The Water Nymph (2 page)
Authors: Michele Jaffe
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Romantic Suspense, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense, #FICTION/Romance/General
The man shrugged. “I cannot say.”
Sophie’s irritation turned to anger. She had neither the time nor the energy to stand around trading evasive answers with a tick. The game they were playing was pointless, her mustache was itchier than ever, her godfather was dead, and between her grief and her investigation she had not had a chance to either eat or sleep for three days. She was torn by conflicting desires, to challenge the man in front of her to a duel, or to go home and eat a hundred of her cook’s candied-orange cakes dribbled with honey.
But then she saw that flicker of a smile, and the choice was clear. Puffing herself up in her best Don Alfonso style, she announced, “I am a very busy man, and I am unaccustomed to chatter with mere messengers. You have smeared the name of Don Alfonso Al Corest del Farmen with your accusation of murder, and I demand satisfaction. Either explain yourself, or prepare to fight.”
The man shook his head. “Both engaging offers, particularly the challenge to duel, but I fear I shall have to decline. Frankly, Don Alfonso, you are much too wily for me. The way you flit from one identity to the other, one accent to the other…I dare not trust myself on the field against such an opponent. Indeed,” the man went on, watching the play of anger over her face, “I rather find myself at a disadvantage here. I believe the time has come for me to take my leave. And while we are speaking of it, I should warn you that I am about to alert the authorities to Richard Tottle’s plight.”
“Is that a threat? Do you threaten to turn me in?”
The man shook his head. “On the contrary. I tell you so you may leave. I should not like you to confess anything to the authorities before you have confessed it to me.”
“And if I decide to stay and cooperate with the constables?”
“Then I am afraid the next time I see you shall be on the gallows. Really, Don Alfonso, I should choose to talk to me rather than the authorities if I were in your shoes. Nice shoes, by the way,” the man added casually. “Brooker?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are they by Brooker? Did he make them? The shoes?”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. Sophie was furious now. Brooker was the most famous and selective of the shoemakers in London, but that scarcely seemed relevant in the context of their conversation. Because the shoe-obsessed man had just effectively told her that she had two choices: to speak to the authorities and hang within a few days, or to do what he said, to put herself in his power and, she thought bitterly, hang within a few weeks. Then, in a flash, she saw an option he had not named. “I am afraid,
señor
, that Don Alfonso is leaving England for good tonight.”
“Don Alfonso may be,” the man said with a negligent shrug, “but I doubt that whoever bought those boots from Brooker is. All I need to do is ask him where the red velvet Spanish-style riding boots reside, and I will know where to find you.”
He watched her eyes fill with angry astonishment at his ruse, but he was impressed by the steadiness of her voice. “If I were in your shoes,
señor
,” she pronounced carefully, “I would hardly trust in my responses. I can assure you that Brooker did not make these boots.”
The smile flickered again. The man was really enjoying himself now. “I believe I mentioned that you are a wretched liar.” He had moved toward the door as he spoke, and he turned to face her. “This has been a most interesting evening, Don Alfonso, and I can only console myself for the loss of your company with the knowledge that we shall meet again soon. I look forward to that pleasure.” He bowed low and stepped across the threshold.
“Pleasure,” Sophie repeated after him, pronouncing the word as if it might grow scales on her tongue. She could not remember having spent a less pleasant quarter of an hour in many, many years. If she had her way, she would never set eyes on that arrogant, horrible, shallow, annoying, conniving, tricky, handsome, dimpled, asset-rich, upsetting, lousy louse ever again.
As soon as she had the thought, she knew she was wrong. Indeed, she saw that she was reacting exactly as he had hoped she would. His plan had obviously been to annoy and antagonize her so efficiently that she would tell him anything and then let him wander off unhampered, with her fate in his hands. And she had fallen for it entirely, even giving up the name of her shoemaker. As she thought about this, thought about how docilely she had walked into his trap, her anger at him was transmuted into cold, hard rage against herself. She had behaved like an idiot. No, she
was
an idiot.
What made it worse was that she did not know into whose hands she had actually fallen. The man was just the messenger, he had said, and she needed to learn for whom he was working. His questions suggested that he believed she knew something or, rather, that she had
taken
something from Richard Tottle. Something important. Probably important enough to require that he report to his employer right away. Before she had even finished the thought, she was closing the door of the smoking chamber behind her and making for the servants’ door of the Unicorn.
