor feeling like you’re trying to force his hand.”
“Not tomorrow,” said Henry.
He squinted at her.
“Her name won’t be in every newspaper tomorrow. The day after maybe, if the other reporters figure it out. I only write for the Southwark Chronicle.”
Every MP would read the Chronicle tomorrow knowing her involvement in Miss Avondale’s revelation. “Can’t it wait a day or two?”
She gave him a sad smile. “Then it wouldn’t be news.”
“Marry me. You’d never want for anything.” He reached out and caught her little hand. “My grandfather has the Midas touch. I have expectations beyond your wildest dreams.” He’d sworn never to try and persuade a woman with his grandfather’s fortune, but he was doing it now. “You could help me investigate or never work again. Please, Henry. I want you as my wife.”
“But you don’t respect who I am. I am a reporter.”
“It isn’t that I don’t respect it. It is just that you don’t have any idea how many lunatics walk into Scotland Yard and confess to crimes they haven’t done. If there is information that is not known to the public, it is easy to dismiss them.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t mind that you write about the trial as it happens, but before that stage you can make it damn difficult to do my job. You and your colleagues forced Coleraine to trial before the investigation was complete.”
“And if you hadn’t been in Ireland to arrest him, we wouldn’t have been there when his wife’s body was discovered.”
He wanted to protest that being there at the right time was just a stroke of luck. Or he might have been there anyway to investigate Coleraine, but that wasn’t important now. The case against Coleraine was done, but he still had an unsolved murder. Really two unsolved murders because he didn’t think the Northern Ireland authorities were looking very deeply into Lady Coleraine’s murder.
“I want you beside me every morning when I wake up, every night when I go to bed. I love you, duckling. I am empty when you’re not with me.”
Her blue eyes washed with tears. She pulled her hand out of his and he knew he wouldn’t like what she had to say.
“I don’t think we should continue to see each other. It will just hurt worse in the end.” Her words were like dagger thrusts to his soul.
“No.” he whispered. It couldn’t hurt any more than it did.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely and climbed out of the cab, ducking away from him as he tried to reach for her.
*~*~*
Henry blotted tears from her paper with the handkerchief she used for wiping ink blots. And remembered when Barnabas had wiped ink from her face. A knot in chest tugged tighter.
She was trying to write the best ever mea culpa article, but she could hardly focus when all she could think about was whether she’d been wrong to end things with Barnabas. She knew it was the right thing to do, but why did it feel like she’d carved open her chest and handed him her heart?
Barnabas was right in that she’d condemned Coleraine before she’d known who he was, but she wasn’t the only one. And she’d learned. Her editor had been incensed when she started writing stories about the women Coleraine had helped, but people continued to buy the paper, so he had let her.
Now she knew she had to write about her sister and how that had led her to condemn Coleraine. She also had to admit that she’d confirmed his alibi and now she knew beyond any doubt that he couldn’t have murdered Jane Redding. Knowing that it might be too late to matter was incredibly sad, and she cried for Coleraine, too.
At one point her editor came and asked her if she was all right. She nodded. A broken heart wasn’t something anyone could fix. She’d only hoped that Barnabas would come to understand that although she’d made mistakes, she’d only wanted the truth—just like him.
Her editor told her to write at his desk and closed the blinds so her tears didn’t upset others.
When she emerged, her editor reached out his hand and asked if she was done. She nodded.
He took the paper she’d written, read it, made a couple of tiny corrections, and handed it to a typesetter who was waiting with his stained hands. “Title it, The Good Earl.” He turned toward her. “That was very brave,” he told her.
Only that made her nauseous. Because it was the kind of thing Barnabas might have said. “Or very stupid,” she answered.
Her editor walked her home.
She just wanted to crawl in bed and sleep for a thousand years. Maybe when she woke up she’d know she’d done the right thing. She loved Barnabas, but he loved who he wanted her to be, not her.
Her mother would have told her she was being foolish. He loved her. The nights they spent together were heaven, as long as they didn’t talk overmuch and end up arguing. Even working together, they complemented each other—when they weren’t at cross purposes. But he didn’t respect what she did. And a matchmaker she interviewed for a light story had told her respect was more important than love in a marriage.
*~*~*
Not only did Henry’s article run in the Southwark Chronicle, The Times picked it up the next day and ran it verbatim—an almost unheard of feat—so Barnabas had to read it twice. Didn’t hurt any less the second time.
He sent her flowers and told the clerk to write congratulations on the card. He wanted to add come back to me, but refrained. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see her withdrawal coming from the first morning after they’d made love.
He threw himself into work and felt like he was drowning as he tried to figure out who killed Jane Redding and the first Lady Coleraine. Was it the same person?
His head hurt as he walked home after a late tasteless meal in a pub.
His uncle’s carriage sat in front of his house. Bloody hell, he did not need this now.
He stopped and seriously contemplated finding a hotel for the night. But, in the end, he shook his head and let himself into his house.
“Hello, son,” said his father.
Barnabas peered around the edge of the doorway to the parlor.
“Don’t worry, it’s just me. Your mother didn’t come.” His father slapped a newspaper against his thigh. “She’s a little perturbed.”
“Did she send you to talk sense into me?”
“No. An olive branch.” He held out the newspaper. “She would like you to bring your reporter friend to dinner at your uncle’s, Tuesday next.”
Barnabas sat down hard on the sofa and buried his face in his hands. “She won’t come,” he managed to spit out.
“Your mother thinks it is time we met this young woman.”
Christ, did everyone know about his relationship with Henry? He lowered his hands. “There isn’t any point. It’s over.”
His father cocked his head to the side. “Is it?”
