Ivory and Steel

Ivory and Steel

Janice Bennett

Bow Street’s Best, Book One

Miss Phyllida Dearne loves tragedy but she prefers it to remain on the stage. After their opera party is drugged, Phyllida awakens to find her sister Louisa, Marchioness of Allbury, has been murdered—with a steel blade hidden beneath the ivory sticks of Phyllida’s fan. First on the scene is the marquis’s old friend, Captain Lord Ingram. Phyllida’s immediate attraction to him is shattered as he makes it clear he disapproves of her as much as he did her sister. But dreams of romance die hard.

Benjamin Frake of Bow Street sets to work at once uncovering clues and investigating suspects. Phyllida and Ingram join forces to assist the Runner and Ingram’s antipathy toward Phyllida blossoms into friendship—and something much more. Phyllida fights against what she is certain are her unfounded hopes of love as she fears he has an ulterior motive. Frake has made it clear Ingram is a very likely suspect and Phyllida finds her logical mind, which can believe in Ingram’s guilt, in aching conflict with her heart, which cannot.

Ivory and Steel

Janice Bennett

Dedication

For Adele, in loving memory.

Chapter One

Tragedy, that’s what Miss Phyllida Dearne adored. Tragedy sung in high style with a frail soprano weeping for the suitor torn from her arms, a tenor vowing eternal love beyond the grave and a booming basso unable to quench their undying passion despite his foul murders.

Unfortunately tragedy didn’t always stay on the stage where it belonged, while love all too frequently did.

With the tip of her muslin handkerchief, Miss Dearne dabbed the moisture from her blue-gray eyes as the curtain of the Royal Opera House closed on the second act to thunderous applause. The production was perfection, she could not have hoped to attend a better performance. And it was not over yet. Warmth flooded through her at that thought. For a little longer she could remain in that romantic, tragic world.

A sigh escaped the thin, mousy young lady seated at her side and Miss Dearne smiled. Apparently she was not alone in her appreciation. She touched Miss Yarborough’s gloved hand, which clasped the ivory fan the girl had painted herself. “Do you enjoy it, Constance?”

Miss Constance Yarborough brushed her unruly brown hair back from her angular features and a trembling smile replaced her habitually nervous expression. “It is so very beautiful, Phyllida. If only life could be so lovely.” Her gaze fell to her unbecoming Pomona green silk gown, a cast-off from her benefactress.

“Has it ended at last?” Louisa, Marchioness of Allbury, fluttered her fan before her lovely, youthful face with no real intent to hide her yawn of abject boredom. She rose in a rustle of amber silk and moved to the railing of the box to peer across the theater. Diamonds glittered in her honey-blonde curls and sparkled about her creamy breast, emphasizing the very low
décolletage
. “Do look, Tristram, it is that dreadful Wentworth woman. She has absolutely the worst taste in gowns I have ever seen. Do you not agree, Mother Allbury? Such a wretched color.”

Rosalinde, Dowager Lady Allbury, turned from her conversation with her only son and leveled her opera glasses at the box across the way. “It is almost the same shade as my own,” she pronounced, and directed a glare of deep loathing upon her daughter-in-law.

“Why, yes, so it is.” Louisa’s soft laughter sounded.

“Louisa, you should not,” Phyllida whispered to her sister.

“Oh, fiddle.” Louisa waved the reproof aside. “Do move over, Phyllida. I want to see into the pit. It is always so amusing.”

Dutifully, Phyllida moved out of her sister’s way, though she watched her with a sense of foreboding. Louisa did little without some ulterior purpose.

Louisa scanned the crowded benches as if searching for someone in particular, her lovely features set in a frown of concentration. Her gaze riveted and with a soft exclamation of triumph she lifted one gloved and beringed hand in an imperious beckoning gesture.

Phyllida raised her own opera glasses and scanned the pit. Who could interest her sister
there?
The vulgar unwashed, Louisa called them, as if she herself had not known poverty before her marriage to the wealthy marquis only eight months ago.

The crowd below jostled each other, as everyone seemed to stand at once to push their way through the narrow aisles in search of refreshment. Except for one man—one slightly built, dapper little man who blended into the motley throng except for his cane. The roisterous mob parted to let him pass, almost as if they feared contamination by touching him. Or was it the man himself they feared? He paused and looked directly up into their box then nodded as if coming to a decision. He strode forward once more, leaning on his cane, and the crowd parted before him then closed over his wake as he passed. He disappeared from sight below them.

