In Pursuit of a Scandalous Lady (15 page)

And then he was out into the garden, the dark, cold sky of night above him, lit from behind by the fire.

“Julian!” Rebecca screamed his name, her voice full of relief and tears.

Dazed, he let her guide him to the back of the garden, away from the dangerous home being consumed.

“Set her here,” Rebecca said, gesturing to a bench.

He did so, even as his protesting lungs began to cough. He tore the scarf from his face, then braced his hands on his thighs, coughing and coughing until he thought his lungs would burst. He vaguely watched Rebecca on her knees beside the old woman. She was holding the woman's head to the side while she, too, coughed weakly. The sound rattled in the woman's lungs in a way that didn't bode well.

When at last her body seemed to wilt as the onslaught of coughing weakened, the old woman murmured, “Roger…Roger…”

Rebecca looked questioningly at him over her shoulder, and Julian pressed his lips together grimly as he shook his head.

“I am so sorry about your son, Mrs. Eastfield,” she murmured. “But you must be quiet now and gather your strength.”

Mrs. Eastfield pushed at her soothing hands. “For what? There's nothing…left. I was…already dying, but I never thought…that my poor boy would leave this earth before I.” She closed her eyes and wept silent tears, her body shaking.

“The flames didn't kill Roger,” Julian said as he knelt beside Rebecca. “Something else did.”

Rebecca gasped as she searched his face, but didn't interfere.

“Murdered,” the old woman said, her voice raspy. “Murdered…right in front of me. Oh God…” She started coughing again.

The sounds of a clanging siren had grown louder, the roar of the fire beginning to compete for attention. But no one came back into the garden. Julian knew the firemen would be most concerned with keeping the fire from spreading to the houses on each side.

“She needs help,” Rebecca said urgently. “We can find out about Roger later.”

“There won't be a ‘later,'” he murmured.

Mrs. Eastfield lifted her head. “Roger?…Did you know my son?”

Rebecca took Julian's wet scarf and tried to dab at the old woman's sooty face, but she pushed her away.

Rebecca sighed. “I knew him in London, Mrs. Eastfield. He was a gifted artist.”

“Then you…should know. You can tell…the police. My son was…murdered.”

“You can tell them yourself,” Rebecca said gently.

“No! I…I'm dying. I have been for a long time. I need you to know…what happened!”

The old woman flailed, agitated, setting off her
coughing again, as Julian met Rebecca's frightened, sad, eyes.

“We'll listen,” he said, putting a hand on Mrs. Eastfield's bony shoulder. “Tell us what you can.”

They fetched water from the well in the rear of the garden, propped the woman on Julian's folded coat, and after several sips she began her halting story.

“Three men burst in…demanding he tell them about a necklace, a diamond. Roger…Roger said he didn't know what they were talking about, but…they hit him”—she gave a weak sob—“and he admitted that he'd had it. Said it was paste—paste! But they didn't believe him…and at last, even I believed that it was…priceless. But poor Roger had lent it…to one of his models. Oh God, they hit him again. The man…in charge…said it was his, that Roger had only been hired to paint his wife…and said my boy had stolen it.”

Julian exchanged a quick glance with Rebecca. A tear tracked through the dirt on her face as she stared down at the fading old woman.

“Roger…wasn't a thief! Oh God, they kept hitting him, and…at last he admitted the man's wife had given him the jewel. The man…wouldn't believe it…and Roger was forced to say he'd been…intimate with the woman. She said…she was bored with the diamond. I never saw such…fury and hatred…in a man. He refused to believe the words, said his wife told him Roger
had stolen it…and he hit my boy, hit him hard with a vase. He didn't move again…my poor boy…”

Her next cough was far weaker, and she couldn't keep her eyes open. Every breath was a gasping effort.

Rebecca was openly crying. “Mrs. Eastfield, you must rest.”

“Too late,” she moaned, her head rolling back and forth. “Too late. They didn't care…about me. I clutched my boy even as they set fire to my home to…hide what they'd done.”