“Not my choice.” He jumped to his feet, intending to show his father out, but that wasn’t what happened. “She’d rather be a reporter than be with me.”
“Is that what she said?”
“I can’t be an inspector with a wife who puts everything she knows out there in the public. I can’t work that way. I want to be able to discuss my cases with her, but I can’t.” Except he had—because he needed her help after she’d whipped the public into a frenzy and they’d demanded an immediate arrest.
His father squinted at him. “You asked her to quit what she does? What she obviously has a talent for doing?”
He stared at his father. “Mother will be happier if I don’t marry Henry.”
“Not if you’re unhappy. She does love you, you know. She wants you to be happy.”
Barnabas rolled his eyes.
“Let me ask you something,” his father said. “Every time your mother demands you give up being an inspector, do you think she doesn’t love you?”
“I think she doesn’t understand who I am.” As the words came out of his mouth it was like his head was a big fat gong. Was that what he’d done to Henry?
“Your mother knows who you are. She knows what George did to you and the butcher’s daughter—and the miller’s son—even if she will never admit it. She’s afraid you’re always trying to fix what happened with your cousin. That you’ll always be reliving the past when you’re in this line of work.”
His parents believed him? He turned over the thought in his head and realized he’d been kept separate from his cousin after he recovered. First, there had been an extended European trip for his family, then a few months at a rented cottage on the coast until his cousin left for his own European tour. Only then had they gone home. “I can’t fix the past. I can’t even stop all injustices. I am good at solving crimes.”
Or maybe he wasn’t, because this one was stumping him.
“I love your mother, but she is arrogant. I love that about her, too. Your Henry Brown has the power to change public sentiment and you want to deny her that?”
“I get it,” Barnabas said, and he did.
*~*~*
Henry woke to pounding on her door. She groggily called out, “What is it?”
Maybe it was a fire. A jolt hit her chest. Sleep fled and she rolled out of bed.
“Let me in.”
She knew that voice. It haunted her. What was he doing here? “Barnabas?”
“Let me in, duckling,” he said. The sound of him using his ridiculous pet name for her started a yearning deep inside her.
“No.” She didn’t have the strength to resist him in the middle of the night. Her heart thundered. She couldn’t let him in her room or she’d throw herself into his arms.
Her lock clicked. He opened the door and stepped inside.
“How did you get a key?” she sputtered.
He held up a couple of tools. “Lock picking tools I confiscated from a burglar.”
“You can’t do that.” She backed away from him. Had he lost his mind?
“I won’t be able to if I quit being an inspector.” He shut her door and locked it.
She shook her head and wondered if she’d dropped into a bad dream. “What?”
“I’ll investigate for you, so you can keep reporting. Or I’ll stay home. It isn’t as though I need to work.”
“But it is who you are,” she said.
“I am nothing without you.” He took a step closer to her and held out his hands palm up. “I’ll forgo being an inspector if it means we can be together.”
He’d lost his mind. Maybe he’d broken into her boarding house because he missed having intimate relations with her. “Are you crazed with lust or something?”
He snorted and shook his head. “Being an inspector hasn’t been all that fulfilling lately. But this”—he pulled out a copy of the Southwark Chronicle—“this is extraordinary. You have completely changed minds in this city with your words. I was wrong to ask you to give it up.” He dropped to one knee. “Please marry me, Henry. I cannot live without you.”
“I never asked you to give up being an inspector.” He couldn’t be serious, could he?
“I’m offering.” He waited on a bent knee.
He stunned her and then stole her breath, and for once she didn’t have to look up at him. That was nice. She took a step toward him. “I don’t want to change who you are.”
“Fine then. We might need to honeymoon in Northern Ireland. I need to figure out if these murders were committed by the same person, and I’m a little concerned about the handling of Coleraine’s sister. I hear they’ve arrested her.”
Henry was being swept along in a current too strong to resist. A wash that hadn’t allowed her time to think. He had already begun planning their future. “I haven’t said yes.”
His eyes glittered strangely. “What are you waiting for?”
“If you’re an inspector and I’m a reporter, we’re going to have arguments.”
“I’m fine with that.”
She took a sliding step toward him. It was as if she was pulled toward him, by a force bigger than herself.
He held out his hand and she took it.
Her chest suddenly felt too small to contain her heart, but she had to get a few things straight. “You can’t just plan everything and then tell me I have to go along with you to Northern Ireland.”
His eyes narrowed for a tiny second.
“You have to ask me if I want to go,” she explained, exasperated.
“I’m fine with that,” he said slowly as if considering what she said. “I’ll try not to bark orders at you. I know you don’t like it.”
She stared at him and bit her lip. He’d forget the first time something came up, but then she wasn’t much better. When she wanted something, she went at it running. Maybe they’d have to figure out a way to weigh what each of them wanted if they wanted conflicting things.
His expression turned anxious. His fingers tightened on hers. “We can honeymoon anywhere you damn well like. Just tell me there will be a honeymoon.”
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” she whispered. Her entire body fluttered, but in a good way. It felt right. He was her match like no other man could be. He loved her for her curious mind, when other men saw it as a nuisance. And she loved his measured, thoughtful approach to learning the truth. They would be a good balance for each other.
He pulled her onto his bent knee and hugged her tight. “Good. Dinner with my parents, Tuesday next. At my uncle’s house.” Then he pushed her off his knee, stood, and unlocked the door.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. She’d barely had time to realize she’d said yes before he terrified her with the idea of dining with his nob family. And leaving. He was leaving?
“Proving I am not crazed with lust.”
She grabbed his jacket and pulled him back. “Well, what if I am?”
“I’m fine with that.” He grinned and scooped her up. “And see? This works so much better when you’re not wearing hoops.”
And she had to admit that it did.