Truly Yours (8 page)

“I am,” Daniel said, hauling Rex to his feet and pulling him along before the Watch came. “You are too damned handsome for your own good.”

Rex stumbled at first at his cousin’s longer stride, but kept up. “What, with the scar? Women tremble at the sight.”

“They’ll tremble, all right, but with eagerness to sink their claws into you now that you are in London. What’s a little scar compared to your title and fortune?”

“That’s not why I came. I have another mission in town. My father sent me to rescue a damsel, and I need your help to fight off the dragon.”

“Damsels and dragons, eh? I suppose you get to play the white knight and you expect me to be your loyal squire as usual? I won’t do it. Ain’t in the petticoat line, and ain’t wearing armor. I like my freedom and my comfort too well.”

“This is different.”

“Not army work, then? I sold out ages ago, you know. Soon as I came home, and glad of it.” Daniel kept walking, leading Rex toward a better section of town, thank goodness. Too many eyes stared out of too many alleys for Rex’s comfort. No one had challenged them yet, but a limping, bloody nob was an easy target for a gang. Daniel was a large target for a thrown knife or a pistol.

“I am going to resign my commission as soon as this is over. I’ve had my fill of being treated like a barbarian.” Not that this evening was any indication of a more civilized existence, but it felt better, except for his nose.

“We saved a lot of English lives with the information we got for the generals,” Daniel said, “no matter how we got it.”

“But we lost the respect of those very lives we saved, and well you know it. This is a more personal battle.”

“Very well, who is the dragon, then?”

“Lady Royce.”

“Your mother? You’ve reconciled with Aunt Margaret? That’s grand.”

“No, I have not reconciled with that woman. She is not even in Town yet. She’s flitting around Bath while there’s a cyclone brewing here. It’s her goddaughter, Miss Amanda Carville.”

Daniel stopped walking. “The female who shot that dirty dish Hawley, her own stepfather?”

“The one who was charged with the crime,” Rex amended. “And charged in a hurry, I might add, by Sir Nigel Turlowe.”

Daniel whistled, then regretted it, discovering a split lip. “So that is why your father sent you. Did she do it?” Daniel knew that Rex would have the truth, if anyone did.

“She was too ill to tell me. Then she was frightened by the dog, then Nanny Brown threw me out of the room.” Rex swung his cane at a street lamp in frustration. “We have to find out.”

Daniel leaned against the lamppost. “We?”

“I do not know my way around Town the way you do. And if Miss Carville did not commit the murder, then someone will not want us looking into it. Nor will Sir Nigel.”

“You need me.”

“That’s what I said, you big oaf.”

“Are you sure your nose is broken this time? I could . . .”

They went to the boardinghouse where Daniel rented a set of rooms, to pick up his things. At first Daniel was not happy at the idea of staying at Royce House.

“I’m not, either,” Rex said in an understatement. He’d rather have slept on the sagging sofa in Daniel’s sitting room, but neither one of them had a choice, not if they were going to settle the court case as soon as possible. “But I vouched for Miss Carville, so I have to stay close at least until the countess returns.”

“She’ll be mad.”

“Miss Carville? How can she complain of another champion? Besides, she is too ill to notice your presence.”

“No, Aunt Margaret.”

“What, that you’ve turned into a sot and a brawler?”

“No, that I broke your damned beak. I promised to look after you.”

“That was on the Peninsula, not in London.”

“I promised your father about the army. Your mother about everything else.”

“Well, I promised your mother and father, too. And I never broke your nose, so you deserve the guilt and the anger.”

“You couldn’t break my nose if you wanted to.”

Rex did not bother refuting the boyish taunt as he sipped at the wine Daniel brought. “I did not know you corresponded with the countess.”

“She’s my aunt, don’t you know. She always wanted to hear about you.”

“She could have asked me.”

“Would you have answered?”

“No.”

Rex sank into a chair and gratefully accepted the wet towel Daniel handed him to put over his aching nose, and another glass of wine.

While Daniel packed—if throwing clothing and papers and books into a trunk could be called packing—he wanted to know their plan. Rex always did have a plan, hey-go-mad or hell-born, and Daniel always went along with it.

