Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)

She looked on in silence as he methodically destroyed his colorful amatory past. The string of old lovers vanished into the flames, occasionally flaring in hot protest, but ultimately leaving behind no more lasting legacy than ashes and the acrid scent of singed fabric. When he was finished, he replaced the poker in its holder and brushed his hands clean of the task.

He shrugged out of his topcoat and came to sit at her side. After a pause, he asked, “What are you reading?”

“I don’t even know. I’ve spent the past hour staring stupidly at the first paragraph and wishing you were here. I’ve made no progress at all.”

“Good. I should hate to miss anything.” He swiveled sideways, then reclined backward, propping his boots on the arm of the sofa and laying his head in her lap. He closed his eyes and signed, “Carry on.”

Clearly he didn’t want to talk about what he’d just done, and Lily decided not to press. The actions spoke for themselves in this instance. Words were unnecessary.

Kisses, however, were imperative. She teased her fingers through his hair and pressed a lingering kiss to his brow. Then the tip of his nose. Then his mouth. “Julian, I love you.”

He exhaled deeply, then finger-spelled in response, “Can’t imagine why.”

“Can’t you?” Her heart squeezed, but she kept her words light. “I shall have to draw you a very explicit picture.”

Chapter Nineteen

Julian stared at the letter in his hand, reading it for the third time in as many minutes. His eyes raced over the preliminaries, then tripped to a halt when he reached the names.

“Horace Stone and Angus Macleod. Apprehended this seventh of June,” he read aloud. Somehow it seemed more real when read aloud. “Charged with drunkenness, vandalism, and breaking and entering with the intent to commit robbery. Sentenced to sixth months’ hard labor on the prison hulk Jericho.”

There it was. The truth, laid down in black ink on white paper, in Levi Harris’s neat penmanship.

Horace Stone and Angus Macleod had been apprehended the morning following Leo’s death, not a mile from the murder scene. Charged with smashing the window of a cookshop, with the intent to rob the place. According to Harris’s inquiries of the prison guards, the two matched Cora’s basic description.

These men were Leo’s killers. Julian knew it in his bones. He read through the letter again, though by now he could have recited it from memory.

“The Jericho,” he said wonderingly. “I’ll be damned.” He’d spent months searching, trudging down every gutter and lane in the county of Middlesex and beyond, and here they’d been floating on a decaying ship in the middle of the Thames, less than ten miles downstream. Virtually under his nose the whole time.

From his perch by the drawing room window, Tartuffe stretched his wings and squawked. “Jericho!” he trilled merrily. “Jericho!”

Ridiculous bird. “What is it with you and names that start with J?”

“Oh, Julian,” the parrot sang. “Mr. James Bell. Oh, Juuuulian.”

“Yes, don’t tell me. Guilty, guilty. Thank you, that will be all.” Julian shook himself. He was conversing with a bloody bird. For once, the blasted creature’s nattering shouldn’t even disturb him.

He did feel mildly guilty for pursuing the matter after he’d promised Lily he wouldn’t. But she’d been concerned for his safety, and he hadn’t done any of the investigating himself. He’d merely written to Harris and let him do the work.

And now, less than a week later, Julian held deliverance in his hands. True liberation from fear and doubt, in the form of two names. After attacking Leo and Faraday, this Horace Stone and Angus Macleod had gone on to commit more criminal acts the same night. Impulsive ones, by Levi Harris’s account. Acts like those didn’t suggest the behavior of two paid assassins. Wouldn’t hired assailants have fled the area and reported back to their employer, rather than bruising about the same neighborhood, indiscriminately smashing windowpanes? The pattern of events pointed to two drunken louts on a petty crime spree. Nothing more.

Lily and Morland—and he had to face it, pretty much everyone else—had been right all along, it would seem. Leo’s murder had been a random act of violence. The death was no less tragic, but the implications for Julian were markedly less profound. Of course, he would always regret not being there that night. Leo was a good friend, and his death cast a long, sorrowful shadow. But if Julian could see the killers punished—if he could feel certain, once and for all, that Peter Faraday was wrong and those men actually hadn’t intended to murder Julian—his future with Lily looked three shades brighter, instantly.