Leslie Lafoy (3 page)

“Well,” Barrett drawled, “I must say that being denied buried treasure worth millions would be an excellent motive for murder.”

She nodded, but didn’t look up. “It’s certainly a far better one than any they can fabricate for you.”

Yes, indeed, it was. When the authorities finally got around to posing the right questions to the right people … “You’re in trouble, Mrs. Dandaneau.”

Her gaze snapped up to his. The fire was gone, replaced by the glint of steely resolve. “No deeper than you are, Mr. Stanbridge.”

“But eventually my name is going to be cleared,” he pointed out. “Especially when the authorities learn the reason for your cousin’s presence in London. And yours.”

One delicately shaped brow inched upward. “Do you think they’ll believe—any more than you do—a story of a scavenger hunt for buried pirate treasure?”

“Probably not,” he admitted, lifting his cup and saluting her with it. “Until they find Mignon’s half of the map.”

“True,” she admitted as he sipped. “Which is going to be very interesting since you’re the one who has it.”

Hot coffee and cold realization caught hard midway down his throat. If she was right …

Isabella concluded that his coughing fit wasn’t life-threatening and waited for him to recover. Timing, she decided, was everything with Barrett Stanbridge. His coolly analytical—and slightly cynical—manner was fairly easy to knock off kilter if she tossed the right information at him at just the right moment. He didn’t strike her, however, as the sort of man who would let her get away with the tactic indefinitely. Intelligent and quick-witted, he’d soon come to anticipate the surprises. Which meant that she needed to use them while she could.

“I have half the map?” he said, his voice a bit strained. He cleared his throat before adding more firmly, “What makes you think that?”

“Mignon liked to appear important,” Isabella supplied, relaxing as she headed into the end of the tale, certain that she’d made the right choice in sharing it with him. “Within hours of being handed our respective halves of the map, all of New Orleans and half of Louisiana knew of it. There were two attempts to steal my half of the map. Three to steal Mignon’s.”

He hesitated, slowly cocking a brow. “Do you have any idea by whom?”

“The list of possible thieves is endless.” She finished her coffee and set the cup and saucer on his desk. Settling back in the chair, she folded her hands in her lap and met his gaze squarely. “It has, however, been narrowed to someone with the financial resources required to follow us here. After I identified Mignon’s body yesterday evening, I went to her lodgings. They’d been ransacked. Whoever attempted to steal her half of the map in New Orleans attempted it again here.”

“How do you know they didn’t find it?”

Something in his manner suggested that he already knew the answer and that the question was more a test of her reasoning abilities than anything else. “Mignon was killed the night before last,” she replied confidently. “I went by her lodgings yesterday morning and the landlady let me in to wait. The room and her belongings were in typical Mignon disarray when I arrived and when I left. It was after her death and after my departure that someone tore things to shreds.”

“They could have found it.”

She shook her head and smiled. “Mignon wouldn’t have left it in such an obvious place. And it’s just as apparent that she didn’t have it on her when she was accosted and beaten or it wouldn’t have been necessary to search her lodgings after she died. Which makes it likely that she hid it somewhere, intending to keep it safe for the time being and come back for it later. According to the landlady, the only time she left her rooms the day she died was to dine all three meals in public establishments and to attend a play in the evening.”

He slowly nodded but didn’t say anything.

“And,” Isabella went on, “according to the constables, witnesses report that she left the play on your arm, climbed into your carriage, and wasn’t seen again until her bludgeoned body was found in the alleyway behind your house yesterday morning.”

“Do you have any idea of where she dined that last day?”

Isabella shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter,” she clarified. “Mignon wouldn’t have hidden the map in a public place. The risk that it might be accidentally lost or discovered would be too great. No. She hid it during the time she spent with you, Mr. Stanbridge. It’s somewhere in your carriage, your house, or on your property.”

He finished his own coffee and set the cup and saucer aside, saying quietly, “Are you aware that, as a holder of half of the map, you’re in the same grave danger your cousin was?”

