Meet Me at Midnight Page 9

  “Then I’ll have to try a different method.” Before she could react to that, he put his hand over hers. “Might I accompany you?”

  With a deeper flush, she extracted her hand. “You’ll be bored silly, but it might do you some good.”

  Sinclair stood. “Excellent. I have an errand, but I’ll be back shortly.”

  Still trying to figure out why in the world Lord Sin wanted to attend a charity luncheon, Victoria nodded. “Well, the afternoon looks to be interesting, anyway,” she said into her teacup. Milo cleared his throat sympathetically—or so she imagined, anyway.

  Milo hadn’t killed anyone.

  Sinclair leaned against the counter of Hoby’s boot-making establishment, barely paying attention to the clerk who shuffled through a stack of musty invoices. In one morning, over toasted bread and strawberries, Victoria had discovered more information than he’d coerced from the damned butler in nearly a month.

  True, the butler had reason to dislike him and none to resent Victoria, but it was more than that. She’d had the stuffy rascal gabbing like an old fishmonger just back from the docks. And though Milo might not have an alibi and corroborating witnesses, Sinclair knew enough. The butler had genuinely liked Thomas.

  Thank God he’d decided to slip into the house to see what mood his bride was in, and thank Lucifer he’d done it in time to overhear the conversation. Roman would be disappointed to learn of the butler’s innocence, but Sin was relieved. It would help him sleep a bit more soundly at night, anyway.

  “Here we are. Thomas Grafton, Lord Althorpe. Is this what you wanted, my lord?”

  The clerk began to pull an invoice from the middle of the stack. Straightening, Sinclair reached for the paper and knocked his elbow into the top of the stack. With a whoosh, a hundred invoices slid off the counter and onto the floor.

  “Bloody hell,” he growled. “Sorry about that.”

  With a stifled sigh the clerk squatted down to gather the papers. “No worries, my lord.”

  As soon as the fellow looked away, Sin lifted the edge of the remaining stack and flipped through the dozen papers before and after the one left sticking out from the pile. Hoby’s had had five other customers the day Thomas had come to pick up his new boots—five nobles who’d been in town, and in Thomas’s vicinity, at the time of the murder. That had been the last day of his brother’s life, and the boots were the ones in which they’d buried him.

  He recognized two of the names and memorized the others, letting the stack go as the clerk straightened again. “Gadzooks, what a mess,” he said sympathetically.

  “It’s all right. They’re all numbered.” The fellow dumped the disheveled pile onto the counter and pulled out the invoice in question. “His lordship paid at the time of delivery. No amount is owing, as I thought.”

  “Well, that’s good news. The fewer debts the better, I always say.”

  The clerk nodded and began reorganizing invoices. “Yes, my lord.”

  That taken care of, Sinclair returned to his phaeton and headed back toward Berkeley Square. For once he’d stumbled onto a bit of luck. He hadn’t realized that Astin Hovarth had been in London that week. Being able to talk freely with a good friend of Thomas’s, someone who knew his other acquaintainces and his habits well, would be a boon. Before the damned charity luncheon, he should have time to scrawl out a letter to the Earl of Kingsfeld. It seemed a good time for a reunion with Astin, and he needed another hint of a direction before he sent out his bloodhounds.

  Milo opened the front door for him, but the odd look on the butler’s face stopped Sinclair on the front steps. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, my lord.”

  “You look as though you’ve swallowed a canary.”

  The butler made a choking sound. “Lady Althorpe just received a few additional…items from Fontaine House.”

  “Oh, really?” That was better than hearing she’d fled the country, anyway.

  “I believe she is in the conservatory, my lord.”

  “Very good.”

  Giving the butler a backward glance, Sinclair climbed the curving staircase to the second floor. As he neared his spouse’s rooms, he passed a pair of footmen carrying what looked like the remains of several exotic plants and flowers.

  The conservatory door was closed, and Sinclair rapped his knuckles against the hard wood.

  “Just a moment.”