She had only been lingering in the shadows in front of the club for a minute when she saw the louse come out and turn right. Never having pursued a man on foot through London before, Sophie was too preoccupied with following unobtrusively to notice the old beggar woman camped inside the doorway of the building opposite the Unicorn, or the curtain in the club’s second-floor window flutter slightly as she and the man went past. The thunderclouds that had blanketed the city earlier in the day were gone now, and a bright moon shone, making it easy for Sophie to keep the man in view but hard for her to stay in the shadows.
It became even harder after they had turned out of Hanging Sword Court and on to Fleet Street, because the entire road was thronged with people, most of them barely clad and very sociable women. Sophie was astonished by their careless comfort and confidence in their bodies, but astonishment turned into something much less clear when she saw the louse approach one of them, a blonde, whisper a few words to her, and then disappear through a doorway with his arm entwined in hers. Suddenly concerned that the meeting might be taking place within those doors, Sophie crossed the street and entered.
It looked like a tavern, but instead of food, each table was topped by a completely naked woman, extended to her full length here, sitting cross-legged there, all of them joking with and teasing the male patrons who surrounded them. As Sophie watched, a plump brunette brought her lips to the ear of a well-dressed young man, allowing her breasts to brush his chin as she whispered something to him. Her skills as an orator must have been quite over whelming, for the man was so moved that he lifted her from the table and accompanied her up a ramshackle set of stairs, apparently wishing to pursue the subject in more private quarters. Sophie then watched as another woman stood atop a table, slowly rotating her hips in front of an increasingly large group of spectators, using a long string of pearls to do something that she indicated loudly was very pleasurable. Before the climax of the performance, however, Sophie saw the man from the Unicorn descending the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he turned and blew a -kiss up toward a voluptuous blonde standing naked at the top and then made directly for the door.
Sophie pressed herself into the crowd around the pearl woman until he had passed, then fled back into the night, relieved to see her target continuing straight down Fleet Street. The experiences in the tavern had left Sophie addled, and it required all her concentration to keep her mind on the man she was following. She forced herself to study his movements, watching for a sign that he would veer left here, or a flicker that he would look over his shoulder, until she discovered to her horror that she had unwittingly amassed a catalog of the comparative differences between him BW—Before the Woman—and after (including walk: jauntier; whistling: louder; loathsomeness: greater).
She had just added, swaggering: increased, when he turned abruptly into a narrow passage and ducked through a door. Proceeding as silently as she could, she followed him through the door and found herself standing in a small paved court. Directly in front of her, there was another door, slightly ajar.
Sophie swallowed hard and hoped her racing heart did not sound as loud outside her body as it did inside. She crept across the court and pushed the door open with one hand, keeping her other on the hilt of her rapier. She waited, listening intently. Nothing.
When what felt like two years had passed in unbroken silence, she ducked under the low lintel and into a pastry kitchen. Remembering the food she had not eaten in days and the orange cakes she had been dreaming of, her stomach did an imitation of a sawmill. There was only one other door in the kitchen, and Sophie proceeded through it, stopping at intervals to listen and to give her stomach severe warnings about talking out of turn.
After weaving through two more kitchens, three pantries, and a labyrinth of twisty hallways, Sophie finally arrived in an immense entrance hall. The wood paneling glowed in the moonlight that streamed through the tall windows of the facade, filling the hall with an ethereal radiance and making the broad staircase at its center appear to float. From somewhere deep in the house came the ticking of a clock, and in its somber regularity Sophie could have sworn she heard the words “Take heed. Go back. Take heed.”
If she had not heard the voices above her at the same time, Sophie might have taken the clock’s very good advice. Instead, she ascended the staircase and alighted in front of an inlaid door. It was not entirely closed, and from within she could hear faint sounds of conversation.
One of the voices she recognized instantly as belonging to her quarry. The other, a sort of angry rasp, was new to her, and its words created a cold knot in her stomach.
“Get the girl,” it growled harshly. “I want the girl.”
“I tried,” the familiar voice replied. “I did all I could.”
She heard the other voice mimic comically, “I tried. I did all I could,” then snort and command again, “Get the girl.”
