Lady Killer (15 page)

“No. I was spying on you. Since you wouldn’t allow me to work with you, I thought I would watch you work. See where you went. What you did.”

“You admit it?”

“I can deny it. If you prefer I can say that I thought ten pounds was a rather steep price to pay for a few minutes of your time and I wanted to be sure I got my money’s worth.”

“That’s strange,” Clio hissed. “I felt the ten pounds was only marginally adequate compensation for having to spend that long with you.” Then she reached behind her back and began untying the laces of her gown.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“I know how you feel about paying women who are dressed,” Clio explained. “I thought perhaps you would get your money’s worth more quickly if I took my gown off.” She had never done anything like this before in her life and she flushed red with anger.

Her pinafore and overskirt fell to the floor, leaving her standing in only a knee-length chemise. It had been fine once, but years of wear had made it almost transparent.

It was a good thing Miles no longer felt desire
(liar)
because if he did he would probably have been feeling it. Damn he wished he had a drink. The room suddenly drew itself in and became smaller, cramped, as if the air were heavier, as if it were somehow compelling them to stand closer together.

There was something about seeing her standing like that, so small and fragile and unutterably beautiful, that sliced through Miles’s anger. “That won’t be necessary,” he managed to choke out before she pulled her chemise over her head. “I think we are all settled up.”

“Good,” Clio said with a sharp nod, releasing the hem of the gown. “Then there is nothing to keep you here. You may go.”

Yes. He should go. She did not need him. And he definitely did not need her. Mucking around with his investigation. Interfering with his life, making his breeches feel like they had shrunk ten inches in the past two minutes. What was it, six in the morning, and he had not yet been to bed? It was not as though he did not have more important things to be doing. What was he thinking, wasting his time pacing up and down in front of her house?

But there was definitely some connection between her and the vampire, and he had to find out what it was.

“I cannot just go.” Miles did not sound apologetic. “You see, I promised to stay with you until you were in custody.”

Clio waved that away. “That is not important anymore.”

“I am sorry, Lady Thornton, but a man of honor always keeps his promises.”

“A man of honor does not torment innocent women by throwing promises they extracted during moments of strain back in their faces,” Clio pointed out hotly.

“It is an interesting point,” Miles acknowledged. “But you are wrong. I am bound. You are stuck with me.” Clio opened her mouth to say something, no doubt comparing him unfavorably with a foxhound, but he cut her off. He was rather enjoying himself now. “Even without my promise, you have to concede that it would be irresponsible of me to leave an admitted fiend alone to do more harm.”

“I am not a fiend. You said so yourself.”

“And you said yourself ‘I am the vampire.’ ”

“But that was before. Everything has changed.”

Miles raised an eyebrow. “Has it? Are you really convinced?”

Clio bit her lip and turned to look out the window into the waning night, hugging her arms around her. The stars still glimmered faintly and the sky was the vibrant blue that marked the moment just before dawn. Until recently, this was a time of day that always made Clio a little sad because it marked the end of the night. She loved the night, loved the stillness of the city air and the velvety darkness, loved the glow of the moon and the twinkle of fireflies. At night, anything seemed possible. It was only during the day that reality took hold, that reason and logic reasserted themselves, that all her hopes and dreams seemed impossible once again. But now this had happened and the peace she had felt at night vanished. Would she ever get it back?

If I am not the vampire, why didn’t he kill me?

You are not what you think you are.

What did it all mean?

The simplest explanation is the best, Clio had learned in her investigations. And the simplest explanation certainly was not that her friend Elwood had drugged her, dragged a dead woman up a ladder into her room, and left the lifeless body lying across her mattress with a white gardenia in its hand. No, the simplest explanation was that she herself was the vampire.

“I can prove you are not,” Miles said then, as if he had heard her thoughts. “I can show you that you are not the vampire, but you will have to obey me.”

Clio turned to face him. “How?”

Miles did not know why he had not thought of it sooner. It was the perfect means of keeping an eye on her. Keeping her safe. “You suggested the method yourself: If you were locked up and another body surfaced, it would be clear you were not the vampire. Correct?”

Clio thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Therefore you have two options: Either I can take you to the constables, or rather,” he said, remembering a certain tone in her voice, “to the Special Commissioner, and have you locked up until another girl dies. Or, you can have me as your constant companion until then, but be able to continue your investigation. The choice is yours—the Special Commissioner, or me.” Miles added, “I would, of course, pay you for having to put up with my company.”

Clio narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t want your money.”

“You will,” Miles assured her. “I know you will find it hard to believe at first, but I can be very bothersome. Tedious, even.”

“I can’t tell you how you surprise me.”

Miles ignored her. “I had to pay you ten pounds to compensate for inflicting myself on you for half an hour today,” Miles calculated, “so at that rate, two days would cost about a thousand pounds. Would five hundred up front, as a retainer, and five hundred when the job is done suit you? It should not take more than two days for another body to arrive. If it is longer, we can renegotiate.”

Clio stared at him, stunned. Five hundred pounds would pay off her debt to Captain Black. A thousand would keep Which House fed for years. It was an absurd sum to offer for a job of detection.

She was immediately wary. “Why are you doing this? Why do you care what I do? Where I am?”

“I don’t,” Miles answered bluntly. “I care about finding the vampire. As far as I can tell, whether you are the vampire or just the person he is trying to frame, you are the closest link I have to the truth.”

She remembered all the news sheets she had read from three years earlier. “Are you doing this because of Beatrice? Because you still love her and want to avenge her death?”

