Chapter One
Ealing
November 1825
When Bow Street Runner Jackson Pinter entered Halstead Hall’s library, he wasn’t surprised to find only one person there. He was early, and no one in the Sharpe family was ever early.
“Good morning, Masters,” Jackson said, inclining his head toward the barrister who sat poring over some papers. Giles Masters was husband to the eldest Sharpe sister, Lady Minerva. Or Mrs. Masters, as she’d chosen to be called.
Masters looked up. “Pinter! Good to see you, old fellow. How are things at Bow Street?”
“Well enough for me to take the time to hold this meeting.”
“I daresay the Sharpes have run you ragged investigating their parents’ deaths.”
“Murders,” Jackson corrected him. “We’ve determined that for certain now.”
“Right. I forgot that Minerva said the pistol found at the scene had never been fired. A pity no one noticed it nineteen years ago, or an investigation might have been mounted then and a great deal of heartache prevented.”
“Mrs. Plumtree paid off anyone who might have explored further.”
Masters sighed. “You can’t blame her. She thought she was preventing scandal.”
Jackson frowned. Instead she’d prevented the discovery of the truth. And that was why she’d ended up with five grandchildren stuck in the past, unable to go on with their lives. That’s why she’d laid down her ultimatum—all of them had to marry by the end of the year or none would inherit. So far, they’d obliged her. All but one.
In his mind arose an image of Lady Celia that he swiftly squelched.
“Where is everyone?”
“Still at breakfast. They’ll be trooping across the courtyard soon, I’m sure. Have a seat.”
“I’ll stand.” He strode over to the window that overlooked the Crimson Courtyard, named for its red tile.
Being at Halstead Hall always made Jackson uneasy. The sprawling mansion shrieked “aristocracy.” Having spent his early childhood in a Liverpool slum before moving to a terrace house in Cheapside at age ten, he found Halstead Hall too large, too sumptuous—and too full of Sharpes.
After nearly a year with them as his clients, he still wasn’t sure how he felt about them. Even now, as he saw them walking across the courtyard beneath a cloud-darkened November sky, he tensed up.
They didn’t look as if they planned to spring anything on him. They looked happy and content.
First came the great lord himself—Oliver Sharpe, the ninth Marquess of Stoneville, said to be a near copy of his olive-skinned, black-haired, and black-eyed father. Initially Jackson had despised the man, having made the mistake of believing the gossip about him. He still thought Stoneville had chosen the wrong path after his parents’ deaths, but since the marquess seemed to be making up for it now, perhaps there was good in him after all.
Beside him walked Lord Jarret, whose blue-green eyes and black hair were said to make him look more a blend of his half-Italian father and blond mother. He was Jackson’s favorite of the brothers. No-nonsense and even-tempered, Jarret was the easiest to talk to. And once his scheming maternal grandmother, Mrs. Hester Plumtree, had allowed him to take over the family business, the man had flourished. Jarret worked hard at Plumtree Brewery; Jackson could admire that.
After him came Lord Gabriel with his new wife, Lady Gabriel, on one arm. No doubt the other two men’s wives were in their confinement—Lady Stoneville was expected to deliver within the month, and Lady Jarret wasn’t far behind. But Jackson wouldn’t be surprised to hear of an impending child soon from the youngest Sharpe brother. The couple seemed very much in love, which was rather astonishing, considering that their marriage had initially been contracted just to fulfill Mrs. Plumtree’s ridiculous ultimatum.
That august woman clung to Gabe’s other arm. Jackson admired Mrs. Plumtree’s determination and pluck—it reminded him of his beloved aunt Ada, who’d raised him and now lived with him. But what the elderly woman was demanding of her grandchildren reeked of hubris. No one should have such power over their descendants, not even a legend like Hetty Plumtree, who’d singlehandedly built the family brewery into a major concern after the death of her husband.
Behind her, the two Sharpe sisters came out to cross the courtyard. He dragged in a heavy breath as the younger one caught his eye.
Masters approached to look out the window, too. “And there she comes, the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“And the most maddening,” Jackson muttered.
