Barbara Metzger - Truly Yours

"We?"

"If I have to go, so do you. She was speaking of the opera tonight."

"The opera?" Daniel turned green again. Rex left the room in a hurry.

Lady Royce was not plotting an escape for this afternoon, Rex reasoned. She was too busy planning an evening of torture. He set out about his business,

Amanda's business, more determined than ever to clear the charges before the month was over.

On his way to that Bond Street jeweler with J.J. as his initials, Rex kept his ear tuned for following footsteps, and his mind keyed to prickles of intuition. The weather was excellent for once, so a great many people were out and about the street of shops, making it difficult to spot anyone in particular on his trail. His instincts told him nothing except how the upper class spent its afternoons, spending fortunes on items they did not need.

The jeweler told him nothing, either. He'd done some business with Sir Frederick, but that was all. Now that the man was dead, Joshua Jacobs could admit to altering some jewelry for the man, exchanging a few precious stones for glass or paste. Jacobs also purchased the real gems, to be recut and used in other settings.

No, he had no idea what Sir Frederick was doing with the money. The necklace was his first wife's, the baronet had sworn, so the diamonds were his to do with as he wanted.

"Not if they were entailed to his son's wife, they weren't."

It happened all the time, Mr. Jacobs told Rex, when the nobs were under the hatches. Minor titleholders especially, who held heirlooms that were seldom documented or drawn, unlike the more famous pieces of the better families. The toffs Jacobs usually encountered kept the real stones to sell one at a time. Sir Frederick's need for cash must have been urgent.

But why? That was the question. Why had he closed his accounts, stolen Amanda's money, and cashed in as many of his assets as he could get his hands on, and still lived like a pauper?

Jacobs raised his hands. "How should I know? I am nothing but a shopkeeper."

An honest one, Rex judged. He thanked the man and left a gold coin on the counter in appreciation. The jeweler handed it back. "Perhaps something for your lady?"

"I don't have a lady."

"Your mother?"

"I barely have a-" Then he saw a tray full of opera glasses and ornate lorgnettes. If they were going to the opera, Amanda might need a magnifier to see the stage, and to stare down the gawking audience. He selected a delicate lorgnette with various colored stones embedded in the gold handle, to match whichever of her mother's jewelry she chose to wear. He ended up paying far more than he intended for information, but a Town beau was supposed to send flowers to a young lady he had partnered in a dance the night before. Surely what they'd shared deserved a lot more than a nosegay, not that anyone had to know, of course. He told himself a quizzing glass was entirely proper for a friend to give. Just in case, he added silver opera glasses for the countess to his purchase, so his gift to Amanda did not look as particular. He ignored the rings entirely.

His next stop was debtors' prison.

The Fleet was not as noxious as Newgate, and the guards were lax in enforcing the rules, or more greedy.

Roger Vandermere, one of the R.V.s on the Aide's list, had a private cell, with a bed and a chair and table. All the comforts of home, the man explained, which was lucky, since his own house had been claimed by the duns and the constable. He'd be living at the Fleet for some time, unless he managed to pay off his creditors.

Now here was man who ought to be bribable, Rex thought, estimating how much money he had on him. No transfer of funds was necessary, however, because Vandermere wanted to talk. He was deuced lonely in prison, he said, and bored. His friends did not stop by, afraid he'd ask for a loan. He was not afraid to answer Rex's questions, either. Perhaps word of Rex's reputation had not reached inside the prison walls, or else the man had nothing to fear.

Rex already knew Vandermere couldn't have killed Sir Frederick Hawley, not from his current address. Vandermere laughed when he asked about a hired assassin. "If I could afford to pay the going rate, I wouldn't be here, would I?" He'd be at the baize tables and the horse track, trying to win back his fortune.

He did know the late, unlamented baronet, to his regret. They'd been partners, he gladly told Rex, with a group of other men, investing in a shipping scheme that could not fail. Except it did. The reason the capital was lost, as well as any profits, was that Hawley had not made the final payment on time to ensure the cargo was shipped. Then he claimed the goods were stolen before he could negotiate another deal. No, Vandermere did not know the other investors, only the banker, Breverton. Vandermere suspected the project had something to do with smuggled goods because words like "warehouse" and "Calais" were mentioned, but he never inquired too closely. "Better not to know, eh?"

Hawley had refused to make good on the missing investment, saying he had lost his own fortune and did not have enough of the ready. Instead of tripling his money as the baronet had promised, Vandermere had lost it all, his house, his carriage, his mistress. That last hurt the most, especially when the disloyal wench never came to visit.

Nor did Sir Frederick come. "I guess that was lucky, or I might have been the one to send the dastard to his maker, and then where would I be?"

In a smaller cell.

So Sir Frederick was indeed connected to a shipping venture of some sort, which led Rex to Joseph Johnston, the merchant who had taken on Sir Frederick's valet. Johnston was away from home when Rex called. Brusseau was there. No, he did not kill Sir Frederick. No, he was not in the house at the time. His late master had told him he was not needed. How could he know who killed monsieur when he was not on the premises?

Everything he said was true, to Rex's disappointment. "You have a brother?"

"Oui. That is no crime, no?"

"Where is he employed?"

"Why, so you can call at his employer's residence and lay suspicion at his door? No, I have answered enough of your questions. Mademoiselle Carville had cause to wish Monsieur dead. That is enough, no?"

No.