  That moment and several more passed before the door opened. Victoria’s maid, Jenny, gave him a startled look, then turned toward the interior of the room.

  “It’s Lord Althorpe, my lady.”

  “Have him come—Jenny, stop Henrietta!”

  Before she finished speaking, a small white streak dashed between the maid’s feet and sprang for the open doorway. Almost without thinking, Sin crouched and scooped it into his arms. And scowled down at it.

  “What the dev—”

  Victoria swept around her maid and slammed full into him. “Oh!”

  He was already off balance from snagging the creature, and he staggered backward. His bride tottered, then tumbled onto her backside.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, trying to decide whether to burst into laughter or flee downstairs in terror.

  She put a hand to her collapsing cascade of black hair. “Yes. Quite.”

  Sinclair squatted down beside her, presenting her with the captured thing. “I presume you were after this?”

  “Thank goodness. Come here, sweetums,” she cooed, gathering it against her lovely bosom.

  “What is it, precisely?” he asked, scratching it behind what looked like an ear, mostly so he could have the excuse of brushing his fingers against his wife’s soft skin.

  “She’s a poodle.”

  “That’s not a poodle.”

  “Yes, she is!” Victoria said indignantly. “Mostly, anyway. We’re almost certain of it. Aren’t you, Henrietta, my little one?”

  “It’s a mop. A mop with legs.”

  She chuckled, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him. “Don’t tease her. She’s very shy.”

  Damnation, he wanted to kiss her. “Perhaps if she had a trim so that she actually looked like a dog, she might be a bit more confident.”

  The humor faded from her violet gaze. “No, we don’t trim Henrietta.”

  Sinclair’s legs were cramping, so he bent his knees further and sat backward onto the floor beside her. “Why is that?”

  “I found her in Covent Garden, shivering in a gutter. Someone had set her fur on fire.” A single tear ran down her smooth, soft cheek. “Thank goodness it had been raining.”

  He brushed her tear away with his thumb. “Maybe she’s not so silly-looking, after all.”

  “I prefer to think of her as endearing.” Victoria smiled again, and his heart gave an odd flip-flop in his chest.

  “Exceedingly endearing,” he murmured.

  Her eyes met his, and then she blushed and turned her attention to the little dog. “Yes, aren’t you, sweetie? She gets skittish in new places. That’s why she ran.”

  Finding the sudden shyness of Henrietta’s owner endearing as well, Sin rocked forward onto his feet and stood. “She’ll come to like it here before she knows it,” he said, holding down his hand.

  The smile remained on her face as she grasped his fingers and allowed him to pull her to her feet. How long they would have stood there in the hallway, gazing at one another, he had no idea. Just as he leaned down to taste her lips, an earsplitting yowl came from the conservatory.

  “Good God! What was—”

  “Sheba!”

  Victoria thrust Henrietta into his arms and dashed back into the room. Feeling distinctly addled, and not a little frustrated, Sin followed. A row of some dozen cages stood in the center of the room. The oddest menagerie of little beasties he’d ever seen stood and sat and slept and pecked and yowled from inside them.

  His bride knelt before the furthest cage and gently extracted an orange feline from it. With a stream o
f the same cooing murmurs she’d used on Henrietta, she gathered the cat into her arms. For a moment Sinclair reflected that he wouldn’t mind at all being one of the Vixen’s pets.

  “So that would be Sheba.”

  She started, as though she had forgotten he was there. “Yes. She’s just hungry, I think.” Splitting her attention between him and the row of cages, Victoria flushed again. “I…hope you don’t mind, but Mama and Papa would never look after them, and they are my responsibility, and you said Grafton House was mine now, too, and I couldn’t give them—”

  “I don’t mind,” he said firmly.

  “Oh. Good. Because they’re staying.”

  “So I gathered.” He couldn’t help the cynicism that touched his voice, though in truth he was amused—and intrigued.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” she asked defensively. “You certainly won’t have to worry about them, or pay a shilling toward their care. They are my responsibility, and you’ll hardly even know they’re h—”

  “I was surprised,” he interrupted. “Somehow I didn’t envision the Vixen mothering a gaggle of strays and misfits.”

