Robyn DeHart - [Dangerous Liaisons 01] Read online

  Fabric tore and the girl’s protests softened to weeping and Mia could only assume he’d ripped the girl’s dress apart.

  “Oh God no, please no,” the girl’s voice was raspy with fear. “Please don’t cut me.”

  “Cry,” the man said. “Beg me not to kill you.”

  Mia tried to move forward, unsure of what she would do, just that she must try to stop him, but her dress snagged against the shrubs. She was pinned in place.

  “Please, please.” The girl’s cries softened to whimpers and then a guttural sound followed by a horrid gurgle.

  Mia knew it was the sound of a knife as it slashed through the girl’s flesh. Again and again.

  He cut through the girl’s dress; Mia could hear the worn material give beneath the blade. And again the knife sliced into her skin, cracking against bone and making a vulgar sucking sound as it moved in and out of the poor girl’s body.

  And then . . .

  Silence.

  Dead silence.

  What was he doing? Had he seen her hiding against the wall? She thought she was well concealed behind the thick shrubs, but perhaps not. Oh, God. She held her breath, trying not to make even the slightest of sounds. Concentrating on the quiet, she strained to hear. Anything. But there was only quiet.

  A moment later, he spat again, and said something vulgar. Then he took several steps, back in the direction of the way he’d come. Moving away from the body of the girl who had long since stopped crying. Stopped moving. Stopped breathing.

  His footsteps came closer to Mia’s hiding place, getting louder with each movement, splashing into the potted holes of rain on the alley. She grabbed handfuls of her skirt, squeezed tightly. A match struck and then he took a long drag on a cigarette. The acrid smell of blood and tobacco merged and filled her nose. And something else, something she couldn’t put a name to—his smell. She flinched and prayed he’d walk faster.

  He stopped walking, took another long drag on his cigarette. Then he walked away. Whistling.

  Mia stood there until she could no longer hear his footsteps. Then she waited some more, long enough for the rain to slow to a trickle. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering and knew she could not stay in the bushes forever. She might have been warned from going to the Duke’s estate, but tonight there would be an exception because Lord Carrington needed to know what had happened on his property.

  She yanked at her skirts where the shrub held her in place and heard the fabric give way. Swiftly, she moved away from the shrubs, being careful to stay on the grass, to avoid the stone path where the girl’s body lay. She took a few steps to ensure her feet were steady, her legs not too weak, and then she took off in a dead run. The grass was slick beneath her worn slippers and her toes burned from the cold, but she would not let herself stop. It mattered not that the stone tore at her fingers as her hand slid against the wall, ensuring her she was going in the right direction.

  Her ragged breath and the ground crunching beneath her feet were the only sounds. Still she ran. It wouldn’t be too much longer before she rounded the corner of the wall and entered the front lawn of Lord Carrington’s London estate.

  A carriage rolled down the street. Mia’s heart pounded, the sound reverberating in her ears. Footsteps behind her. Her foot slipped.

  She would not stop, could not stop, moving forward.

  ***

  Alex Foster, eighth Duke of Carrington sat in his newly acquired study and glanced at the desk littered with mail from the last few months. Technically he was still in mourning after his eldest brother, and the seventh Duke of Carrington, got himself killed during an illegal duel. Alex had scarcely had time to do little else other than bury his brother and try to quiet down the scandal that had surrounded his death.

  What kind of damned fool had an affair with the wife of a marquess, then challenged said marquess to a duel, and promptly lost said duel? Stephen had been a fool of the first order.

  As Duke, Alex had new priorities in life. As a retired military officer he’d been inclined to a quiet life with some books and a position with the state department. Now he was getting acquainted as a lord in Parliament. And he had a task that was quite tedious—securing a wife. A duke needed his duchess. Luckily the mourning was affording him the chance to move more slowly on the wife hunting.