Something tensed in Miles’s cheek, but his voice stayed level. “You are very good at asking questions. That will be useful at the fair.”

Clio, who had opened her mouth to protest his change of subject, said instead, “The fair?”

“Yes. I propose that we start with a visit to the Jubilee Fairgrounds. Perhaps someone there can tell us who she—” he gestured at the dead girl on the bed, “—is, and who she left with last night. Perhaps someone there saw the real vampire.”

Clio might not have been to the fair, but she had read about it, and knew that by law it was supposed to close at midnight. “But it’s nearly dawn. Who will be there?”

“Everyone. It is only once the booths licensed by the crown have closed that the fair begins to get interesting.”

“I am only going along with this for the money,” she announced to him.

“Really? I thought it was my charm that convinced you,” Miles replied dryly.

Clio felt as though the reigns of the investigation had slipped away from her. For one final moment she considered telling him to take her to the Special Commissioner instead, but then the thought of his thousand pounds and what it could mean convinced her.

That and the fact that he might be the only thing standing between the innocent women of London and death at her hands.

Even in the kind, rosy light of dawn, the Jubilee Fair looked disreputable. The air was filled with shouts—people hawking everything from leather belts and knives to love, good breath, and long life—and scented with a mixture of lemons, roasted chickens, spilled ale, women’s perfume, and soot. The place was entirely singular, entirely unforgettable.

And entirely unfamiliar to Clio. She felt her spirits lift enormously. To her, even the hastily constructed shanties of Jubilee Fairgrounds looked beautiful because she was sure she had never been there before.

“This is the first time I have seen any of this,” she said to Miles as they walked between the stalls, Toast perched on her shoulder to avoid being trampled. The opening lines of an old ballad came unbidden to her mind.
The first time I did see you dear, my heart in me did pound. I knew that day as I know
—

“What are you humming?” Miles demanded sharply.

“Humming?” It took Clio a moment to realize that in her excitement, she had been. “It is something my nurse used to sing me to make me go to sleep,” she said. “I don’t even think it has a name.”

Miles nodded, but his eyes had a faraway look. “It is called ‘The First Time I Did See You Dear.’ A very good friend of mine used to sing it often.” It had been Beatrice’s favorite, one of the vestiges of her early life in the country. He used to love it when she sang it to him because he knew it meant she was happy, loved seeing the sweetness that still hovered unextinguished beneath her ever more polished exterior. Or at least, had until—

A woman in a red satin gown festooned with fake gems and ribbons barreled into him with a coy smile. “Good evening lovie,” she began with an exaggerated wink in Miles’s direction. “Look like you’re a man who could show a lass a good time. A real good time, if you know what I mean.” Before she could elaborate, her eyes fell upon Clio, and her smile vanished. An expression almost of terror took its place. “Oh. You. Never mind,” she said, hastily backing away before turning around and running into the crowd.

“I am sorry, my lord,” Clio said with a frown. Had the woman been afraid of her? “I seem to have scared her off. If you’d like, I can wait in the carriage.”

Miles looked down at her to be sure she was joking, and found she was not. “That won’t be necessary.”

“But she was beautiful,” Clio said, with real awe.

“I suppose some might think her beautiful.”

Clio frowned at him. “If you are trying to spare my feelings by understating your admiration, you need not, my lord.”

“Thank you. I shall remember that in the future.”

His eyes seemed to be laughing at her and Clio was suddenly strikingly aware that the man whose hand was on her elbow
(The first time I did see you dear),
the man who was looking at her with genuine interest in his intense golden eyes
(My heart in me did pound),
the man whose lips were close enough for her to touch
(I knew that day as I know now),
the man whose proximity was filling her head with old songs
(That my true love I’d found)
—that this man was her cousin’s fiancé, that he could never be hers, and that he was probably in love with Mariana just like everyone else.

Clio moved away abruptly.
Bad girl
she heard her grandmother screeching, and had to agree. Coming here, going anywhere, with the Viscount Dearbourn was a mistake. She would have been better off with the Special Commissioner. At least she would not have imagined kissing him, or kept wishing that she were beautiful, or had a lovely gown like the woman in red, a gown that made men swoon. What would it be like to be that sure of yourself, Clio wondered, remembering the woman’s smile at Miles. What would it be like to know you were beautiful, that people desired you, that they loved you?

“Like a slice of heaven” a voice answered her thoughts. Clio looked up and realized it was a question, not a statement, put forward by a man selling sweetmeats from a tray. “Rose water and almond paste and sugar, that’s what that is. Or perhaps a lemon-and-sugar sweet for the lady? She loves a good lemon sweet, I can tell you.”

How did he know that?
Clio wondered.

Miles gave the man a coin, and selected three of the large lemons with hollow sugar straws in them, giving one to Clio and one to Toast.

“You’d better take the whole lot of ’em, if this is the smallest coin you got,” the sweet-seller told Miles.

Miles shrugged. “You keep the difference.”

The sweet-seller’s eyes grew wide. “You are a gentleman, sir, a true gentleman, and I thank you, sir.” He leaned over to Clio, who had been watching the exchange with perplexity, and said, “You done well this time, sweetheart.”

“Tell me,” Miles said, drawing the man’s attention. “Have you seen a girl with a birthmark in the shape of a flower on her cheek, here at the fair?”

The sweet-seller seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say that I have, but then I don’t notice all of them. Now if she had a birthmark here,” he made a gesture toward a region below his neck and above his stomach, “that I mighta remembered.”