  She held his gaze. “If I didn’t, who would?”

  He wasn’t about to begin an argument with her right before her luncheon, especially when her unexpected compassion had him feeling like a wobbly-kneed schoolboy. “This does explain your dislike of Lord Perington. Which feline did you rescue from him?”

  “Lord Baggles. He’s in my bedchamber, napping.”

  “I had no idea so many sadists populated London.”

  Victoria shrugged, still absently stroking Sheba. “Weak men have to prove their superiority on creatures weaker than themselves.”

  After only one day, the woman he had thought he married was turning out to be someone else entirely. He already knew he wanted to make love to her—but he hadn’t realized until now that her lovely features might not even be the best part of her.

  Victoria kept catching herself looking at Lord Althorpe as they left their carriage and made their way into Lady Nofton’s substantial garden just outside of London for the charity luncheon. He hadn’t batted an eye about her menagerie, and in fact had seemed to understand and agree with her motives for taking them in. She didn’t know quite what she’d expected from him, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

  “You’re being waved at,” he murmured from beside her.

  She blinked, belatedly noticing the substantial woman trundling across the grass toward them. “It’s Lady Nofton. Be nice.”

  His arm beneath her hand tensed, then relaxed again. “I’m not one of your pets,” he drawled. “And neither am I twelve years old.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” she returned, glancing sideways at him as he released her arm. “I just don’t want anything to go wrong today.”

  “Ah. I see. I’m worse than a twelve-year-old. I’m Sin Grafton.”

  “You’ve made your own reputation.”

  “And so have you.”

  She wanted to stick her tongue out at him. As the person who usually said something too direct and thereby made a muck of things, Victoria reflected that it might be a nice change to have someone around who was ten times worse. And whatever his feelings about being present today, he hadn’t made any fuss about her attending one of her charitable causes. Another surprise—though everything she discovered about him seemed to be one.

  “Victoria,” the large blond woman said, taking both of her hands. “I’m so glad you were able to attend. I’m having a terrible time with the place settings.”

  Victoria smiled. “Show me your list, and we’ll have a look. Sinclair, may I introduce Lady Nofton? Estelle, my husband, Lord Althorpe.”

  Estelle’s brown eyes grew round as she offered a belated curtsy. “My lord. I’m…pleased you decided to attend our humble little function.”

  Sin smiled, the charming one that didn’t touch his eyes. “I’m always ready for a good gathering. What are we supporting, anyway?”

  Victoria cleared her throat. He might have asked that earlier, for heaven’s sake. “We support limiting the number of hours children work each day,” she said, “and increasing the amount of schooling they receive.”

  “Splendid. Where might I find some port to toast your efforts? I’ll be happy to participate—as long as you charity ladies have provided something stronger than punch to drink.”

  “Oh,” Lady Nofton stammered, her dismay almost palpable, “Hollins, my butler, can assist you. My husband is absent today, but he keeps a generous supply of liquor in his study.”

  Althorpe nodded. “I’m off, then. Lady Nofton, Victoria.”

  “You actually did marry him, then,” Estelle said as they watched him round the corner of the house. “I’d heard, but then when you arrived today, I thought perhaps I’d been mistaken.”

  “No mistake.” Victoria sighed.

  “Sin Grafton, himself. Oh, my. He’s quite…delectable-looking, isn’t he?” Lady Nofton’s substantial frame shook with her tittering laughter.

  “I suppose he is. Never mind that, though. Let’s have a look at your seating arrangements before the guests arrive.”

  By the time they decided that Lady Dash would sit beside Lady Hargrove but not her sister-in-law Lady Magston, the carriages began to arrive. Victoria had just begun to wonder where her husband had vanished to, when he materialized beside her.

  “I had no idea you knew so many stodgy people,” he said, nodding as the Count and Countess of Magston passed by them and nearly tripped over a border fence as they turned to stare at him.