“Do you know who they were?” Julian asked urgently.

She shuddered, her body arching. “Windebank,” she whispered. “They called him…Windebank. He said…he was going…home. Oh, Roger—Roger—” Then she collapsed back onto the bench and became still.

In that moment of silence that cocooned them, they both stared at the woman's body. Rebecca sniffled and rubbed at her eyes. Julian felt frozen, stunned, telling himself to think logically, calmly, even as a rising tide of fury seemed to choke him.

“Julian?” Rebecca said, shaking his arm. “What is it? Do you know that name?”

“My uncle,” he said between clenched teeth. “He's my uncle.”

S
till on her knees, Rebecca gaped up at Julian, his expression harsh and forbidding. With his dark features and heavy brows, the width of his shoulders, he looked like a man to be feared. But she didn't fear him.

She was angry with herself, had stood outside a burning building and let him take all the risk, wondering if she'd ever see him again. He'd coddled her, as she'd allowed everyone in her family to do for her entire life. A person of action would make her own choices. Instead of proving that she could be his partner, she'd wrung her hands and waited while terror and helplessness choked her.

Now he faced a revelation that might be worse to him than the danger of a burning building. An ache of worry and sympathy tied a knot beneath her breastbone. He finally had a connection to the theft of the diamond—and it was within his family.

Had his own uncle stolen the Scandalous Lady?

Before she could speak, she heard a crash at the back of the garden near the alley. Julian came swiftly to his feet and began to run. The growing fire lit the night, throwing wild shadows against the garden wall. A tall bush shuddered back and forth, although there was no wind.

Rising, she watched in amazement as Julian flung himself toward the bush. It bore his weight, and he swiftly scaled it so that he could look over the wall. He froze, suspended, and she thought he might throw himself over and leave. But instead, he lowered himself back to the ground and returned to her.

“What did you see?” she cried.

“A man at the far end of the alley. Running
away
from the fire. It would have been useless to chase him.”

“Why would you have even considered it?” she asked.

“I think he was left to watch for the fire, to make certain no one escaped alive. He also could have been ordered to look for us.”

She swallowed heavily and shuddered. “On orders from—Windebank?”

Julian shrugged and said nothing.

She looked down at the poor dead woman. “We must do something for her.”

“It's too late to help her, Rebecca.”

“But—”

“They'll think she crawled out of the fire only to die. We can't involve ourselves. Can you imagine the questions?”

“But we have some of the answers! It was all about this—” She broke off, putting a hand to the hidden jewel at her throat. It almost seemed to burn her, as if men killing for it made it evil.

“Windebank will soon know we were here. We can't waste time, or he'll find some way to elude punishment. And do you want the world to know of our involvement—together?”

“It isn't about us, or some foolish notion of impropriety!” she cried, rocking back in outrage.

“I don't want it to be about our deaths either!”

She stared up at him, with no way to counter such a truth. She watched in shock as he knelt down and gently lifted Mrs. Eastfield's head so that he could retrieve his coat.

“No one can know we were here,” he murmured, looking at Rebecca with his piercing gray eyes. “Come with me.”

She didn't hesitate—what would be the point? Climbing to her feet stiffly, slowly, she didn't protest when he took her arm and half lifted her. He grabbed their portmanteau, and they went out through the garden gate to walk several blocks away from the fire.

“Where will we go?” she asked at last. His face was so forbidding that she wished to distract him—for the
moment. But they would soon have to discuss what they'd learned. He needed to talk about it, though she sensed he wouldn't want to.

“We can't afford the inn where the wagon left us,” he said.

“Can there be any place worse than that?” she asked with faint sarcasm.

He nodded. “A lodging house in a poorer section of the town.”

“Will it have food?”

At last he seemed to really see her. “No. We'll look for a tavern after we make arrangements for the night.”