“Well, until we know if the lady is innocent or not, we cannot mount a defense. We’ll need to talk to the servants at Hawley’s house, and pick up Miss Carville’s belongings while we are there. And I want to know why the stepsister and -brother never visited the jail, and what man Miss Carville was supposed to be meeting on the sly.”

“I never heard a name in the clubs and coffeehouses when everyone was talking about the killing. Mostly they were all glad Sir Frederick was gone.”

“That’s what I heard too, so far. But someone has to know more. Then there is the little problem I might have with the Lord High Magistrate or the sheriff’s office, for nearly kidnaping Miss Carville out of Newgate.”

“You didn’t go bail for her?”

“There is no bond set for a killer—an accused killer. I suppose they figure the accused would all scarper off to the colonies or something.”

“Right. I would be running too, if I had the gun in my hand at the scene of the crime.” Daniel grinned, then found another towel to hold against his split lip. “So you stole the woman like a ravaging Hun?”

“Not exactly. I paid the guard and claimed I was taking her for medical treatment. So I might have to call at the War Office.”

Daniel took a long swallow of his wine, deciding that would work better than a towel. “The Aide?”

Rex nodded. No one voluntarily called on the secretive figure behind the covert operations of the army’s Intelligence division. “I am on sick leave still, so he cannot order me back to the Peninsula. On the other hand, he will not want me arrested for obstructing justice.”

Daniel put on a clean jacket—cleaner, at any rate—and said, “With friends like that, who needs maggots?”

“Right.”

“Tell me about the woman.”

So Rex told what little he knew. Of course he did not describe the woman’s figure or soft skin, only her condition, the rescue, and the few words they’d exchanged.

“Have you a guess?”

Rex knew Daniel meant about the murder, not whether Miss Carville was a virgin or not, which kept rattling around Rex’s brain like a loose shutter on a windy night. “My gut says she’s no cold-blooded killer, and Nanny Brown swears the countess would not have sent for us if she were. Other than that, the lady might have had good reason.”

“Good enough for Sir Nigel and the courts?”

Rex did not know, which worried him. “Are you ready? I do not like leaving her alone in that household. Most of the servants are on holiday.” He stood, with effort. Damn, but his bad leg was not up to this much activity. He took a last swallow of his wine for the trip back to Mayfair.

Daniel watched, without offering a hand. “Well, if she is convicted, at least your mother won’t make you marry the chit.”

The wineglass slid out of Rex’s fingers. “What do you mean?”

“Stands to reason Aunt Margaret won’t want a killer in the family, even if the gal is her goddaughter. Might shoot her husband next. That’d be you,” he added, in case Rex missed the barb.

Rex was still on the dire word. “Marry?”

“Well, the wife of a peer gets special privileges in the courts, doesn’t she? And there’s no doubt that you compromised the female. Took her off on your horse, brought her to your mother’s house with no respectable female present. Undressed her, too. If that’s not compromising a lady, I don’t know what is, unless you raise her skirts on a park bench in Hyde Park.”

While Rex sputtered and tried to explain the situation, Daniel tied another spotted kerchief around his neck in lieu of a cravat and then hauled his trunk onto his shoulder. He looked more like a dockworker than a gentleman, but Rex was not in any position to cast aspersions, not with his shirt and coat stained with blood, his red-soaked neckcloth tossed in the trash altogether. Besides, who cared about neatness when Daniel spoke of nuptials?

“Deuce take it, I saved her from being beaten and raped! I took her to where she could be tended and healed.”

Daniel headed down the stairs with his burden, as if he carried a bandbox instead of a trunk. “You ought to know the
ton
don’t care a whit about the right or the reason. They only care about the looks of the thing. An earl’s son, a spinster lady alone in a house. Sounds like wedding bells to me. You better hope she’s guilty.”

“No, I shall not hope for that. And no one can force me to the altar.”

“I don’t know about that,” Daniel called back over his shoulder. “Your mother is a powerful woman. Made me take tea with her cronies and their daughters a few times. You know how I hate that kind of thing. Makes me break out in a rash.”

“That’s not pushing you to wed one of them.”