Louisa, with that self-satisfied smile Phyllida distrusted, turned back into the box. “Have you requested refreshments, Tristram? Champagne, I hope? Ah, and lemonade for Phyllida and Constance, of course.”

Tristram Sylvester Rutherford, Fifth Marquis of Allbury, straightened his tall, lanky frame and his hazel eyes clouded with displeasure. “If they would rather have champagne—”

“What utter nonsense! Of course they would not.” She dismissed her husband’s objections with the airy wave of a hand and her lips formed a pretty pout. “Really, Tristram, it seems I must have the ordering of everything.”

A dull flush crept up to the roots of his gray-flecked auburn hair. “My duty—”

Louisa laughed. “Your duty! Do you forget your duty to me? You sit there talking to your
mother
,”
she said the word with scorn, “and leave me to my own devices.”

A light rap sounded on the door to their private box and the marquis turned in relief and bade the caller enter. The man Phyllida had seen in the pit stepped inside and doffed his hat, revealing a close crop of blond hair above a face boasting no more than five-and-thirty years. His large, innocent blue eyes darted quickly over the five occupants. Assessing them, Phyllida realized, and her interest quickened. He seemed completely at ease in this august company.

Louisa turned her head in a swirl of blonde curls and directed a calculating look at him from blue eyes as bright and hard as the diamonds that sparkled against her throat. She fluttered her fan before her rouge-touched face then closed it with an audible snap.

“Mr.…Frake, is it not? How good of you to join us.” Her brilliant smile flashed and the uninitiated might have made the error of believing she was delighted to see him.

Mr. Frake awarded the marchioness a brief, suspicious bow. Apparently he was initiated. “Your ladyship.”

Her eyes glittered. “You remember my mamma-in-law? The
dowager
marchioness?” Only the slightest emphasis sounded on the word.

It confirmed Phyllida’s suspicions. Louisa had brought this poor man to the box for the sole purpose of enraging her mother-in-law—though why his presence should irritate the dowager Phyllida couldn’t tell.

Apparently Mr. Frake guessed her intentions. He inched a step closer to the door.

The dowager directed a basilisk stare at him and inclined her head a bare fraction of an inch in acknowledgment. The ostrich plume rammed into her purple satin turban barely jiggled.

The marquis frowned. “Mr. Frake?” He turned his inquiring gaze on his wife.

Louisa merely laughed.

The man folded his arms and his disconcerting gaze moved over the other occupants once more.

Phyllida flinched as it settled on her. The eeriest sensation crept through her, as if he could read her every thought. Her chin rose a fraction and challenge lit her eyes. She was well accustomed to being compared to her lovely nineteen-year-old sister and being judged a faded copy. Louisa’s eyes were a sparkling blue, Phyllida’s closer to gray. Louisa’s curls shone like honey while Phyllida’s were more often likened to straw. If likened to anything at all. Far too frequently people overlooked a spinster who had celebrated her two-and-twentieth birthday.

Her fingers tightened on the simple gray muslin of her skirts. Everything about her must scream her standing as a poor relation.

Whether Louisa would have spoken further to the odd Mr. Frake remained a moot point. A knock sounded on the door and as it opened the marchioness seemed to forget his presence.

Lord Woking, a portly gentleman in his late fifties, nodded a greeting then stood aside to permit his wife to enter. Harriet, Lady Woking, swept in, her blue silk shawl trailing behind her. Three long strands of pearls slipped back over one shoulder and even the plumes in her silken turban drooped in the same flowing line. She presented her faded, scented cheek to the marchioness for a salute.

Louisa brushed it with her own and withdrew at once. “I didn’t know you would be here this night, dear Harriet.”

Lady Woking bestowed a patently false smile on her. “We are generally at the opera on the same evenings, are we not? Along with the Enderbys.”

“Are we?” Louisa shrugged her disinterest.

A waiter pushed his way inside, bearing a tray on which rested a bottle of champagne, a decanter of lemonade and five glasses. This he placed on a small table at the rear of the box and bowed to the marquis.

Allbury frowned. “Only five glasses?”

“Yes, m’lord. That’s all as was ordered.” With a deft movement the man uncorked the champagne, replaced the bottle on the tray and bowed himself out the door.

