The Emperor's Conspiracy (17 page)

Edward shrugged, admitting the truth of what Dervish said. “There’ll be a way.”

Dervish looked at him more closely. “Do I want to know about this?”

Edward shook his head. “I haven’t even got a plan, yet.” He stood and put out his hand as Dervish rose with him. Shook it, as though they were meeting for the first time.

As he turned away to take his leave, he only just heard Dervish’s final words.

“I was fourteen.”

21

C
harlotte stirred her morning tea, sitting alone in the garden in the shade of an apple tree, the summer apples hanging heavy from its branches. The house felt empty without Emma and the boys.

She could have gone with them, if she’d wanted.

Edward had come yesterday to take them back to the Holliday country estate in Kent, and it had been a strangely awkward meeting. Her eyes had gone to the bruise on his jaw, the battered appearance of his face, and she hadn’t wanted to look him in the eye.

She was a bad penny in his life. She wished she could take back the flirting she had done with him when they’d first met. Her delight with his complete lack of social veneer had made her lose her head. She recalled the way he’d touched her in the street, and in this very garden, no more than a few days ago, and knew she had stirred something to life that would have been better left alone.

But despite her attempts to avoid him, he had neatly maneuvered her away from his family during the mayhem caused by three small boys and a mountain of luggage, crowding her into the small drawing room just off the hall.

“Come with us.”

She’d stared at him in amazement. This was not something to be said five minutes before leaving. This was something he could have broached with her the day before.

He must have sensed her astonishment.

“I don’t want to leave you alone.” His face was intent. Intense. He seemed to crowd the space around her, and she took a step back. “I know it’s late notice, but as I was riding here, I realized I couldn’t leave you behind.”

She didn’t understand. “I have no business there, and I can see Emma would like time to herself. I could help her with the children, but the staff there are familiar to them, more so than I am, and I would only be a burden. A guest Emma will feel obliged to entertain. If I thought I could be of help, I would go.”

“I don’t ask you to go to help Emma, I ask you to go so that I know you are safe. Under my care.”

She had the sense of stepping into a strange new reality. “Under your care?” She choked a little on the words. “You did not understand anything from the other day? That I have a crime lord as my protector? That his men, some of the most vicious criminals in London, watch me constantly?”

He’d swept that aside with a chop of his hand. “There is something going on, and it involves Luke. Either because they
were watching Emma and me, or watching Luke, these men know of you now. I don’t know if Luke would stop them if they wanted to ask you what you know, or use you in some way.”

She did not hesitate. “He would.”

He frowned at that, instantly angry. “You have a lot of faith in him.”

There was nothing to say to that. She did, and she didn’t. But on the issue of her physical well-being, she had not a single doubt. Luke would let no one harm her. “How could they use me, anyway? Use me for what? I don’t even know what this ‘matter’ is.”

“Please. Just come with me.” He spoke quietly and was in that moment suddenly open to her, so honest, set on his course of action. He took hold of one of her hands.

She drew a sharp breath and saw his eyes go to her neckline as her breasts pushed against the tight bodice of her fashionable sage morning gown.

It was a look of searing sexual hunger, and her cheeks burned at the feelings it stirred in her. She looked away. She could not be in proximity to this man and not want things it would be impossible to have.

“No. I will be perfectly safe here.”

He gripped her hand a little tighter, and she thought she saw a ruefulness in his expression, as if he were only too aware that the intensity of what lay between them had played a part in her decision to stay.

“Then be careful while I’m away.” He’d lifted a hand to her jaw, his strong fingers holding her so she was forced to look
into his eyes. The touch was intimate, scandalous, and yet he did it anyway, with her guardian and his sister just a wall away. A man could be forced to marry a woman for doing something like this, in the world he’d been born to.

In the world she’d come from, it was the most minor of touches.

“What is all this about?” Her face flushed again as she spoke to him in a calm, even voice, because with his hand cradling her head, she’d felt anything but calm. Her heart thundered below her cool silk bodice.

“I’ll be back in two days, and I promise I’ll explain everything. Just keep aware. Use Kit as a bodyguard. Don’t trust anyone.”

She’d looked at him with her head to one side, recalling Emma had once said something similar to her. What a different life they had led to her.

He mistook her cocked head for either pique or stubbornness. He dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Promise me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t trust easily, and I certainly will watch my back if you say it needs more watching than usual.”

He blinked at her cool tone and released her. His eyes never left her face. “You are the center of it, somehow. Without you, I wouldn’t have known of Frethers and Luke. Because you have a foot in each world, you’ve shed light on something the Crown has been chasing for months. If the men behind this find out your role, it may be enough to make them want you silenced.”

She stared at him as she turned over his words in her head. “If my only act was to link two men you would otherwise not have linked, then my role is surely over.”

“We don’t know that yet. There is so much I don’t understand, including the why of this. I beg you to take this seriously.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but just then Emma called out her name, and Charlotte turned. She stepped back into the hall and through to the front steps, where the little group waited to say their goodbyes.

“You will take care?”

He’d come up silently behind her, was walking just beside her before she realized he was there.

