Keep reading for a sneak peek at
NEVER DECEIVE A VISCOUNT,
the next in the Infamous Lords series.
Coming soon
from
Renee Ann Miller
and
Zebra Shout!
from
Renee Ann Miller
and
Zebra Shout!
Emma Trafford tapped softly on her sister’s bedchamber door and inched it open. A single candle on a bedside table sent scant light into the dark room. Lily, dressed in a white cotton nightgown, stood before the window, her blond hair and slender twelve-year-old body illuminated by moonlight.
“Lily?” Emma whispered.
With a gasp, Lily spun around and tucked a pair of opera glasses behind her back.
Why, the little hoyden! If that gossipmonger across the street saw Lily spying upon her, the whole of Bloomsbury would know before daybreak.
“Are you watching Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Indeed not. One could expire from boredom observing her snooze all day.”
Emma released the air in her lungs and glanced out the window. The London sky was absent its perpetual fog. Perhaps Lily had turned her mind to more intellectual pursuits. “Were you observing the constellations?”
“Ah . . . yes, indeed, the stars.” Lily nibbled her lower lip.
One day, when they were old and gray, Emma would reveal to her sister that Lily always bit her lower lip when she lied. “No, you were not. Now confess.”
Lily shuffled her bare feet. Even in the dim light, Emma could see the two red spots on her sister’s porcelain cheeks. “I’m observing the woman who recently moved into the town house next to Mrs. Jenkins. Have you seen her? She looks to be your age, perhaps a bit older. She wears feathered hats and gowns with huge bustles. Late at night, a fine carriage pulls up and an exceedingly tall gentleman enters the house.”
“You were spying on them?” Emma tried to keep the shrill tone from her voice.
“Well, tonight they didn’t close their shutters, and I was ever so curious.”
Emma gasped. “Lily, that’s scandalous.”
“Ha! If you think I’m scandalous, you should see them. Do you wish to hear what they wear to bed?”
She did, but before Emma could lie and say no, her sister barreled forward. “The woman is dressed in a nightgown that barely hides her bosom. And the man, well, he’s wearing just his drawers.” Shock and titillation colored Lily’s voice.
“Oh my goodness.” Emma dashed to her sister’s side and outstretched her hand. “Lillian Marie Trafford, give me those glasses. Now!”
Lily jutted out her bottom lip and handed over the opera glasses. “Em, the man has arms as thick as Titian’s depiction of Mars. And he has the largest—”
Emma clapped a hand over her sister’s mouth. She didn’t know what Lily intended to say, but the child spent too many hours at the lending library examining books on Renaissance paintings, and Emma feared it wasn’t a love of art that piqued Lily’s interest.
“Not another word.” Emma removed her hand.
“But he looks nothing like old Mr. Peabody when he drank too much punch at Mrs. Green’s Christmas party and removed his shirt and trousers.” Lily leaned close and spoke in a hushed tone. “He looks more like the paintings of the naked men on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But larger. More powerful.”
Oh, my. Emma stifled the salacious images working their way through her mind.
“If you don’t believe me, take a peek.” Lily pointed at the window, her eyes bright.
The temptation to join her sister in wickedness tugged at Emma. She’d never seen a man wearing only his drawers. Well, except for Mr. Peabody, but his prune-like anatomy and pencil-thin legs had not impressed her in the least. And the one time she’d been intimate . . . that had been a debacle she didn’t wish to recall. She set the opera glasses on a table and drew the curtains closed.
“Get under the covers, and promise me you will not spy on the neighbors again. Especially those neighbors.” She pulled her sister toward the bed.
With a sullen expression, Lily climbed under the blankets and folded her arms across her chest. “I promise.”
Emma pressed a kiss to her sister’s cheek. “Now sleep well, dearest, and blow out the candle as soon as I close the door.”
Across the central corridor, Emma slipped into her bedchamber and padded to the window. The curtain rings rattled on the rod as she pulled the material closed. Unable to resist, she parted the fabric an inch and peered out. The town house across the way glowed like a balefire in the dark night. Their new neighbors certainly didn’t want for money.
She moved away from the window. After she changed into her white cotton nightgown, she settled between the sheets with a book of Tennyson’s poems.
A half hour later, Emma stared blindly at a page. Doubtful the man across the way resembled Michelangelo’s nudes. Men like that were only in artists’ imaginations. She set her reading aside and turned down the wick on the bedside lamp, shrouding the room in darkness.
Boom! The bedchamber door flew open and slammed against the wall.
“Em!” Lily’s frantic voice cut through the gloom like a shaft of light.
Heart pounding, Emma bolted upright. “What’s the matter?”
Lily rushed forward, her pale face illuminated by the globed candle she held. “You must summon a constable.”
“What’s happened?” Emma tossed off her bedding.
Her sister’s empty hand fluttered in the air. “The man. I-I believe he’s killed the woman. He tore the thin material from her body, then settled under the sheets and climbed atop her. Her head thrashed back and forth while he . . . Oh, it was horrid. And when he was done, she just lay there not moving, eyes closed with an odd expression plastered on her still face. She’s dead!”
More than once, Emma had contemplated the joining of a man and woman—compared it to what she knew. Her single experience had left her sore, shamed, and ruined. But there were times she’d imagined a husband gently removing his wife’s clothes in the dark. Or if they were daring, leaving a single candle lit. She’d never imagined all the lights on. Perhaps her imagination was lacking.