“Watch it, Pinter,” Masters said in a voice tinged with amusement. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”
Jackson started. He hadn’t been staring at Mrs. Masters. “I beg your pardon,” he murmured, figuring he’d best not explain.
Masters would never accept that Lady Celia was to her sister as a gazelle was to a brood mare. The newly wedded barrister was blinded by love.
Jackson wasn’t. Any fool could see that Lady Celia was the more arresting of the two. While Mrs. Masters had the lush charms of a dockside tart, Lady Celia was a Greek goddess—willowy and tall, small-breasted and long-limbed, with a fine lady’s elegant brow, a doe’s soft eyes. …
And a vixen’s temper. The damned female could flay the flesh from a man’s bones with her sharp tongue.
She could also heat his blood with one unguarded smile.
God save him, it was a good thing her smile had never been bestowed on him. Otherwise, he might act on the fantasy that had plagued him from the day he’d met her—to shove her into some private closet where he could plunder her mouth with impunity. Where she would wrap those slender arms about his neck and let him have his way with her.
Confound her, until she had come along, he’d never allowed himself to desire a woman he couldn’t have. He’d rarely allowed himself to desire anyone, only the occasional whore when he felt desperate for female companionship. Now he couldn’t seem to stop doing so.
It was because he’d seen too little of her lately. What he needed was a surfeit of Lady Celia to make him sick of her. Then he might purge this endless craving for the impossible.
With a scowl, he turned from the window, but it was too late. The sight of Lady Celia crossing the courtyard dressed in some rich fabric had already stirred his blood. She never wore such fetching clothes; generally her lithe figure was shrouded in smocks to protect her workaday gowns from powder smudges while she practiced her target shooting.
But this morning, in that lemon-colored gown, with her hair finely arranged and a jeweled bracelet on her delicate wrist, she was summer on a dreary winter day, sunshine in the bleak of night, music in the still silence of a deserted concert hall.
And he was a fool.
“I can see how you might find her maddening,” Masters said in a low voice.
Jackson stiffened. “Your wife?” he said, deliberately being obtuse.
“Lady Celia.”
Hell and blazes. He’d obviously let his feelings show. He’d spent his childhood learning to keep them hidden so the other children wouldn’t see how their epithets wounded him, and he’d refined that talent as an investigator who knew the value of an unemotional demeanor.
He drew on that talent as he faced the barrister. “Anyone would find her maddening. She’s reckless and spoiled and liable to give her future husband grief at every turn.” When she wasn’t tempting him to madness.
Masters raised an eyebrow. “Yet you often watch her. Have you any interest there?”
Jackson forced a shrug. “Certainly not. You’ll have to find another way to inherit your new bride’s fortune.”
He’d hoped to prick Masters’s pride and thus change the subject, but Masters laughed. “You, marry my sister-in-law? That, I’d like to see. Aside from the fact that her grandmother would never approve, Lady Celia hates you.”
She did indeed. The chit had taken an instant dislike to him when he’d interfered in an impromptu shooting match she’d been participating in with her brother and his friends at a public park. That should have set him on his guard right then.
A pity it hadn’t. Because even if shedidn’t despise him and weren’t miles above him in rank, she’d never make him a good wife. She was young and indulged, not the sort of female to make do on a Bow Street Runner’s salary.
But she’ll be an heiress once she marries.
He gritted his teeth. That only made matters worse. She would assume he was marrying her for her inheritance. So would everyone else. And his pride chafed at that.
Dirty bastard. Son of shame. Whoreson. Love-brat. He’d been called them all as a boy. Later, as he’d moved up at Bow Street, those who resented his rapid advancement had called him a baseborn upstart. He wasn’t about to add money-grubbing fortune hunter to the list.
“Besides,” Masters went on, “you may not realize this, since you haven’t been around much these past few weeks, but Minerva claims that Celia has her eye on three very eligible potential suitors.”
Jackson’s startled gaze shot to him. Suitors? The word who was on his lips when the door opened and Stoneville entered. The rest of the family followed, leaving Jackson to force a smile and exchange pleasantries as they settled into seats about the table, but his mind kept running over Masters’s words.