As the last gray of twilight faded, they found a lodging house where Rebecca saw a truth she'd never imagined before. Each floor was one open room, and people of both sexes, even children, slept wherever they could, on pallets and bedding or even on straw. Though the windows and doors were open, the smell made her nauseous. Several candles guttered on broken crates, and she could see more than one child stare at her listlessly.

“I'm sorry,” Julian said in a low voice. “We have barely enough coins to eat.”

“Don't apologize. It isn't your fault.” She clutched his arm when a rat boldly scurried past them. “Can we find a tavern before we sleep?”

“Of course. But first I have to clean off this soot.”

He paid a halfpenny for some rags and a basin, and drew up water from the well in the middle of the courtyard shared by all the surrounding tenements. He washed his face as best he could, then she took the rag from him and searched for the last smudges he'd missed. He watched her, his face so close to hers, those opaque eyes revealing nothing. One eyebrow seemed singed at the end, and he had several red patches on his hands and face. He'd come so close to being seriously injured.

“I can't wear this filthy shirt,” he said, and pulled it over his head.

She felt flushed with embarrassment that he should be half clothed so openly, but of course anyone here who saw him thus would be suitably wary before challenging him. She bit her lip and said nothing as he pulled out his only fresh shirt from their sack. How could she clean them while staying in such a place?

At last he put his arm around her and she welcomed his strength and protection as they left the lodging house. She felt abashed that in all her dreams of grand adventures, she never imagined what some people had to live with every day, with never a hope to escape. And what did
she
want to escape…parties where she ate the best food, wore the most expensive clothing? She wanted to bury her face against him so she wouldn't have to confront the truth about herself.

To her surprise, a nearby tavern proved half decent, and several cleanly dressed women were sitting among
the men, eating. When Julian would have taken any table, Rebecca asked the barkeep for one in the back, where they could have privacy. Again, they sat in a settle, whose high wooden back protected their conversation from the table behind them. In front of them was the hearth with its coal grate empty on the warm spring evening. The room was large and noisy enough that people across the room would never be able to hear them—not that anyone looked their way.

As they awaited their order of mutton and boiled potatoes, she kept near him, her hand still wrapped about his arm. His gaze seemed unfocused, his expression impassive.

“Julian?”

He blinked several times before looking down at her.

“Windebank is your uncle?” She felt him stiffen. “No, you can't keep quiet now. This involves me, too. And if this man knows we're aware of his crimes, and we're in danger, I should know everything.” When he was still silent, a muscle working in his jaw, she softly added, “You would feel better if you spoke about it. Tell me, Julian. I want to help.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don't even know where to begin.”

“Are you certain Windebank is your uncle?”

“The name is rare. And he had more access to the diamond than most. But I never suspected—never imagined he would steal it.”

“Is he your mother's brother?”

“No. His wife, Lady Florence, is sister to my father, making her the daughter of an earl. She always thought highly of herself, and is rather melodramatic. I can see her having an affair.”

“But apparently Windebank couldn't.”

“Harold Windebank,” he murmured. “He's a gentleman without title, and I remember being surprised that my aunt, so self-important, had not married a nobleman.”

“Perhaps she loved him.”

“Not enough, apparently.” His voice was grim.

“You are certain they stole the Scandalous Lady?”

“How else would they have gotten it? The hue and cry was great, since the jewel was bestowed so openly by a grateful maharajah. If Windebank had ‘accidentally' found it, he would surely have returned it. And the police never did have proof that someone broke into the house to take it.”

“Did your father ever mention a belief that it was stolen by a family member?”

“No, he…”

She watched as Julian's face turned ashen.

“Julian? What is it?”

He cleared his throat, but his voice was still hoarse, and she knew it wasn't because of the smoke he'd inhaled.

“My father was humiliated by the accusation that he'd
sold such a precious gift for his own benefit. A darkness of the mind seemed to come down over him. It didn't seem to matter to him that soon I would turn eighteen, and I would inherit enough to save the earldom.”

Worry coalesced inside her at the pain in his voice, and she almost didn't want to know what happened next.