“Em!”
Lily’s voice startled Emma from her torrid thoughts. “Lily, you promised you wouldn’t spy on them.”
“I know, but . . .”
Emma scooted to the other side of the mattress and lifted the blankets. “Get into bed.”
Her sister’s mouth gaped. “Aren’t you going to summon a constable?”
She sighed. “Dearest, sometimes married men and women partake in activities in their bedchambers that girls of twelve should not be privy to. They . . . they play games.”
“This was not a game. A game would be blind man’s bluff or twenty questions. This was depravity. Murder. Just like the murders Inspector Percival Whitley solves.”
Lily had a fertile imagination, and those penny dreadfuls she read about Inspector Whitley of Scotland Yard didn’t help. “Get into bed,” Emma repeated. “I’m sure it was a game.”
After setting the candle on the bedside table, Lily climbed next to her. “If that is the type of amusement married couples engage in, I shall become a spinster.” Lily grabbed Emma’s hand under the sheet. “Is that why you didn’t marry Charles? Because you knew once married you’d have to partake in such wickedness?”
Emma’s chest tightened as shame overwhelmed her. Charles had asked for her hand three years ago, on her twenty-first birthday, a week after Papa died. She’d allowed Charles to convince her that they didn’t have to wait for the sanctity of marriage to join with each other. He’d professed his love and told her he couldn’t wait anymore. That madness might overtake him, if he couldn’t make love to her.
Three days afterward, he’d called on her and said his father was not in accord with the betrothal. How foolish she’d been to think a baron’s son would marry out of his station, especially a portraitist with no fortune.
“We realized we didn’t suit,” Emma said, shoving the guilt over her reckless behavior aside.
“I’m glad”—Lily snuggled closer—“for I hate to think of you being forced to play such wretched games.”
Charles had married last year, an earl’s daughter, and his wife was now round with child. She blinked away the moisture filling her eyes. Silly to shed tears. She didn’t need Charles or any other man. If she sold enough portraits, she could support herself and her two siblings all on her own.
Forcing a smile, Emma tucked the blankets around her sister’s slender shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Good night, dearest.”
* * *
The morning sun shone through the drawing room’s windows, brightening the faded blue walls. Emma sat at her secretaire and perused the bills in front of her. Once she finished painting Mrs. Naples’s portrait, she’d have nearly all the funds for Michael’s boarding school tuition, along with enough to pay the coal merchant. Though not enough to pay what she owed Mrs. Flynn. The housekeeper continued to work for them even though Emma hadn’t paid the woman her full salary in months. For all her gruff ways, Mrs. Flynn possessed a soft heart and a motherly tendency toward them.
The double doors swung open, and Lily stormed into the room with as much drama as the night before.
“I told you that man murdered the ginger-haired woman!” Lily grabbed Emma’s hand and tugged her across the room.
“I do not want to hear another word about murder.” Emma planted her heels into the threadbare carpeting.
Her sister stomped her foot and pointed at the window. “See for yourself.”
The headache that had begun as Emma looked at the bills grew stronger. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I insist you cease this spying.”
“But Inspector Whitley says one must carefully search for clues, for they will always reveal the villain.”
Emma attempted not to roll her eyes heavenward at the mention of the fictitious inspector. Setting a hand on the window’s casings, she gazed outside. Two burly men were hefting a large trunk onto a dray across the street. “What is it I’m supposed to be witnessing?”
Lily groaned. “Don’t you understand? The woman’s body is stuffed in the trunk.”
“You know no such thing.”
“What else could it be?”
“They might be cleaning their attic.”
A tall gentleman with broad shoulders stepped out of the town house. He was impeccably dressed in a navy overcoat and top hat.
“That’s him!” Lily clasped Emma’s arm, her fingers tight enough to leave marks.
The man lifted his hat and raked his fingers through shiny black hair.
Lily’s warm breath puffed on the back of Emma’s neck. “Criminals are always dark and dangerous in appearance. And if he isn’t dastardly looking, I don’t know what one would call him.”
Emma swallowed. She would call him beautiful. The perfect subject to paint. His face all hard angles. His jaw strong and firm. His nose chiseled. He reminded her of a panther she’d seen at Regent’s Park Zoo. Striking, yet if one were foolish enough to reach out to stroke its fur, surely they’d lose an appendage.
Her gaze shifted from his broad-shouldered body to the trunk. It was indeed large enough to hold a woman’s body. Oh bother. She was letting Lily’s imagination play havoc on her own mind.
“I will not make accusations against him.” He looked not only dangerous, but also wealthy—a man financially capable of destroying them if they libeled him. “You have no proof.”
“Proof? I told you what I saw last night. Now the trunk. What more do you need?”
“And I told you—”
“Yes, yes, a game. What balderdash.”
The drayman’s voice calling to the horses to “move on” drew their attention back to the window. A closed carriage with yellow wheels now stood in front of the town house as well.
“See,” Emma said, pointing at the fancy equipage. “The woman is probably inside.”
Lily bit on the nail of her index finger. “If you hadn’t been arguing with me, I might have seen something. I’m going to go outside and peek in the carriage.”
Emma grabbed her sister’s hand. “You will do no such thing. Anyway it has already started up the street.”
Lily wrenched her hand free and pressed her nose to the pane of glass. “Drat, I know what I saw, and I shall prove it to you.”