The familiar voice sounded annoyed. “There is nothing we can do tonight. We will just have to wait.”
It was the perfect time, Sophie decided. She would catch them off guard, take them by surprise. Drawing an enormous breath, she pushed open the door—
And froze in her tracks.
“Ah, Don Alfonso. We have been expecting you,” the familiar voice told her while the other cackled in delight.
Horrified, Sophie looked from the smiling face of the man to the piercing gaze of his companion, and understood for the first time what she should have known hours earlier.
She had been playing a game. Her opponent was cunning and ruthless. The stake was her life.
And there was no end to her losing streak in sight.
“—an arrogant, blustering, contemptible, disgusting slug,” Sophie concluded triumphantly, leaning forward in her seat as if to hurl the last word across the desk at the man. “Or rather, slugs. You and your vulture.”
“It is a raven,” the man answered smoothly. “And I have to admit, I am disappointed. ‘Slug’? Surely you could do better. What about ‘clever devil’?”
The raven, on its perch at the man’s shoulder, repeated “clever devil, clever devil,” in its rasping voice, and executed a jig.
Sophie sneered at the bird, then at its owner. “I think you overrate yourself. Dragging women against their will to your house for your entertainment hardly counts as clever.”
The man regarded her paternally. “Let us review.
You
followed me of your own volition.
You
broke into my house at your own initiative. And so far, you have not been very entertaining at all.”
That was not strictly true. Indeed, he had to admit that the two hours he had just passed with her had been more diverting than any in his recent memory. Because Crispin Foscari had been having a very bad week. He had been forcibly stripped of his status as the Phoenix, accused of treason, and for all intents and purposes, dismissed from the Queen’s service. He had been given only fourteen days to find out who was angling for his destruction and stop them. He had already spent six days investigating, with no appreciable results. And his best source of information had been shot dead in the smoking room at the Unicorn. But despite all that, he now found that he was enjoying himself immensely.
He could not decide which was more entertaining: watching the woman in front of him or antagonizing her. Fortunately, he could do both at the same time.
“You know, you still have not really fixed your mustache,” he pointed out sweetly.
“Not fixed your mustache,” the raven intoned, less sweetly.
In her outrage at being tricked, Sophie had forgotten that she was still wearing the mustache, but this double reminder made it suddenly ten times itchier than it had been earlier. “And you,” she replied, her voice tight with the struggle to resist the urge to scratch her upper lip, “still have not explained what you want with me. Or, for that matter, even who you are.”
“Why, this is my house,” the man answered simply, as if that settled everything. Then, seeing that the woman looked uncomprehending, he added, “Sandal Hall.” When she continued to regard him blankly, he quickly explained, “I am Crispin Foscari. The Earl of Sandal.”
Satan’s knockers, he was a pompous termite. “The Earl of Sandal? I have never heard of the Earl of Sandal.” She was focusing hard on keeping her voice level, but not so hard that she missed the look of astonishment on the man’s face. She decided to push him farther. “How do I know you are not making the title up? That you are not one of those rakes who invent a noble-sounding name in order to con others out of their money or property?”
“Like Don Alfonso del Forest al Carmen del Farmen al Carest?” Crispin suggested in a voice slightly tighter than usual.
“Exactly.” Sophie pretended to cough then, in a desperate effort to keep from bursting into laughter. It was the first time in hours that she held the upper hand, and she found it so pleasant that the mustache ceased to bother her at all. “How can I even be sure this is your house? Given the way you have behaved tonight, with unscrupulous disregard for the truth, I would not be shocked to learn that you had purloined it.”
Sophie did not know it, but she had done something quite incredible: she had surprised him. Indeed, as one of Queen Elizabeth’s most secret operatives, surprise was something Crispin could ill afford if he valued his life. He was not a vain or haughty man, but he had assumed that his name and title would be well known to her. After all, it was well known to everyone. It had been years since he had been able to go anywhere incognito, to remain unrecognized or unacknowledged in any locale from a seedy quayside tavern to the papal court unless he was well disguised. And yet here was this woman, challenging not only his right to his house and title, but the very existence of the title itself.