Allbury picked it up and glanced at his visitors.

“Oh no, Tristram.” Louisa pouted. “Not the champagne. Not
now.”

His lips tightened. “And why not? Your manners, Louisa—” He broke off as two more people entered. His scowl deepened and he replaced the bottle beside the lemonade.

Mrs. Maria Enderby, gowned in pink silk that seemed to consist entirely of flounces and artificial roses, greeted Louisa with a slight frown on features that had not yet lost their childish roundness despite her eighteen years. Her husband followed, his habitual smirk marring his handsome features. He nodded a casual acknowledgment to the others.

Mr. Frake, apparently forgotten by his noble hostess, inched to the farthest corner of the box as if he wished someone might move enough to clear his path to the door. Phyllida could sympathize. The opera box wasn’t meant to hold ten people. She cast an uncertain glance toward the balcony rail, against which she was pressed. It was a long way down to the pit below. She cleared her throat to point out her imminent danger but the words never reached her lips.

A tall gentleman in a deep-green velvet coat of military cut, his neckcloth tied in the exquisite folds of the Mathematical, had managed to lever himself inside. Dark, thick hair waved back from his forehead and wide-set green eyes blazed in a face of angles and planes. Phyllida drew an unsteady breath. Now
there
was a man worth singing an aria or two about.

The marquis sprang to his feet, pushing back his chair, thus creating an extra few inches of space. He leaned across his mother, seemingly oblivious to her outraged intake of breath. “Ingram?” he cried. “Good God, man, is it really you? It’s been a dog’s age!”

The newcomer caught his outstretched hand but his response disappeared in the rising murmur of the other conversations. Phyllida craned her neck as the occupants in the box jockeyed for positions and was awarded a view of the man’s broad shoulders covered by the exquisitely cut velvet. Then he turned, his gaze drifting across the occupants, and his expression froze. Phyllida followed the direction of his fixed stare, though there was no need. The lovely Louisa took most men that way.

Phyllida’s budding dreams faded, leaving a lingering sadness. She did
not
begrudge her sister her easy conquests, she never had. But just once—just
this
once…

Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Mr. Frake making good his escape. She wished she could follow him.

Miss Yarborough rose as one of the visitors addressed a question to her. Phyllida stood also and eased her way past them to her sister’s side. Her gaze, though, rested wistfully on the marquis as he introduced his friend to the dowager. Captain Lord Ingram, she heard the name. Then Maria Enderby spoke to her and with reluctance Phyllida turned her attention to the girl.

Along with the others, Phyllida maneuvered about the box as best she could, doing the pretty, until at last the orchestra returned. The visitors took their leave to go back to their own seats and Louisa sank once more into her chair at the rear of the box. She let out a bored sigh.

“Now, Tristram,” she said as the first strains of the overture to Act Three began. “The champagne, if you please.”

* * * * *

From somewhere came the low rumble of voices but it required too much effort for Phyllida to sort them out. She shouldn’t be this tired, yet it was an effort even to move her head. The attempt left her temples throbbing.

“Miss Dearne?” A deep voice sounded from a great distance, insistent, forcing her mind to function once more. An attractive voice, filled with resonance—and impatience. Why couldn’t it just let her go back to sleep?

“Miss Dearne,” it repeated, firmer, demanding her attention. Now someone chaffed her wrist and she found it irritating.

With an effort, she forced her scratchy lids open. A face filled her vision, unfocused, just blazing green eyes set wide and deep beneath thick dark brows. She blinked and angular features took shape, vaguely familiar and decidedly annoyed.

“Lord…Captain Lord Ingram?” she murmured. Her mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton wool. She shifted aching muscles and the man caught her as she slid out of her chair.

“Steady, Miss Dearne. You remember me then?” His frowning gaze never wavered from her face.

“Of course. You’re a friend of Allbury’s. You came to the box during the interval. But what are you doing—” She broke off and looked around. She was not, as she had somehow assumed, in her room at the Allbury mansion on Berkeley Square. The plush hangings belonged to the Royal Opera House. “What…I must have fallen—”

Beside her the inert figure of Miss Constance Yarborough slumped in her chair. Beyond, Phyllida saw the marquis, the dowager, even Louisa, all asleep where they had been sitting.

She turned startled eyes on Captain Lord Ingram. “What is the matter with them?”