Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(76)

He did feel mildly guilty for pursuing the matter after he’d promised Lily he wouldn’t. But she’d been concerned for his safety, and he hadn’t done any of the investigating himself. He’d merely written to Harris and let him do the work.

And now, less than a week later, Julian held deliverance in his hands. True liberation from fear and doubt, in the form of two names. After attacking Leo and Faraday, this Horace Stone and Angus Macleod had gone on to commit more criminal acts the same night. Impulsive ones, by Levi Harris’s account. Acts like those didn’t suggest the behavior of two paid assassins. Wouldn’t hired assailants have fled the area and reported back to their employer, rather than bruising about the same neighborhood, indiscriminately smashing windowpanes? The pattern of events pointed to two drunken louts on a petty crime spree. Nothing more.

Lily and Morland—and he had to face it, pretty much everyone else—had been right all along, it would seem. Leo’s murder had been a random act of violence. The death was no less tragic, but the implications for Julian were markedly less profound. Of course, he would always regret not being there that night. Leo was a good friend, and his death cast a long, sorrowful shadow. But if Julian could see the killers punished—if he could feel certain, once and for all, that Peter Faraday was wrong and those men actually hadn’t intended to murder Julian—his future with Lily looked three shades brighter, instantly.

Julian folded the letter from Harris, jammed it in his breast pocket, and crossed to the escritoire, withdrawing two sheets of paper and taking up a penknife to sharpen a quill.

He needed to send an express to Ashworth at once. If the brutes were sentenced to six months’ hard labor, they were due to be released within weeks. Both witnesses to the killing were in points far West, out Ashworth’s way—Cora Dunn, the prostitute, had stayed on in Devonshire, and Peter Faraday remained convalescing in Cornwall. If Ashworth could deliver one or both of them to London before Stone and Macleod were released, they could bring the men up on murder charges before they ever tasted freedom. Leo would finally have justice.

And Julian could feel some measure of peace.

“Julian?” Lily’s voice, from the doorway. “Are you ready? The property agent will be waiting.”

Deuce it. With the arrival of Harris’s letter, he’d forgotten all about their appointment to look at houses for lease. She was excited; he could hear it in her tone. And now, with this news from Harris, Julian was excited, too. He didn’t dare tell Lily about this latest development, not yet. No benefit in raising her expectations or anxieties until he could be sure.

He looked up. Spied his wife, a vision in sage-green muslin and frothy lace. Promptly dropped the penknife and quill, as if they burnt his fingertips.

“What is it?” she asked, laughing at his clumsiness.

He smiled. “Beautiful,” he signed expansively, putting face and shoulders into the gesture. “Beautiful.” Because sometimes, spoken words just wouldn’t do.

She looked to the clock and finger-spelled, “Late.”

“The property agent will wait.” He readied his hands and waited for her attention. Feeling mischievous, he decided to test how her comprehension was improving. In swift finger-spelling, he described in explicit detail what he planned to do with that sage-green dress when they returned, and then what he planned to do with the body beneath it.

Her cheeks burned crimson as he went on. When at length he concluded his indecent proposition with the words, “five times,” she laughed and put a hand to his cheek.

She said aloud, “Finally. There’s the infamous scoundrel I know and love. I wondered where he’d been hiding these past few weeks. I was beginning to wonder if I’d truly married a boring, stuffy clerk.”

He dropped a playful kiss on her brow before offering his arm. “Shall we, then?”

Lily, Lily. The things she must never know.

“Oh, I like this one.” Lily’s face lit up as they stepped over the threshold of the third house that afternoon. She gripped his arm. “I have a good feeling about this house, Julian.”

“We’ve only seen the entrance hall.”

“Yes, I know. But it’s a very fine entrance hall.”

Julian thought it looked rather shabby. The paper on the walls was faded and peeling, and cobwebs shrouded the far corners of the ceiling.

“It’s been vacant for some time,” the property agent said. “The owners have only just decided to let it out.”

“The proportions are lovely,” she said, turning into what he supposed to be the dining room. With no furniture, it was difficult to tell. “And there’s so much air and light.”

True, for a town house, it did have a pleasant, open feel. Something about the number of windows and the harmonious arrangement of the rooms, he supposed. Julian would have liked to build her a lavish mansion from the ground up, surrounded by acres of green, rolling park. But such houses weren’t built in a matter of weeks, and a matter of weeks was all they had before Leo’s heir arrived from Egypt. Julian’s old house in Bloomsbury was out of the question, for a host of reasons. So they would choose from the available homes for lease in Mayfair. If Lily was pleased with this one, Julian was pleased.

She asked the property agent, “Is there a garden?”

“Yes, my lady.” The man led them down the corridor to the morning room at the rear, pulling back the dusty drapes to reveal a stone terrace and an overgrown jumble of weeds.