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A nod. “He planned on selling her. He meant to ship her off to some animal named Rouge, who sold women as prostitutes. And he was going to beat me until I told him her whereabouts. I couldn't allow any of that. Something inside me just snapped.” She inclined her head, gazing thoughtfully up at Royce. “I often relive that moment. And I wonder what I would have done if he'd disregarded my threats and continued advancing toward me. Would I have pulled the trigger? I honestly don't think I could have—not then. Maybe because he's my father, and maybe because I hadn't yet actually heard him hire an assassin to do away with Stacie. If I already had, or if I'd seen Father either hurt Stacie or shove her onto that ship bound for Calais, my anger might have won out over my reticence. I don't know.”
She inhaled shakily. “But with the assassin, it's different. He's a cold-blooded killer who's made it flagrantly clear he intends to murder Stacie and her unborn child. In his case ... Royce, I think I could shoot to kill.”
In response, Royce's jaw clenched. “I know you could,” he replied, that fierce mixture of pride and protectiveness welling up inside him. “But you wouldn't be able to do it fast enough. I'd beat you to it. Because I'm the one who's going to kill that bastard.”
A tiny shiver went through Breanna, as if some premonition told her that's precisely how it would happen.
Blindly, as if to ward off the ugliness of their discus s ion, she reached up, twined her arms around Royce's neck. “No more.” She tugged his mouth down to hers, obliterating all talk of the assassin by rekindling the beauty they'd just shared. “No more talk about him tonight” She pressed closer, slurring her hips ever so slightly, drawing Royce into her melting warmth. “Tonight is ours,” she whispered. “ I want nothing else to intrude.”
Royce responded with an overwhelming urgency his body hardening to rigid fullness, swelling to fill hers. “ It won't,” he murmured, rolling her to her back, pressing deep inside her. “Not tonight. Not ever.”
19
“ You ' re saying there's no connection among the victims, at least not f inancially,” Royce stated, taking a healthy swallow of brandy and leaning against the sitting-room mantel, regarding Hibbert, who'd just returned from his investigative excursion.
“None.” Hibbert settled himself in a chair, and glanced through his notes. “Except that they all lived in London and were all affluent.”
“What about their wills?”
“Four separate solicitors drew them up. I spoke with all of them. They had nothing substantial to offer in the way of information. As for the beneficiaries, none were common among the victims. Each of the wives stood to inherit first. But, in the event the wives died before they did, each gentleman made different provisions. In two of the cases, the estates were bequeathed to grown daughters by a previous marriage, in one case to a grown nephew. In the case of Lord Hart, it was left to a son he'd sired with one of his mistresses.”
Royce frowned. “Nothing to the children they shared with their current wives?”
“There were no children with their current wives. That was the only other link I found among the four noblemen. Their wives were significantly younger than they, and had been married a relatively short period of time—three years or less. My guess is that's what led Bow Street to suspect the women were involved. They had huge fortunes to gain and long years in which to enjoy them.”
“Have any of the beneficiaries pressed to collect their money?”
“No.” Hibbert shook his head. “They're all wealthy in their own right, other than Hart's legitimate son, who ran off years ago and took to the sea. The other three are waiting patiently. They're more interested in finding out who killed the victims and kidnapped their wives than in claiming an inheritance.”
His frown deepening, Royce stared off into space. “So the men all had young wives—wives who disappeared, taken by a kidnapper who's made no attempt to get at their husbands' money.” He took another swallow of brandy. “Which brings us to the question, if the killer isn't holding these women for ransom, what did he do with them? Murder them? If so, why haven't the bodies turned up? If not, what would he want with them?”
Abruptly, Royce broke off, his own words finding their mark.
Realization struck hard, and the missing piece fell into place.
“Dammit,” Royce bit out, slamming his goblet to the sideboard. “It's been right in front of me all this time and I never saw it.” He turned, his hard stare finding Hibbert. “We've been assuming the men were his intended victims. They weren't. They were merely sport—as I said, a sick game of target practice to ready him for Breanna. It's their wives who were his true marks. They were the ones he wanted. And, as you discovered, they're the ones with something in common—their youth, their childless state.”
Hibbert gave him a puzzled look. “You've lost me.”
“Something Breanna said last night just sank in .” Royce began prowling about, his forehead creased in thought as he polished his theory. “Or rather, two things she said in the same breath. She referred to overhearing her father arrange for the assassin to kill Anastasia, and she referred to having to bear the knowledge that he intended to sell her cousin as a pro
stitute.”
“We knew both those facts.”
“Yes, but we didn't look for the common link between them. We never directly tied the assassin to Medford's selling of women. But there is a tie, a strong one—Cunnings.”
Hibbert's head came up, his eyes narrowed as he caught his employer's implication. “It was Cunnings who Medford paid to hire the assassin. So we know Cunnings and the killer were well-acquainted. We also know that Cunnings was aware of Medford's business of selling women. Which means he could very well have mentioned that fact to his colleague.”
“Cunnings was more than aware of what Medford was doing,” Royce corrected. “From what I remember of the Bow Street report, he was right in the thick of things. While he went about hiring the assassin, he was also trying to provide a substitute for Anastasia— another nobly-bred young woman to send to Paris.
That way, Anastasia would be eliminated, and George Colby would still get paid by his French buyer Cunnings knew he'd be handsomely rewarded for managing both.”
“A fact he could have boasted to the killer,” Hibbert murmured.
“Right. After all, he was taking on a daunting task. Highborn ladies don't vanish as easily as workhouse women do. They're missed— if there's someone alive to miss them.”
“You think the assassin picked up where my father left off?”