Of course she did and she found it interesting that his mind was tracking along that course. Was it based in something approximating chivalry? Or was it more a natural consequence of his occupation? Private investigators probably focused on the potential danger more than others did. Not that the answer mattered, she reminded herself. By nightfall, he’d be nothing more than another person she’d met along the way and would never encounter again.

Isabella nodded. “I also know that my best chance of staying alive is to find Mignon’s half as soon as possible so that I stay well ahead of whoever it is that killed her.”

He folded his arms across his chest and crossed his ankles. “Did you come here thinking to hire me to protect you?”

He did that sort of thing? The possibility had never crossed her mind. “No, Mr. Stanbridge,” she assured him, chuckling darkly. “Until I find Lafitte’s treasure, I can barely afford one meal a day. I came here this morning because I need your permission and assistance to search your private property. If you’ll give it, if you’ll assist me in this one small way, I’ll tell the authorities the entire story and clear your name.”

The cynical smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “And make yourself the principal suspect in Mignon’s murder?”

It was a small price to pay for invaluable—no, absolutely essential—help. And one she’d concluded was worth the risk before she’d walked in the door. “I’ll be well gone before they open the letter. Let them try to find me.”

Barrett stared down at the carpet, his mind racing. How long had Mignon Richard been in London before she’d met him in the theater lobby? he wondered. Was he the only man with whom she’d spent time? Was his the only property she might have used to hide her half of the map? They were important questions, he knew. But not absolutely vital. Not unless a thorough search of his house and carriage failed to produce results. At that point, he’d have no choice but to find the answers.

But if, on the other hand, the map was where Isabella Dandaneau thought it was … It wasn’t going to solve his problems as easily as she believed. Her vouching for his innocence wasn’t going to carry all that much weight with the authorities. Especially when they couldn’t find her or another suspect to haul into the dock for a grisly murder.

The decision of what to do in the long run could wait, he decided. At the moment, it was in his best interests to help her find the missing half of the map. Hopefully, she was right and they’d discover it tucked somewhere in his carriage or his house. The prospect of having to trace every move Mignon had made while in London was too daunting to even contemplate. And spending hours and hours with Isabella at the task … God, he wished she didn’t look quite so much like her cousin had. His eyes seemed to be linked to his memory and his memory to his loins. All by the shortest of cords.

Unfolding, he pushed himself off the desk and strode across the office. “Quincy,” he said, pulling open the door. “Have the carriage brought around, please.”

He was taking his greatcoat from the rack in the corner when she rose from her seat saying, “Thank you, Mr. Stanbridge. I appreciate your trust and accommodation.”

“Those are noble reasons,” he replied, shrugging into the wool garment. “I’m going along with this strictly in the interest of self-preservation.”

“I do understand the importance of that.”

Barrett considered her. Her initial nervousness had subsided in the course of their exchange and the woman who now met his gaze from across the room was absolutely certain of the direction in which she was setting them. And beneath that confidence lay a steely resolve every bit the equal of that her cousin had displayed during her time with him.

But there was more to Isabella. Or maybe less, depending on how he looked at it. Mignon had been the kind of woman who moved through every moment like a chess player; each action, each breath, calculated for effect and strategically planned well in advance. But while Isabella knew just as well where she wanted to go and what she wanted to accomplish, she didn’t seem to employ cold manipulation to get there. She danced along the edge, trusting instincts to keep her balance from one moment to the next.

All in all, he decided as he motioned for her to precede him out of the office, she was a much more dangerous woman than Mignon had ever been. Isabella was comfortable with behaving in largely unpredictable ways. The sooner she was gone from his life, the better.

Chapter Two

“Is this the seat Mignon occupied during the trip to your house?”

Barrett’s chest tightened as an unpleasant certainty settled in his brain: the particulars of his time with Mignon couldn’t remain private. Not given the realities of why she’d left the theater with him and why Isabella Dandaneau had marched into his life in her cousin’s wake. Expelling a long, slow breath, Barrett resolved to handle the circumstances with as much dignity and decorum as possible. “Initially, yes,” he replied tautly.