  It was something Stephen had failed to do so there had been no other heir but Alex. Alex had been to more soirees and balls in the last two months than he had at any other time of his life. He found bride shopping, as it were, to be incredibly frustrating, especially since his parents had already preselected someone to be the new duchess.

  But his mother and the girls’ parents had wanted to keep up appearances, make it look as if he were introducing himself as a bachelor, when in reality they all knew eventually he’d propose to Juliet Beckinsale. She’d been groomed to be his wife. Well, the wife of the Duke of Carrington.

  “Your Grace, I am sorry to disturb you, but there is a woman here to see you.”

  Alex Foster looked up from his book and eyed the butler standing in his study doorway. Rain pattered against the windows and lightning momentarily flashed through the room. “In this weather?”

  “I’m afraid so. I tried to dismiss her, but it seems she won’t be dissuaded.”

  “Very well, but don’t go far, you’ll be seeing her out again in but a moment.” Alex stood and waited for Hodges to withdraw, and then return.

  Behind the butler came a tall and lithe and very wet creature. She was not familiar to Alex, yet he sensed he should know who she was. As if at some point they had met.

  He waited for her to speak, but she did not. Instead she stayed precisely where she was and seemed to stare right at him.

  “Madam, what is it that you think I can assist you with? I do not like being disturbed this late in the evening. Nor do I appreciate you soaking everything in your wake.”

  She blinked and took a few shuffling steps forward. “My Lord, my name is Mia Danvers, I live in the cottage at the edge of your estate.”

  “My God.” He’d never met her before, at least he did not remember if he had, but she’d lived on their property for nearly nine years. An agreement between his late father and her parents, an agreement that had been written into his father’s will. Alex remembered his mother saying once that the poor girl was mad. But up until now they’d never had any trouble with her. In fact, she’d kept to her own and out of sight, so Alex had never questioned her living arrangement. He studied her now, taking in the frantic, almost crazed, expression on her face. It might be time to reexamine the situation, search for a way around his father’s odd demand.

  “Miss Danvers, what are you doing away from your cottage?” he asked, voice firm and authoritative. She needed to know this sort of behavior would not be tolerated, regardless of what his father had agreed to.

  She craned her neck awkwardly to the right, then moved in that direction, heading straight for the fire crackling in the hearth. But she ran right into a chair. With her hands she felt around the piece of furniture, moving around it as she did until she stood directly in front of the fire. She silently warmed herself for several moments before she spoke.

  “I witnessed a murder tonight. On your property.”

  He inhaled sharply at her admission, but before shock could take hold of him, he considered the source. Her pale skin was in sharp contrast to her dark, wet hair that was pulled severely away from her face in a tight bun. No fashionable curls framed her face or hung delicately at her neck. Her dress was devoid of all fashion as well. Instead, she wore a dark brown wool frock that hung loosely against her thin frame.

  She turned her face toward him and it was then that he understood, for while she looked in his direction, she did not meet his eyes. Her painfully beautiful blue eyes stared sightlessly at the bookshelf behind him.

  “Unless I am mistaken it is impossible that you could have witnessed a crime, madam.” He took several steps so that he stood nex
t to her. With his right hand, he waved in front of her face.

  Long, delicate fingers grabbed his wrist. “It is true that I am blind, sir, but the rest of my faculties work properly, I can assure you.”

  She released his hand.

  “Could you be so kind as to offer me some tea?” she asked. “I’m afraid I lost my dinner on your front lawn and am still feeling rather shaky.”

  She was not going to go away, of that he could be certain. She might be mad, but she was also persistent. He exhaled loudly, but rang for a tea service nonetheless. “Now that your tea is on the way, might you proceed with your story? You may sit if you are more comfortable doing so. Though I would prefer, if you do that, you select the wooden chair so you do not ruin the imported leather.”

  “I’ll stand, thank you.” She faced the fire and he noted her skin began to take on a warmer tone. She was still impossibly fair, but looked less pallid now. “Normally I am in my cottage long before dark, but tonight I was on an errand on Bond Street and got delayed. I was walking home, along the stone wall that borders the property.”