He found Johnston at his offices near the docks, where the air stank of the tidal mud and Johnston's cigars. "I am busy, as you can see." He waved purchase orders, bills of lading, crew rosters, and a few gilt-edged invitations at Rex. "I do not have time for any half-pay officer playing at detective. You can show yourself out." He picked up another document, this one with an official seal on it.

"A moment more, please. I merely wish to know if Sir Frederick had dealings with your company."

"I take on many investors to finance my ships, and I do not keep track. The bank handles that."

"Breverton's Bank?"

"Among others. The contracts are all legal."

"Are they written up by Sir Nigel Turlowe, by any chance?" Rex guessed.

"Among others. Is that what this is about?" Now he put down the papers and took his cigar out of the corner of his mouth, setting it atop a stack of ship's logs. "You want to put some of your blunt on my ships? I'll tell you what I tell all the swells: I cannot guarantee anything. Ships sail, get blown off course, get pirated or shot at. If you can stomach the risk, I'll be happy to have more backing."

Paying for information was one thing, paying to smuggle goods in from France was another. Rex answered the man with another question of his own. "Why did you hire Brusseau, a Frenchman?"

"Why not? The chap was out of work. I must have met Sir Frederick a few times. He always looked bang up to the nines."

"But Brusseau had no references. He might have killed his former employer."

"The girl did it."

Odd, Johnston's statement was a definite red in Rex's mind, an outright lie, with no orange confusion, no yellowish thinking the words might be true.

"I say she did not kill Sir Frederick."

Johnston waved his cigar in Rex's face. "Are you accusing me?"

"He had a lot of money hidden at his house, not all belonging to him."

"That's right, some of it is mine! I'll have my lawyer see about claiming my share. I lost a good deal because of that." He spit out a bit of tobacco leaf. "But I did not kill him, not to get the money back, not to get even."

Bright blue.

Damnation.

Few names were left on his short list, and few hours remained to get ready for-gads!-the opera. Damnation, with divas.

The opera was not so bad. Rex got to sit next to Amanda. Lady Royce arranged it so, with them in the front of the private box for the world to see, while she and Daniel sat behind them. That way, she said, no one could notice Daniel's sallow complexion, or the yellow Cossack trousers he insisted were all the crack, or the puce waistcoat embroidered with orange butterflies. If his apparel was not enough to make everyone else bilious, too, she swore, she did not know what would.

As expected, every eye in the huge theater was directed toward their box, one of the best in the opera house. Even without all the current speculation, Rex alone would have stood out in his dress uniform, with its lace and gold braid, his stunning dark looks, his features still handsome despite the scar and a bit of discoloration around his eyes and nose. Nor could they miss Amanda, elegant in brown velvet the color of her eyes, with a black lace fichu at her neckline, and black ribbons under the high waist of her gown. Her pearls were at her neck, making her appear as demure and proper as a woman could look, considering she ought not be in public at all. No one could tell Amanda had butterflies of her own, in her roiling stomach.

Rex thought the careful image of ladylike decorum was destroyed by her headpiece. Instead of the feathers many women stuck in their piled coiffures, Amanda wore a gold tiara atop dashing blond curls. Lady Royce's gift, the tiara made his own offering seem paltry. Worse, the countess might as well have crowned Rex the king and Amanda his queen. Rulers of the gossip columns and the on dits, that was more like it. He knew that the audience was watching them instead of the stage, and every tongue was clacking with tidbits of their pasts, and their chancy futures.

Amanda knew they were the center of attention, too. Her head was held as regally high as royalty, but Rex noticed the way she nervously fidgeted with the lorgnette he had given her, which did not match her ensemble at all. The countess had raised her eyebrows at the token, but then she colored and stuttered when he'd handed her a ribbon-tied parcel also, before leaving for the opera. He'd stepped away to take their wraps from the butler, before Lady Royce could think of kissing him in gratitude. He thought Amanda was thinking of it, but they were not alone, curse the countess and her stratagems.

Now, when Rex and Amanda were even less private, he took her hand under cover of her skirts, and whispered to her about anything he could think of to ease her anxiety, and to drown out the whispers from the surrounding boxes. From what he could overhear, the countess was correct: Society was more offended at the lack of proper mourning than the crime Miss Carville was purported to have committed. No one mentioned her supposed lover, not with Lady Royce as her sponsor, and not with Rex glaring at them. Perhaps, he heard one skinny spinster in a turban declare, he was the man Miss Carville had been meeting on the sly. And how romantic that was!

Hell and damnation, he'd not been in Town until days after the murder! Still, if the gossip grapevine wished to wrap its tendrils around a fairy tale instead of a tragedy, and the countess wished to nurture the wayward creeper, he would play his role of gardener for tonight. He raised Amanda's hand to his and kissed her gloved fingers. Hers were trembling, and not from his touch, damn it.

"Stare them down, I say." He took the lorgnette from her and raised it to his eye to ogle the rouged dowager in the adjoining box, the one who had been condemning modern morals in a voice loud enough to drown out the orchestra's tuning. The matron smiled as if she had not been titillating her companions with tales of Rex's hell-raking about Town the past few days. "As for the cousin…" died on her lips.

Yes, Rex acknowledged, the countess had been right: Murder was nothing compared to a social blunder.

The opera began at last and most of the audience switched its attention to the stage, at least those not near enough to peer into the darkened private boxes. Rex took advantage of the dimmed chandeliers to hold Amanda's hand more tightly, to drape his other arm around the back of her chair, where his fingers could reach up to caress the back of her neck, the silky curls, the-"Ouch!"