As she watched his bemusement, Sophie was thinking that her bluff seemed to be working admirably. It alone provided an antidote to the stinging mortification of her failure to recognize him at the Unicorn. For she would have had to be dead or locked deep inside Bedlam not to have heard of the Earl of Sandal, given the frequency with which his rakish exploits had been detailed in printed broadsides and ballads—complete with collectible engraved portraits—during the two and a half years of his exile. According to these newssheets, where he was retitled the Earl of Scandal, there was no challenge to which this peer of the realm would not rise, no woman he could not possess, no bedroom door that would not fly open at the merest hint of his smile, nothing he would not casually wager for the bare thrill of it. A recent number related how he had bid an outrageous sum for a stable of racehorses one morning, only to hazard them at cards that night against a worthless necklace to which his mistress had taken a fancy. (As usual, he won the necklace, but gave up the horses to the loser anyway in what was described as a wildly gallant gesture.) Other editions touted his prowess with arms by pointing out that only one of Europe’s leading swordsmen could seduce so many married women and live to tell about it. It was just such behavior, in particular a duel over one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, that had gotten him exiled two and a half years earlier, and all London was alive with speculation about his current reinstatement in Her Majesty’s good graces.
Everyone knew that as one of the Arboretti, the six co-owners of the most successful shipping company in Europe, the Earl of Scandal had to be worth at least as much as Queen Elizabeth herself. This information, coupled with the general opinion that the earl had renounced his Scandalous ways and returned to England to be married, caused deep stirrings in the hearts of every English mama with an unbetrothed daughter between the ages of two and forty. Indeed, Sophie had herself invested in silk and lace that week on the Royal Exchange, correctly assuming that such rumors would prompt a flurry of dress orders from the scheming mamas hoping to catch the Sandal eye by outfitting their daughters in yards of the latest continental fashions. But she was certainly not going to tell
Señor
Scandal about the one thousand pounds in profit she had reaped from those investments, any more than she was going to admit that he was better looking than the engravings had led her to believe. And also smarter.
In fact, this was the most annoying part of all. What was goading Sophie so painfully was that she had been tricked—twice—by, of all men, the one she had always regarded as a brainless, pleasure-obsessed tick. Who, she realized with further annoyance, was again addressing her.
“So you see, Don Alfonso,” Crispin was saying, “it really does not matter whether you believe in my identity, because the constables certainly will, and will have no qualms about arresting you for the murder of Richard Tottle on my order.” He smiled that annoying smile. “Now, you asked why you were here. I need some information, and it seems likely that you have it.”
Sophie tried to keep her eyes off his smile, and especially his long dimples. “I have already answered all your questions,” she told him haughtily. Then she had an inspiration. “In fact, I will not say another word to you.”
“How gracious. Your wishes tally with mine exactly. I have always been partial to quiet women.” He almost laughed when he saw her struggling to pack all her emotion into the glare she leveled at him. “Besides, what I am looking for is not the answer to a question, but rather an object. An object removed from the murdered man. I suspect you have it somewhere on your person, so you will oblige me by removing your clothes.”
Sophie’s glare turned to a disbelieving stare.
“That is right. I am asking you to strip,” Crispin replied firmly to her unspoken question.
The raven, who had been quietly cleaning itself, suddenly chimed in “Strip! Strip, strip, strip!” and then resumed its preening as if nothing had happened.
Sophie treated it to a glance that would have killed a lesser bird, then broke her vow of silence. “Why should I comply with your wishes?”
“Because otherwise I shall turn you and this”—Crispin held an object up for her to see—“over to the constable.”
Before realizing what she was saying, Sophie blurted, “Where did you get my pistol?”
“Where you left it.”
Sophie was horrified. “You stole it from my house?” Only then, when the words were out, did she remember the silver plaque on the hilt of the weapon. The pistol had been presented to her by the gunsmith, a gift of gratitude for dowering his bride, and he had recorded his appreciation on the plaque.
“ ‘
For Sophie Champion. In Everlasting Thanks
,’ ” Crispin read aloud. “In the future, Miss Champion, you might remove all identifiable markings from your murder weapon. It takes all the fun out of trying to learn your name.”
“Murder weapon?” Sophie repeated breathlessly. “Richard Tottle was shot with my pistol?”