“He died,” Julian said impassively. “We were hosting a hunt during the weekend celebration of my birthday. Everyone was there, including my uncle.” His face seemed to twist as he said the words. “They found my father's body. He'd gone off alone, chasing the deer. It looked like he tripped climbing over a fence, discharging his gun.”

“It was an accident,” she murmured.

“Everyone said that to our faces,” he said bitterly. “But he was an expert huntsman, and knew our land from childhood. He would have never made so foolish a mistake. I knew what no one would say—he'd killed himself.”

She gasped. “Oh, Julian!”

“I never said those words aloud, but others in Society did. They assumed Father killed himself out of guilt over the scandal of the missing diamond, and what he'd allowed the earldom to come to.”

She touched her hand to the jewel hidden beneath her gown. It seemed cursed, the source of so much bloodshed.

“I was just so angry with him, too angry to grieve. I thought it cowardly for him to leave us rather than help resurrect the earldom.” He bowed his head, and rubbed his face with one hand. “I believed the worst of him, Rebecca, even though it didn't make sense. I was inheriting money; everything would have been better. I didn't understand why he would commit suicide…but maybe he didn't. Maybe he discovered the truth about who stole the jewel, and to silence him, Uncle Harold killed him.”

He had a spasm of coughing then, and she patted his back and kept her arm around him, though she couldn't reach far.

“I blamed him,” he said at last, his voice rough, “when all along I should have been looking for his murderer.”

“Stop this,” she said firmly. “Are you a god, all-knowing, all-powerful, that you should have been able to figure everything out? Why would you even suspect your uncle capable of such a thing? Only now do you know he's a murderer of innocents.”

“I should have known,” he said too quietly.

“And I think you're being arrogant to assume so much. You were eighteen!”

“This eighteen-year-old saved an earldom.”

She was shocked. “You really
do
think you can fix anything, don't you? As if everything should rightly rest on your shoulders. Oh, Julian, how can you hold your
self to heights you would never expect from another?”

Their mutton arrived then, and he began to eat, his face back to that impassive mask that kept her out. She could think of nothing else to say that would make a difference. He needed to let all of this sort out inside him, to come to peace with this new revelation that changed his past.

He was a man who didn't like to make mistakes, who controlled everything around him. And in this, he'd had no control except over his emotions, and he thought even those had failed him. What must it be like to believe the worst of your father, and then have it all shown to be wrong?

 

As they walked back to the lodging house, Julian stared at the decrepit building and came to a decision. He pulled her to a stop beneath a gaslight before they reached the open door, where people lingered on the stoop.

“After I earn money tomorrow, I'm sending you home.”

She rolled her eyes, which only irritated him more.

“Take the necklace and keep it safe,” he insisted. “Keep yourself safe.”

“Julian, I have a very good reason why I will disobey you.”

“Rebecca—”

“I listened to you, now you can listen to me. How
do you even know if I will be safe? Your uncle knows I have the jewel, and now he'll surely think there's a chance I know what he did in that house to those poor people.”

“Your brother will—”

“My brother is not in London, and neither is the duke.”

“Then you'll go the Metropolitan Police.”

“And tell them what? ‘Officer, I have this rare diamond which has been stolen and now several people are dead because of it.' Julian, they could just as easily believe I'm the murderer.”

“They would never—”

“I posed for a nude portrait. Will they think I'm an innocent Society miss? Even you don't believe that of me.”

He winced, wondering if he'd hurt her. If only she didn't make sense.

“And I don't want to leave you,” she added softly, slipping her arm into his and leaning her head against his shoulder.

He didn't know what to say to that.

“You're suffering, Julian.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“You've discovered things about your family you never imagined possible. You shouldn't be alone right now.”

He thought of the days they had spent together, the
fascinating revelations of her personality as if he'd peeled back each petal of a blossom. She made him crazy; she made him laugh; she made him ache with lust. She confused the hell out of him. Did he want that distraction right now?

But Rebecca was right—he couldn't risk sending her back. He trusted himself to protect her more than he trusted anyone else.