“Yes. It’s a lesson I learned very early in life, Lord Durnham. If I don’t look after myself, no one is going to do it for me.”

He’d said nothing to that, and stepped back as she’d said her farewells and kissed the boys, telling them to hurry back.

He’d closed the coach door on Emma and the boys, swung himself up into his saddle, and waved to her and Catherine. She’d felt his eyes on her like a hot caress, and despite the warmth of the morning, she’d shivered as she turned back into the house.

And now a whole day had passed and she hadn’t even been out. A listlessness had overcome her, and she had gone to bed early, and slept late. Her ride this morning with Kit had been short and left her with a pounding head, and now she’d retreated into the soothing shade and light breeze of the garden.

This was a tangled mess.

She could not understand Luke’s involvement. It was one thing for Geoffrey and Edward’s stepfather to be involved. They were related by family ties, and it was all too believable that they had gone into something together. Frethers, too, she could understand. He was part of Geoffrey Holliday’s set, and a man with no moral qualms.

It may have been he who drew Geoffrey into the affair, and Geoffrey took Emma’s stepfather along with him. But Luke?

He had nothing to do with the upper classes. Ever.

He hated them, and would do nothing with them that would allow them to profit, no matter how much he could gain by the deal.

There was something off here, and she would have to ask Luke to tell her.

She had no expectation that he would, though.

She took a deep gulp of tea, and it was almost painful as it quenched the dryness in her throat with its sharp heat. She took a more dainty sip and set the cup down, glad that Catherine was with a friend, shopping, this morning, so she could sit quietly with no demands on her at all.

Greenfelt came out of the house, his step as spry as it had been the day she’d met him, so many years ago, and he set down the paper, a fresh pot of tea and some ginger cake still warm from the oven.

The scent of it lifted her spirits immediately. She murmured her thanks and poured the tea, breathing the fragrance
of ginger deep into her lungs. She barely glanced at the paper, but a single name caught her attention.

Heart suddenly tight and painful in her chest, she flipped the folded sheet open. Stared at it until the breeze rattled the paper in her hands, tugging at it.

Sometime yesterday, Frethers had been found dead.

T
here was a subtle sense of relief at Fairlands, Geoffrey’s country seat in Kent. Edward felt it in the light steps of the staff, the extra effort of the cooks, and the quick service of the butler.

The estate manager had been almost manic in his delight at Edward’s proposed injection of cash, and his threadbare clothing and gaunt look told Edward more than words how close to the bone Geoffrey had been running things.

Now he stood in the magistrate’s rooms in Manston and noticed the lack of any real regret in Sir Humphrey’s eyes over Geoffrey’s death.

“Could have been his own hand,” the magistrate said, voice gruff with discomfort. “It could go either way. The angle of the shot could be accounted for if he turned his head as he pulled the trigger, or someone stood close to his right shoulder, just behind him, and shot him.”

“It would have had to be someone he knew, unless they crept up on him.” Edward saw that the pile of clothing, the gun, and other small items found on Geoffrey’s body were lying on the magistrate’s desk.

“Couldn’t say, one way or t’other.” The magistrate pushed the release documents forward for Edward to sign. “No one has come forward. He was found by one of his laborers. The house was empty of guests. Butler said they’d all left earlier that morning.”

Edward signed, and waited for a clerk to wrap the items up in brown paper for him to take away.

“There’s one thing.” The magistrate waited for the clerk to leave and close the door before speaking. He hesitated a moment. “We’re not known as a smugglers’ haven for nothing here; it’s a way o’ life. Damn Crown men don’t understand how to deal with it, but never mind that. Lord Holliday was—” He fiddled with the quill on his desk. “There’s rumors he were dabbling in owling himself. Them owlers aren’t people to cross, nor to go in with lightly. If he did either …” The magistrate shrugged.

Edward could see he had no sympathy for Geoffrey if he’d been killed because he’d got into bed with smugglers. And he was also prepared to put it down to being the most likely scenario in which Geoffrey had gotten a bullet in his head.

He gave a nod, careful not to show his shock. “How long has the rumor been around? About Geoffrey being in with the smugglers?”

The magistrate gave him a considering look. “At least a year. I didn’t do anything ’bout it—no proof, just whispers, y’know. But he had money troubles, that was clear from the way he ran the estate. Many a lord’s been seduced by the danger and the profits o’ owling, I’m sure.”

“I’ll warrant you’re right.” Edward collected everything and took his leave.

He walked out into the small town, savoring the fresh breeze off the sea. He’d never thought about the location of Fairlands in relation to his investigations. Had only connected Geoffrey to the gold smuggling since yesterday. But of course, his brother-in-law’s local connections, the location of his estate, would have been a boon for whoever was financing the smuggling of gold guineas from England.

He’d worried over what Geoffrey had to offer, other than a connection to Edward himself, that could have drawn the men in this to his brother-in-law, but this explained it.

Explained a great deal.

Up ahead he saw Emma, stepping from the vicar’s large house, her body drawn tight with tension. He raised a hand and she stopped short, waited for him in the road.

“What is it?” he asked when he reached her and held out an arm.