Crispin nodded, noting how convincing her surprise sounded. “I found it right next to the body, and it was still hot from the explosion. But you know all that. Now, Miss Champion, if you will please remove—”
Sophie interrupted him. “Why, if I were the murderer, would I leave my pistol lying next to the body?”
“Why indeed?”
“Clearly this proves that I did not kill Richard Tottle.” Sophie leaned forward in her chair. “Surely even you can see that is obvious.”
Crispin leaned toward her across the desk, as if speaking confidentially. “I am not familiar with that particular use of the words ‘clearly,’ ‘proves,’ and ‘obvious.’ I would say the evidence points in the opposite direction. The
obvious
assumption is that the owner of the murder weapon is the murderer. Your gun was the murder weapon. You are its owner. And constables are notoriously obvious minded. So, while I might agree with your more figurative take on the situation, I am afraid they will see the pistol with your name on it as clear and obvious proof that you
are
the murderer.”
Sophie ignored his sarcasm, leaping instead on the hint his words contained. “If you agree with me, that means you do not think I committed the murder.”
“I have reservations.” The room fell silent except for an occasional grunt from the raven, and Crispin’s words hung between them. After a long moment, he continued, moving closer to his objective. “There is a way you can prove it to me. Or at least, make me relatively certain. You see, if you do not have the object I am looking for, I shall be forced to conclude that you did not murder Tottle, or at least not alone. I could hardly turn in a woman I knew to be innocent, even one as bothersome as you are.”
“I told you. I did not take anything from Richard Tottle, dead or alive.”
Crispin caught her eyes with his own and stared at her steadily. “Prove it.”
Sophie’s eyes continued to meet his, but narrowed. “I did not think the famous Earl of Sandal would have to stoop to such tricks to get a woman out of her clothes.”
“I did not think you had heard of the Earl of Sandal.”
Sophie was too angry now to be upset by her gaffe. Her only interest was in provoking him, as he had provoked her. She strove to keep her voice neutral as she said, “I am not at all impressed by your means of seduction.”
“I assure you, I had no such intention. I would rather seduce a porcupine than you, Miss Champion. Now, are you going to remove your clothes, or must I do it for you?”
Sophie leaned across the desk again. “I would rather have a dozen of Her Majesty’s lewdest sailors touch me than you, Lord Sandal.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Crispin replied, unconcerned. “Even animals are most attracted to their own kind. But your predilection does make me wonder why you are so afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you?” Sophie repeated, appalled.
“Clearly. If you are innocent, as you claim, and do not have what I am looking for, your refusal to remove your clothes obviously proves that you are afraid of me.”
“I am not familiar with your use of the words ‘clearly,’ ‘obviously,’ and ‘proves,’” Sophie mimicked.
Crispin pretended not to hear. “Be honest, Miss Champion. Is it that you don’t think you can trust yourself around me? My charms are famously hard to resist.”
He knew he had won then, even though it took another few moments for his victory to manifest itself. The striptease that followed was the least erotic striptease Crispin had ever witnessed, possibly the least erotic striptease ever, probably the only one conducted to the snores of a sleeping raven.
And yet it nearly undid him.
Sophie rose from her chair and, her eyes never leaving his, proceeded to remove her red velvet doublet. Her boots came next, then her leggings, until finally she was standing in only her hat and a thin linen shirt that ended just below her bottom. Reaching over her head, she deftly removed three pins and the hat, liberating a riot of long, ruby-colored waves that reached to her stomach. Finally, she loosened the ties at her neck and cuffs and pulled the shirt over her head. Her gaze left Crispin’s as the fabric passed across her face, and he had his expression back under control by the time she was done, so she never saw what passed through his eyes that first moment she stood before him completely naked.
During his service for Queen Elizabeth, Crispin had learned that impulses, like emotions, made people vulnerable, which was only a half-step from making them dead. Containing his emotions was easy, and he had trained himself rigorously to overmaster the impulses of his body as well. He could hold his breath underwater for ten minutes, slow his heartbeat to appear dead, and stand stockstill for twelve hours. Compared to these feats, curtailing amorous urges was child’s play, and he had become so good at it that he had begun to wonder if he had not eradicated them entirely. He had completely lost interest in seducing women, finding the thrill and adventure of his secret commissions far more exciting than anything he experienced between the arms of even the most talented courtesans.