Page 1 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

Chapter

One

JULY 1889

Steele House

A Vow Kept

Istood at the window that overlooked Grosvenor Square, desperate for a glimpse of her.

Three weeks had passed since we’d last spoken. Oh, I’d seen Rosalynd. I hadn’t deprived myself of that much. But it had been from a distance, as she climbed aboard a carriage on her way to a ball or some other social event. It hadn’t been close enough to capture her luminescence, to see how her eyes lit up when she found something amusing, to breathe her bewitching scent. To touch her.

I had asked the Queen for an instrument. She’d granted it. And I had spent every day since learning to wield it against a man who did not exist on paper but existed everywhere else. He had been the hand on the river. He had stood in Rosalynd’s own ballroom and told her she was remarkable, then walked out leaving no name. I was hunting a ghost. But to catch him, I'd surrendered the one thing I wanted most: Rosalynd. Beautiful, captivating Rosalynd.

That was the part no one knew. London believed the Duke of Steele and Lady Rosalynd had cooled toward one another, as the overheated do when a season runs long. Rosalynd believed the gentler version—the Queen’s warning about scandal, which fit the truth closely enough to pass for it. She did not know I had gone to the Queen myself. She did not know that every yard between us was a yard he could not use against her. Were I to hunt this man with her at my side, he would come for Rosalynd. So I had taken the choice from her.

She would never forgive me, if she knew. She would not know. I had made certain of it.

In the three weeks since, I had not been idle. What the Queen had granted me was not manpower—a clerk or a watcher I could hire myself—but sanction.

With her authority behind me, I had gone to Scotland Yard and obtained what no private gentleman could command: Chief Inspector Graves and a handful of officers, handpicked and sworn to secrecy, working a case that sat in no ledger and bore no inspector's name.

I had also brought in Caleb Finch—the enquiry agent whose discretion I trusted beyond any badge—and Mr. Whitfield, a forensic accountant with an uncanny gift for following money wherever it chose to hide. Between us, the thing had begun to take shape. But it was slow work. Maddening work. And the only thing keeping me on my feet.

It would pass, I told myself. This longing, this ache. I just needed to keep busy. Heaven knew I had enough to do. I returned to my desk and the draft bill on the regulation of cabmen’s fares because the work of the Lords could not be ignored. Dull. Boring. Maybe that would keep me from the window.

An hour later, Milford’s knock at my study door was a relief. “Lord Nicholas, Your Grace.”

The tension I’d been holding eased. My brother would provide a welcome diversion. “Send him in.”

Nicky strode in with the air of a man who hadn’t a care in the world. But then he’d always been the sunny one while Philip was the scapegrace, and I the solid, serious one. But then I was the Duke of Steele.

“Warwick.”

I came to my feet. “Nicky. Good to see you.”

He came forward and embraced me, which was unusual. We had outgrown such gestures, but he revived them at intervals when he meant something by them. I did not ask what he meant. He would tell me soon enough.

Stepping back, he looked at me a moment longer than usual. “You are losing weight.”

“I am the same weight I was at the beginning of the year.”

“You are not. I can tell.”

“Then it is the cut of the coat.”

“It is not the cut of the coat. It is your face. Your face has gone narrow, Warwick. You have not been eating. Mother has remarked upon it.”

“I am glad to hear that Mother has continued her interests. Now, shall I order tea or whiskey?”

He gave a theatrical shudder. “Too hot for tea. Something refreshing would suit.”

Milford, still by the door, spoke up. “Some lemonade, perhaps, Lord Nicholas?”

“That’s the ticket, Milford,” Nicky replied. After Milford withdrew, he took the chair in front of my desk. “Did you see her?”

“See who?”