Vow of Deception (The Ministry of Curiosities #9)(87)

"Won't you congratulate them, dear Julia?" Buchanan drawled. "Show them you're pleased for them. Come now, water under the bridge and all that."

"Stop it," she snarled. "Stop this charade, Andrew. You are in as much trouble as I am."

"For what?" he blurted out.

"For harboring me. For not notifying the police that I was alive after I showed up here."

"True," Lincoln said. "But that is not a hanging offence. Murder is."

She swallowed again but she let go of the door. Buchanan promptly sat. "Don't tell anyone," he begged Lincoln. "Let her go. If she hangs, it will be on your conscience."

Lincoln didn't take his gaze off Lady Harcourt. If he'd heard Buchanan's plea, he showed no sign. She stared defiantly back, daring him to capture her.

"She committed murder just so she could stage her own death," I said to Buchanan. "An innocent woman—"

"Whores aren't innocent," Buchanan said. "Not even the ones of respectable birth and good breeding." He fluttered a hand in Lady Harcourt's direction.

She rounded on him. "Will you not stop? Can you not see it's over? Do you exist only to torture me?"

"A man must get his pleasures where he can."

She made a harsh sound low in her throat. "You were pathetic when I showed up on your doorstep. Pathetic and ridiculous. He fell all over me," she told us. "He was so happy to see me alive that he couldn't stop pawing me." She crossed the room to the window and slapped a hand on the sill. "He took me right here with the curtains open. Anyone could have seen. The neighbors…" She closed her eyes. "It was hideous and humiliating. I wished I really was dead."

Buchanan's chest heaved. His hands opened and closed at his sides and his face screwed up, as if he were trying hard not to cry or shout or both. She thrust out her chin, daring him to react.

With her sickening words ringing in my ears, I stood. "I'll ask the landlady to fetch the police."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Buchanan rush toward me. I had only a moment to settle into a fighting stance, my fists up to defend myself. Lincoln was too far away to stop him.

But Buchanan hurtled past me, straight for Lady Harcourt. I realized what he was going to do in the moment before he did it. My reaction was too slow.

I watched in horror as he pushed her out the window then followed her through it. There was no scream or shout, merely a distant thud.

I covered my cry with both hands. My knees trembled and I had to sit again. Lincoln strode to the window and peered out.

"Are they…?" I murmured.

He nodded. "People are already milling. I have to see that the police are informed."

"Go. I'll be down in a moment."

He touched my shoulder as he passed. Someone in the distance gave a horrified cry and another shouted. Then everything went quiet, calm, and I suspected Lincoln had taken charge.

I wanted to join him but I waited for the drift of mist to coalesce in the sitting room. I wasn't all that surprised when two figures formed, one in the shape of Lady Harcourt and the other of Andrew Buchanan. They were inseparable even in death. How fitting.

"Well," she said, looking at him. "That's that." She touched the bloodied, damaged side of her face then stared at her hand.

The back of Buchanan's head had caved in, leaving his handsome face untouched. He smiled at her. "Forever together, as it should be. We are meant for one another, Julia. You know that. This proves it."

She simply lifted one shoulder, the movement as elegant in death as in life. If someone had just pushed me out the window, I would do more than shrug when confronting him.

"You goaded Mr. Buchanan," I told her. "You wanted to end it all, but you wanted him to end it for you, didn't you?"

She drifted to the window and peered down at the bodies. Or perhaps she was looking for Lincoln.

"He's quite the man," she said, confirming that he did indeed capture her interest.

Buchanan's spirit shimmered violently and he bit off a string of foul words. "Can you not forget him now? It's over!"

"Even if he never met me," I told her, "he wouldn't be with you."

"I thought sending him to prison would keep him from you." Her spirit deflated, although there was no breath within her to expel. "It was a foolish notion, borne of desperation. I admit that now."

"You told Mr. Salter about the ministry," I said. "You told him and other newspapermen about Lincoln being the leader, and you urged your parliamentary friends to set up a committee to investigate him."

"The newspapers, yes, but I have no political sway. I heard the Duke of Edinburgh boasting about it so I suggest you look there."

So he'd played a part after all. We could do nothing to bring him to justice, but at least his influence had been trounced by his brother's.

Her full lips curved seductively. "The possibility of losing Lincoln upset you, didn't it, Charlotte?"

I didn't answer. I simply sat with as serene an expression as I could muster through my anger. The last thing I wanted was to act exactly as she hoped. She would end her existence here without that satisfaction.

"I came up with the idea of landing Lincoln in trouble after reading the report about the attack in The Star," she went on. "It went a little too well. I wasn't expecting his arrest. I don't know who informed the reporter about werewolves, but I knew you would suspect Ignatius of the attacks. Horrid man."