Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(75)

He didn’t reply right away, but took his time finishing his roast duck and red wine. With thoughtful precision, he folded his linen napkin and set it aside.

“Do you know,” he said, “I think I will go by the club tonight.”

A few hours later, Lily sat up alone in her private sitting room with a roaring fire, a book, and a pot of coffee to keep her company. Well, all these and her regrets. Why had she ever suggested Julian spend an evening out? She missed him terribly.

Lifting her cup, she took a scalding sip of coffee and grimaced at the bitter aftertaste. She hated the brew, but she’d requested Holling to bring it especially for its stimulating properties. She wanted to be awake when Julian returned. Even if he stumbled in at half three, reeking of brandy.

Or cheap perfume.

She shook herself, feeling a twinge of dismay. That had been a jealous, spiteful thought unworthy of them both. After all his displays of tender devotion over the past weeks, did she really think one night at the gentlemen’s club would have him reverting to his old, rakish ways? Julian was her husband now, and he deserved her trust and good faith. But it was more pleasant to imagine him surrounded by bare-breasted opera dancers than skulking down dark, dangerous streets.

Lily tried to plant her nose firmly in her book, but her mind insisted on wandering, tracing through every gentleman’s haunt and shadowed alleyway in her mental map of London. She was still stuck on the first page of her novel—the first paragraph, really—when she looked up to check the mantel clock yet again. She saw that barely an hour had passed. And she saw that Julian had already returned.

He brought with him no odor of brandy or perfume. But he was festooned with several yards’ worth of vibrant ribbons and satins in every color of the rainbow, tied end to end and yoked about his shoulders.

So this was the infamous billiard-room garland.

If he noticed Lily reclining there on the sofa, feet curled under her dressing gown, he paid her no greeting. Instead, he went straight to the roaring fire and began feeding it the gaily colored garters, an arm’s length at a time. He paused every so often to take up the poker and prod an errant swatch of silk into the flames.

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.