  At that moment Hodges brought in the tea and set the tray down on the side table. Alex waited until the man had retreated before he said anything. “You were walking alone?”

  “Rachel takes one evening off a month to go and visit her aunt. Otherwise she would have been with me,” she said. “Normally, during her visits away, I simply stay at the cottage, but there were two new pieces in the statuary garden and the temptation was too great for me to wait. So I went. It was only when I heard the low hiss of the gaslights that I knew it had fallen dark.”

  Alex nodded, then remembered the woman could not see him. “Go on.”

  He watched as she methodically found her way around the tea service, then poured her tea, adding precisely one lump of sugar and enough cream to color the liquid a warm brown. She took a sip, then clutched the cup close to her chest before dragging in a ragged breath. Her hands shook as she held the teacup, Alex was unsure if it was from her nerves or the cold.

  “I heard footsteps in the distance and I moved in closer to the stone wall, putting myself between it and the shrubberies. I could tell whoever had been behind me was struggling. It was a woman and then I heard the man. I froze.”

  Her sightless eyes widened as if she’d seen something terrifying in the flames.

  She continued and began to explain how she’d stayed hidden and proceeded to hear the man murder the girl. Alex watched Mia’s movements; they were small and controlled, a gentle lifting of the teacup to her lips and a delicate swallow, then a brittle blinking of her eyes. She was beautiful in a fragile sort of way, much like the delicate cup in her hand.

  But he knew every word out of her mouth was imagined. Somehow in her broken world she’d conjured this terrible happening and now she was here standing in his study, dripping on his fine Persian rug and staring into his fire as she regaled him with her tale.

  A murder? In Mayfair? It was madness, nothing more. And he would allow her to finish, then he would send her on her way and hope his acceptance of her story would pacify her.

  One shiny tear escaped from her right eye and rolled down her now-pinkened cheek. “I just stood there. I couldn’t move, my dress had caught on the shrubs. And I couldn’t call out.” Her head shook. “I was immobilized by my own fear and now that poor girl is dead.”

  “What is it that you would have me do?” he asked, unmoved by her show of emotion.

  “I cannot very well go to the authorities. They would think me mad,” she said, earning a tight laugh.

  “Indeed.”

  “Go out there.” She turned to face him. “Find her body and make certain her family is notified. Then I can help you find who killed her.”

  “Miss Danvers, I am not with the police, in case that has missed your astute observation. I am a duke. I am not in the business of tracking down killers.”

  “But this was on your property, sir. It must be your duty to address such a crime. You cannot ignore it.”

  “I will investigate matters. But suffice it to say that if there is a crime to be solved, we shall leave that to the fine gentlemen at Scotland Yard.”

  Her hand reached out and grabbed onto his arm. “Thank you. If you establish the meeting I will gladly speak with the inspectors. With your support then they will be more likely to believe my account. I want to do whatever I can to bring justice to that poor girl.”

  There was such earnestness in her features he found himself wanting to agree. But, of course, that would be impossible, he could not risk his family name by aligning himself with such a woman. “Let us see how things play out. I’ll have a footman walk you home.”

  She nodded, then set down her teacup perfectly on the awaiting saucer.

  ***

  Alex stood at the window until he could no longer see Miss Danvers or the footman that escorted her. The rain had slowed, but the ground was, no doubt, saturated from the earlier downpour. She’d be fortunate if she did not catch her death.

  He’d never before felt any curiosity toward the woman who lived in the cottage. Until today, he’d never even seen her. But now he was tempted to investigate, to learn more. It would do no good. Her tale was nothing more than wild imaginings and he needn’t waste any more time on her.

  He had to admit that despite her outlandish story, she hadn’t seemed mad. More than likely she’d heard something, a lovers’ quarrel perhaps, and had simply gotten spooked.

