Burning Lamp (24 page)

Mrs. Harper dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “The past several hours have been a nightmare. We were expecting to learn at any moment that Norwood’s body had been pulled out of the river.”

Calvin put his hand on her shoulder in a soothing gesture before turning back to Griffin. “This morning we heard rumors to the effect that Norwood is being held prisoner.”

“Have you received a ransom demand?” Griffin asked.

“No, no, nothing like that.” Mrs. Harper dried her eyes. “There has been no word of any kind. That is what is making this situation so dreadful. It’s why we came here to see you, sir. We could not think of anyone else who might have the connections necessary to discover what has happened to Norwood.”

“Your concern seems a bit extreme,” Griffin said. “Most collectors who believe they have been deceived simply demand a refund.”

There was a short pause. The Harpers exchanged glances.

Ingram cleared his throat. “We have reason to think that the collector in question may be Mr. Luttrell.”

“I’ll be damned,” Griffin said very softly. “Norwood Harper sold a fake antiquity to Luttrell? Now, there’s an astonishing display of nerve for you.”

“Will you help us, sir?” Ingram pleaded. “Our entire family is distraught.”

“I will make some inquiries,” Griffin said. “But this is Luttrell we’re talking about. Norwood Harper may already be at the bottom of the river.”

“We are aware of that, sir, although my intuition tells me that he is still alive, albeit in dreadful peril,” Calvin said grimly. He squared his shoulders. “But regardless of the result of your inquiries, please know that we are in your debt. If there is ever anything you need that the Harper family can provide, you have only to ask.”

Mrs. Harper rose and stepped forward. “And if it transpires that you do not require anything of a Harper in this generation, rest assured that the obligation will pass down through the family. Harpers do not forget a debt. If one of your descendants ever needs our assistance, we will stand ready to aid him in whatever way we can.”

“I’ll try to come up with something to request in my own lifetime,” Griffin said. His tone lacked all emotion.

Adelaide’s intuition tingled. She sensed that Griffin did not intend to produce any descendants. It certainly explained why he was not married, she thought. But he was a vigorous man as she had discovered last night. She wondered what had occurred to make him conclude that he did not want or could not have a family.

Then, again, she thought, she had made a very similar decision, herself.

 

 

 

“WE KNOW ONE THING FOR CERTAIN ABOUT NORWOOD Harper.” Griffin unrolled a map on the small table near the window. “He is a fool.”

“Because he sold one of his fakes to a vicious, ruthless crime lord who will not hesitate to make an example of him?” Adelaide asked.

“You will agree that such a transaction does not speak well for his common sense.”

“I expect the artist in him got the upper hand,” Adelaide said.

She set two mugs of tea on the table and watched Griffin draw a circle on the map.

“Do you do this sort of thing often?” she asked.

“Go to ground in rooms that no one knows I own while I try to decide how best to flush out the person or persons unknown who sent two talents equipped with a large number of infernal devices to subdue my entire household?” Griffin did not look up from the map. “As rarely as possible, I promise you. It is not at all convenient.”

She sat down across from him and glanced around the small space. Griffin had brought her here following the meeting with the Harpers. After seeing the bookshop he used as an office, she had not been surprised to discover that his bolt- hole consisted of two small rooms above a shuttered shop on yet another nameless lane. Evidently crime lords did not concern themselves with luxuries and amenities when they went into hiding.

“I was not referring to our new quarters,” she said. “I meant your new clients.”

“Ah, yes, the Harpers.” He sat down and picked up a mug. “I’ll be honest. I’m not at all hopeful that Norwood is still alive.”

“But if he is you will try to rescue him.”

He swallowed some of the tea and lowered the cup. “I’ll see what I can do. I may be able to negotiate with Luttrell.”

“Why? Surely there is no favor you will ever need from a family of forgers.”

“Psychically gifted forgers,” he reminded her. He shrugged. “The Harpers have a true talent for the work. I might someday find myself in need of their skills.”

“Or one of your descendants might need to call in the favor,” she suggested gently.

She held her breath, aware that she was pushing against some invisible gate, but she could not resist. The urge to discover all of Griffin’s secrets had become something of an obsession of late.

“Not likely,” Griffin said. He set the cup down with an air of finality.

She frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Mine is a dangerous world, Adelaide. I will not bring a wife into it, let alone a child. I tried that once, when I was younger and still somewhat inclined to take a romantic view of life.”

“You were married?” She was taken aback. Somehow she had not expected to hear that particular fact.

“When I was twenty-two I fell in love. She was nineteen but she had been on her own for several years. She knew the ways of the streets. She knew my world.”

“How did you meet?”

“Rowena had some talent for reading auras and a good head for business. She made her living as a fortune-teller. That put her into a position to learn many secrets. In those days, I was always in the market for information just as I am now. So I did her a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“Got rid of a client who had begun to frighten her.”

He watched her very steadily. She knew he was waiting to see some indication of shock or, at the very least, strong disapproval of the implied violence. She kept her expression calm, revealing only her curiosity.

“How did he scare Rowena?” she asked.

“Did I mention that Rowena was very beautiful?”

“No, you skipped that part,” she said.

“Blond, blue-eyed. Ethereal.”

“A real angel?” she asked politely.

“Some men certainly thought so.”

Including you? she wanted to ask. But she already knew the answer. He had married the lovely Rowena, after all.

“A number of her male clients assumed that they could buy her favors as well as their fortunes,” Griffin continued. “One particular gentleman took an unwholesome fancy to her. When she rebuffed his advances he began to stalk her. His approaches became more and more aggressive.”

She folded her hands together on the table. “I have seen situations of that sort.”

He raised his brows. “Have you, then?”