“I don’t know. Your mother had that look in her eye. I was glad she left for Bath when she did, except she did set a fine table. Oh, pull the door shut behind you, there’s a good fellow.”

There’s a wed man walking.

N
anny Brown clutched her heart when she opened Miss Carville’s door to see Rex looking as if he’d been run over by an oxcart.

Rex almost had palpitations too, when he saw the gun wavering in the old woman’s gnarled fingers.

“My stars!”

“My pistol.” Rex still had the mate tucked into his waistband. He gingerly reached out to take the weapon.

Nanny almost dropped it before he had his hands on the barrel. Daniel ducked, behind him.

“Oh, it is not loaded, but I thought it best to keep the thing nearby. My knitting needles are in my pocket and the warming pan is next to my chair.”

“You needed a weapon to defend yourself from Miss Carville?” Good grief, had he carelessly left his former nursemaid alone with a homicidal maniac? He’d supposed that the younger woman had a good excuse for shooting Hawley, if she actually did commit the murder. Not that she was liable to murder a frail old woman in her sleep along with the rest of Lady Royce’s household.

Rex shuddered to recall his last day in the army, when the same overconfidence in his intuition almost let a troop of French scouts fire on headquarters. He was the only casualty, thank goodness, or he never would have been able to forgive himself. Lud, if something happened to Nanny, he’d be in worse straits. She was not even a soldier.

He should have waited for morning to find his cousin, or left a message at Daniel’s rooms. He should have posted guards, or stood sentinel himself. He should have—

Nanny sniffed, then scowled at the odors of cheap ale and fine wine and clucked her tongue. “How much have you been drinking to come up with such a foolish notion? Of course I did not need to fend off Miss Carville. She is a lady, not a criminal. But someone loose in London killed that unfortunate man.” She stepped closer and peered up at Rex. “Did he attack you?”

“No, we encountered a spot of trouble at a gaming club, that’s all.” Rex touched his swollen nose. “A, um, discussion about the dice used.”

“It looks broken, which is no more than you deserve, gambling and drinking and brawling, on your first night in London. What will her ladyship think?”

Rex was about to say he did not give a rap for what the countess thought when Nanny caught sight of the large man standing back in the shadows of the hall. She clucked again. “I should have known. Daniel Stamfield, you always were up to no good. From what my sister tells me, you are no better now than the nasty little boy you always were, getting my lamb into trouble.”

Instead of taking offense, Daniel laughed and rubbed at his chin. “You always were blind when it came to your favorite. Everyone in Royston knew Rex was the ringleader. You must be the only one who thought he was an angel.”

“I’ll have you know I still do. Except for the gambling and drinking and brawling, of course.”

“And Daniel was never little, Nanny,” Rex put in, before he received another scolding.

“No, and he has never been other than a heathen, either. Is it true what my sister says about the night last month when you escorted Lady Royce to Almack’s?”

Rex looked back at his cousin in amazement. “You actually went to that pillar of propriety? The place they call the Marriage Mart?”

“I told you, your mother is a strong woman.”

Nanny poked at Daniel’s chest, but she was too short and stuck her finger in his stomach, grown soft in London’s clubs and pubs. “She said you scratched your arse right in front of your aunt’s friends and Princess Lieven.”

“I warned her that all that gossip and sham politeness made me itchy. It always did, but she insisted. Said I had to have outgrown throwing spots like a high-strung debutante. At least she never bludgeoned me into going again.”

Rex was laughing out loud. The wine at Daniel’s house might have had something to do with his hilarity, but the thought of his bumbling giant of a cousin among the dainty manners at Almack’s cheered him up considerably.

Daniel muttered, too low for Nanny’s hearing, “Keep laughing if you want your arm broken, too.” To Nanny he said, “I apologized to Aunt Margaret.”

“A great deal of good that did. Why, my sister said the poor lady decided to leave for Bath the next day, so she did not have to face any of her acquaintances. Which is why she wasn’t in Town to help Miss Carville last week. As for you, Master Jordan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, getting into a nasty brawl at your age. Why, you are supposed to be an officer and a gentleman, not sowing wild oats. For that matter, you are supposed to be proving Miss Carville’s innocence.”