The arch of her brow and the cynical shadow to her smile told him that she knew exactly what had transpired the instant he’d closed the carriage door that night. Precisely why he was embarrassed by that …

“Still, it bears searching,” she announced jauntily, turning on the seat and skimming her fingers along the seam where the bottom cushion met the back one. “She could have hidden the map in the moments before putting you on your back.”

Barrett watched her as yet another realization took up residence in his brain. He had two choices: he could either focus on the trampling of his sense of propriety and wiggle in acute discomfort, or he could ignore all that and concentrate on understanding the spiderweb in which he’d become ensnared. Since the latter of the two courses actually offered him a glimmer of hope for influencing the outcome of the disaster, he concluded that there really wasn’t much of a choice at all. And given that, he needed to gather as much information as he could. Mignon and the map were the keys, Isabella the logical—the only—source of what could be learned.

“You truly didn’t like your cousin, did you?” he asked, beginning his quest.

Shifting about to continue her exploration, she replied, “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been mistaken for her and been groped, mauled, and all but raped.” She moved her search to the space where the lower cushion met the walls. “And as you might well imagine from that bit of information and your own experience with her, her behavior wasn’t exactly a sterling contribution to the family reputation.”

He could have surmised that much on his own. But the fault didn’t lie in Isabella’s answer; it lay in the question and his approach to the matter. Frowning, he silently cursed the mush his brain had become since the constables had appeared at his door. In a great many respects, it felt as though the better, more capable part of it had packed its bags and departed with the detectives.

She’d finished examining the seams of the lower cushion and was almost done with her inspection of the seam between the upper cushion and the back wall when he temporarily abandoned the attempt to chart a sounder course and drawled, “Find anything?”

“No,” she admitted, turning back to sit squarely facing him. “I’d like to search your seat, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She was thorough; he had to give her credit for that. And apparently, judging by the direction of her thoughts, she wasn’t the least bit priggish either. Shrugging his assent, Barrett moved to her side of the carriage, easing her hoops and skirt aside to avoid crushing them as he did. Oddly, the courtesy seemed to fluster her. Her gasp was tiny and quickly strangled, but he heard it nonetheless. The sound prompted him to glance at her just in time to catch a glimpse of widened eyes and slightly parted lips.

Even as he was thinking about how delectable she looked, she slipped the mask of cool composure back into place and gracefully, ever so nonchalantly, transferred herself to the seat he’d just vacated. Barrett watched as she began a systematic search of the cushions and added
persistent
to her list of more favorable qualities.

Not, he had to admit, that he’d seen anything in her so far that he’d consider to be a glaring character flaw. Judging by her behavior in his office, she did seem to have a tendency to act first and think later, to make judgments and decisions on instinct and at the spur of the moment. But, he reminded himself, that wasn’t something terribly uncommon in women. At least with most of the women of his experience. His mother had always maintained that women were gifted with highly developed senses of intuition. And while he’d always considered it a rather flimsy excuse for the lack of cool logic and well-planned actions, he’d learned that efforts to make them think more like men were not only hopeless, but exceedingly frustrating. They were happily what they were and there was no changing them.

On the more positive side of the ledger, Isabella Dandaneau didn’t seem to have even a sliver of false pride; she’d outright and easily admitted to poverty. And the fact that she’d come to him asking for help certainly implied that she had an uncommon amount of pragmatism; that she understood the importance of putting success before any notions of personal independence.

And, thanks to the combination of her moving around on the seat and a rather pathetic set of hoops, he could see that she also had a most wonderfully curved waist, hip, and backside.

Barrett reined in his smile and forced his gaze to the floor. God, he really needed to see that she found what she was looking for and was on her way as soon as humanly possible. The longer her departure was delayed, the greater the chance that he would do or say something he’d later regret. Although, he had to admit, it was going to be hard to do anything that turned out more regrettable than having taken Mignon home.