Page 8 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

The inspector in charge of the opera house murder, who was now assisting me in enquiries into the masked man. But that was something she did not need to know. “Leave it to me, Rosalynd. As a matter of fact, leave the entire investigation to me.”

Her eyes sparked. “Do you honestly think I’m going to allow you to investigate this on your own without my involvement?”

I knew she wouldn’t agree with my suggestion, but she could not be involved in this investigation. I needed to keep her safe. So, I played the only ace left to me. “Have you forgotten Her Majesty asked us to sever our connection?”

She rushed to her feet. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. But this is my brother and his life we’re talking about. I’ll be damned if I don’t investigate this murder right along with you. Once it is over, we can resume our ridiculous charade.” She jabbed a finger into my chest. “Don't you dare freeze me out.”

The vibrant essence of her was back, the one I hadn’t stopped thinking about. “Even if you are forced to marry a man you have come to despise? That’s what you said on the train from Windsor.” It had hurt, that, though it had been entirely deserved.

She hitched up her chin. “It won’t come to that, Steele.” She turned her back to me and began to pace. “We need to learn the name of the murder victim. You’ve already thought of that. Can’t do anything until we know it.” She turned back to me. “Once you know, put Finch on it. Have him find out everything about the man. And then send me the details. I’ll see if there is any connection to Cosmos.”

“Anything else?”

She stepped toward me and thrust out her chin. "Yes. Go to the devil."

I brushed a finger along her jaw. “I’ll gladly go if you come along with me.”

She batted away my hand. “Don’t touch me. That leads to…other things, and I’d just as soon not be chained to you for the rest of my life.”

Apparently, she was perfectly entitled to prod me like an errant schoolboy. Touching her in return, however, was quite beyond the pale. Fighting back a grin, I inclined my head. “As you wish, my lady.”

She gave me one last withering look, turned smartly on her heel, and swept from the study. A minute later, I heard the front door close.

For a moment, I stood in the silence she left behind, feeling the happiest I had felt in the last three weeks. But then reality asserted itself, and I rang for Milford. “Have the carriage brought round.” There was no time to lose.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

As the carriage rattled toward Scotland Yard, the shape of the thing finally began to assemble itself. The masked man had not planted Cosmos's pistol beside a body merely to ruin him.

Cosmos had never been the object. He had been the bait.

The pistol guaranteed that Rosalynd would involve herself in the investigation. He knew she would move heaven and earth to clear her brother's name.

Cosmos was not the prize.

The prize was Rosalynd.

Chapter

Four

A Name Without a Face

Aduke does not walk the corridors of Scotland Yard at will. He is known at the door, remarked upon at the desk, and his errand guessed at before he has gained the stair. So while I conducted my covert investigation, I had kept away from the Yard, meeting the men I needed in a back room in Villiers Street, above a chop-house whose proprietor asked no questions of gentlemen who paid for the use of his upstairs room.

But today I came through the front. In daylight, in my own name, for shadows do not get doors opened on the record. And the record was precisely what I had come for: the name of the man found dead at Kew Gardens, with Cosmos's pistol set beside it.

“The Duke of Steele," I told the sergeant. "For Inspector Graves."

His pen stopped. A title would do that. He sent a constable off at a trot, leaving me in the vestibule with the smell of coal smoke, lamp oil, and damp stone.

Graves came down the corridor himself rather than send a man for me. He was a spare, careful man, in his fifties, with a habit of looking at a thing twice before he spoke of it once. We had taken each other's measure across other investigations, including the opera house business, and arrived at something I could not call friendship but would not, in honesty, call it less.

"Your Grace." He did not offer his hand in the vestibule. "We'll want my office."

I nodded.

His office was a narrow room with one barred window and a desk buried under working papers. He shut the door behind us and gestured to a chair in front of his desk.