  “Hush.”

  He chuckled, and she leaned closer to him, sniffing and abruptly suspicious.

  Victoria cursed under her breath. “You’re drunk? You can’t be drunk. You’ve only been gone for twenty minutes.”

  “I try not to waste time. But don’t worry, I’ll let everyone know the cause has my full support. Is that Lord Dash? The marksman?” He started forward.

  She grabbed him by the arm to hold him back. “Please don’t support anything on my account,” she whispered urgently. “Some of the people here actually believe the law needs to be changed.”

  “And some of them are here for the roast chicken. They might support you with their stomachs, but how many back it up with their purses?”

  “Enough to make the luncheon worthwhile,” she snapped. “Not everyone here thinks of nothing but themselves.”

  His lazy amber eyes glinted. “Indeed,” he drawled softly. “I’m learning something new every day.”

  She stood on her tiptoes, trying to look him in the eye and demand that he leave before he offended one of their patrons, but she abruptly noticed something. His clothes reeked of whiskey, but his soft breath on her cheek still carried the tang of the peppermint candy he’d snagged from a bowl on their way out of Grafton House.

  Victoria narrowed her eyes, remembering the three supposedly intoxicated strangers at their wedding and their sober midnight rendezvous last evening. “I’m learning new things, as well.”

  He tilted his head at her. “And what might you be learning, Victoria?”

  “I’m not sure yet. But I am beginning to learn what you’re not, Sinclair Grafton.”

  “Enlighten me. What am I not?”

  “You’re not drunk, for one thing.”

  At that moment Estelle summoned Victoria to the front table, and she walked away. Let him think about that for awhile.

  Chapter 6

  “Who was that nasty fellow with the large nose? The one who ate all the Brazilian cashews.”

  “You ate your share of them,” Victoria returned airily, apparently fascinated by the hordes of pedestrians outside the carriage.

  Sinclair crossed his ankles. “Yes, but I didn’t snatch a platter of them from a neighboring table when no one was looking.”

  “Apparently at least one person was looking.”

  He scowled. Whatever he’d done wrong at the charity luncheon,
his bride was hanging onto it like a dog on a ham bone. “So I noticed him stuffing himself. Who the devil was the fat ox?”

  Finally she looked at him. “Why were you pretending to be drunk? Was it because I asked you to behave yourself? Was it just to embarrass me?”

  She’d left him a way out, though any answer would make him look like a cad. “I’m not used to being told what to do,” he returned, sidestepping. “Especially by someone five stone lighter and eight years younger than I am.”

  “And a female.”

  “Yes. And a female.”

  She folded her arms across her lovely bosom, her expression as warm as icicles. “Fine. I won’t tell you what to do. But don’t you dare tell me what to do or who to speak to or how to conduct myself.”

  “I’m not your damned parent. I haven’t given you any orders. But don’t you throw any tantrums in my direction, Vixen. I went to your useless charity luncheon and watched some fat man whose name you won’t tell me eat cashews. You got your way.”

  To his surprise, a tear ran down her cheek. “It was not useless.” She swiped the tear away with her fingers. “And that fat, stupid man is a vicar in Cheapside. If it takes a few Brazilian cashews to convince him to talk to his parishioners about setting up another local school, then I would happily give him a thousand of them.”

  He’d begun to think her invulnerable. How pleasant to know that he could wound her with such little effort. “Oh. Point taken,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Point taken,’” he repeated more loudly. “You were doing something worthwhile, and I was…being myself.” The self he’d become over the past few years, anyway. The one who’d seen holy vicars sell out a loyal parishioner for a bottle of whiskey—when he’d been the one to provide the bottle.

  “I don’t think you were being yourself.”

  Damnation. “For God’s sake, Victoria, I was trying to have a bit of fun with you and it misfired,” he said, hoping volume and conviction would carry some weight with her.

  She jabbed a well-manicured finger into his knee. “So you’re nothing but a boor?”