“Yes. Such men are difficult if not impossible to stop.”

“The gentleman in question started to leave notes to the effect that if he could not have her, no man would ever have her. Rowena could read auras, remember. She saw enough to know that her life was in danger.”

“So you took care of her problem.”

“It was a delicate operation. The gentleman in question was not some nameless clerk who would never be missed if he disappeared. He was a man of rank and status, well known in social circles.”

“He suffered an accident, I take it?” she said, raising her brows a little.

“It was tragic, really. Jumped off a bridge in a fit of despair. Family went to great lengths to keep it out of the press.”

The gentleman in question had no doubt had some assistance getting off the bridge, she thought.

“I see,” she said evenly. “And afterward?”

“Rowena repaid the favor by passing along odd bits and pieces of information. I started making excuses to visit her. After a time I asked her to marry me and she accepted.”

“What happened?”

“A year and a half later she died in childbirth. The babe died with her.”

“Oh, Griffin.” She unfolded her hands, reached across the table and touched his arm. “I’m so very sorry.”

He looked down at her hand. “It was a long time ago.”

“Such losses fade with time but they never go away entirely. We both know that. In any event, it was not your world that killed Rowena. She died of natural causes, not because she married a crime lord. Why did the tragedy convince you that you could never marry and have a family?”

He raised his eyes to meet hers. “Men in my profession do not make good husbands, Adelaide. I was obsessed with building my empire and with keeping Rowena, myself and those who worked for me alive. I was not able to spend much time with Rowena but I was determined to keep her safe. In the end, she felt trapped. She grew . . . restless.”

“She took a lover?”

“My lieutenant and closest friend,” Griffin said. “We had been a team since our days on the streets. I trusted Ben more than I had ever trusted anyone in my life after my parents were killed.”

And suddenly she understood.

“You trusted him to protect Rowena,” she said.

“He was her bodyguard whenever she left the house.” Griffin’s mouth crooked. “I wanted my best man to look after her when I could not.”

“That is so sad. It is the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.”

Icy amusement glittered in Griffin’s eyes. “With one significant difference. I’m not King Arthur.”

“There is that,” she agreed very seriously.

He startled her with one of his rare smiles. “What’s this? Aren’t you going to assure me that in my own way I’m a modern-day warrior king?”

She smiled, too. “I very much doubt that you even own a sword.”

“You can say that after last night? I’m crushed.”

She felt herself turning red. “Don’t you dare try to turn this conversation in that direction.”

He stopped smiling and drank some more tea. “In hindsight, assigning Rowena a bodyguard was a disaster that I should have seen in the making. During that year and a half she spent far more time with him than she did with me. I suppose she came to view Ben as her protector. Which is exactly what he was. Hell, I gave him the job.”

“Stop right there, Griffin. It is one thing to regret the past, quite another to assume total responsibility for it. Rowena falling in love with her bodyguard was not your fault.”

He smiled his faint smile but there was nothing of humor below the surface. “You absolve me of all guilt?”

“Not entirely. From the sound of it you were not an ideal husband. Your concern with your, ah, professional advancement and with keeping your family safe certainly did not help—” She broke off as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Oh, good grief. I see what’s going on here. You were
obsessed
with protecting your family and associates. Later you wondered if that obsession was a sign that you had inherited the Winters family curse.”

“The first talent fills the mind with a rising tide of restlessness that canNot be assuaged by endless hours in the laboratory or soothed with strong drink or the milk of the poppy,”
he quoted. “That was how it was for me in those days. I did not spend hours in a laboratory, though. I spent them building an empire. But it came to the same thing in the end. And Rowena and the babe both died.”

“That was when you first started to wonder if you really were fated to become a Cerberus,” she concluded. “And that, in turn, made you believe that in some bizarre way, the curse was the real cause of the death of your wife and child.”

“Perhaps.”

“I probably should not ask but I must. Was the babe yours?”

“No. Rowena told me at the end. She knew that she was dying and I think she wanted to clear her conscience. She believed that if I knew the babe was another man’s I would not grieve the loss.”

“But of course you did. You grieved the loss of both of them and the loss of your friendship with Ben, as well. They were all the family you had. What’s more, it was the second family you had lost. No wonder you started to take the curse so seriously.”

And no wonder he had convinced himself that he could not protect a family, she thought.

Griffin drank some more tea. “Does it strike you that this conversation has become somewhat depressing?”

“Yes, it has,” she said softly. “Shall we change subject?”

“I think that would be a wise idea.”

“One thing before we leave the topic,” she said. “I must know. What happened to Ben?”

He smiled a slow, icy smile. “What do you think happened to him?”

She wrinkled her nose. “If you’re implying that you killed him in revenge for his betrayal, you’re wasting your time. I don’t believe that, not for a minute.”

“Everyone else does.” The feral smile disappeared. Griffin looked mildly disgusted. “I must be losing my touch. Not a good sign.”

“Griffin, I know you did not kill Ben because you were too busy blaming yourself for what happened,” she said patiently. “What became of your friend?”

“Well, it was immediately apparent to both of us that our business association, not to mention our friendship, had been somewhat altered by the situation,” he said. “At the funeral he asked me if I was going to slit his throat. I told him no. He then informed me that he intended to move to Australia. We both agreed that was a brilliant notion. He sailed a week later.”

“I’m glad.”

“A rather dull ending to the tale, though, don’t you think?”

“You’re a crime lord,” she said. “You have enough action and adventure in your life. A little dullness once in a while cleanses the palate.”

“But what about the King Arthur analogy?”

“As I recall, Arthur did not kill Lancelot. I believe he banished him from the royal court, instead. Who knows? Maybe Lancelot went to Australia.”