  Alex called for and sent two servants to the alleyway where the girl had said the crime had transpired. When they returned with the news of no dead body, he’d know the truth of the matter and be able to send her a message to hopefully alleviate her fears.

  Even if she had been telling the truth, Alex knew for certain that a blind woman could never assist in the apprehension of a killer. She couldn’t see; therefore she couldn’t have witnessed anything. It was an impossibility. She’d been quite certain, but clearly the girl was unbalanced just as his mother had suggested.

  ***

  The footman had been instructed to escort Mia into her cottage, examining each room to ensure that she was alone. He had left now and she stood shivering in her bedroom, peeling off her still-damp clothes.

  Lord Carrington was pacifying her. She had heard it in his voice, the controlled annoyance and rather blatant dismissal. He didn’t believe her. It was understandable, she would grant him that. How was he to trust that a woman with her limitations could have any legitimate information to offer in such a situation? But she knew what she’d heard, what she’d witnessed.

  Stoking the fire, she reveled in the whoosh of heat resulting from her efforts. But no amount of warmth seemed to dispel the chills still scattered across her arms. She hated feeling this way, was unaccustomed to the fear. In the years since she’d come to live here, she’d learned to banish all sorts of fears. She’d learned to navigate this house by herself as well as this tiny corner of London. She had learned to do for herself whatever she needed and to do without everything else. She’d thought her independence made her strong. Instead it made her fear in this moment that much more shocking.

  Knowing it was a futile exercise for herself, Mia went about lighting every lantern in the cottage. Perhaps if the little house were lit from every window, anyone outside would stay away. She dragged a chair from the small kitchen table to the front door and leaned it against the wooden entrance. It was a small measure and probably unnecessary, but she couldn’t shake the fear that clung to her like a heavy, wet coat.

  Sleep would be impossible, she knew that, and didn’t even bother to crawl into bed. Instead she settled into the settee in the front room and called to Pocket, her tomcat. He immediately jumped onto her legs, turned a complete circle twice before nuzzling into her lap. Soon his rhythmic purrs filled the quiet space.

  Somehow, Lord Carrington would discover the truth. He had to. Surely the girl’s body still lay in the alleyway, but Mia could not be certain since t
he footman had led her through the yards. She hadn’t argued because she didn’t want to be near the alley again, didn’t want to remember how she’d felt helpless as the girl had been brutalized. Mia didn’t want to be able to smell her lifeless body. But someone would find it and take care of the girl.

  Then Lord Carrington would believe her. He would help her then. He’d have no choice.

  Chapter Two

  Three hours later, Alex remained sitting in his study, waiting for the police to arrive. Once his footman had confirmed there was in fact a body of a murdered girl at the edge of his property, he’d sent for them straightaway. But they were certainly taking their time.

  “Lord Carrington, I do apologize for my intrusion,” Hodges said, “but there are some gentlemen,” his face soured on the word and he took a moment before continuing, “from the Metropolitan Police here to see you.”

  “It’s about time they arrived.” He didn’t bother to lower the shirtsleeves that earlier he’d rolled to his elbows. To hell with propriety at a time like this. “I don’t suppose Drew has made an appearance to sign those papers?” he asked Hodges.

  “No, Your Grace, I have not seen your brother in three days.”

  Alex was simply going to have to go and seek out his brother since the cad could not be bothered to answer a summons. Hodges returned to the study with three men in tow. One was clearly a constable by the dark blue uniform and bell-shaped hat. The other two, Alex assumed, were inspectors, judging by their wool tweed trousers and basic white shirts.

  “Lord Carrington, I am Inspector Givens and this is Constable Phipps and Inspector French.” Each man nodded with mention of his name. “We need some information from you.”

  “Please sit,” Alex said. The two inspectors sat in opposing chairs, which seemed to suit their conflicting appearances. Givens was short and rotund with rosy cheeks and a cheerful appearance despite his rather gruff voice. French, on the other hand, was older, tall and grizzled. There was really no other way to describe him.