Chapter 17

17

A drian knocked on Mrs. Riley's door some fifteen minutes later. After checking to make sure his mistress was home, her butler showed Adrian into a stuffy drawing room where lace curtains, piles of embroidered cushions, and thick carpeting seemed to serve as no other purpose than to collect dust.

The lady, a widow who'd lost her husband five years earlier and had chosen not to remarry, sat in a high-backed velvet armchair, her posture rigid. Dressed in a burgundy morning gown cut from a crisp crepe, she looked like a queen awaiting her execution.

"While I realize your coming here was inevitable, Mr. Croft, you still managed to catch me by surprise. I didn't expect you quite so soon." Her stiff gaze stayed upon him as he stepped toward her. She raised her chin – an attempt no doubt at feigning confidence. "You should know that I did consider asking Henson to turn you away."

He slanted a look in her direction and arched an eyebrow. "Why didn't you?"

A snort – an underlying hint of surrender. "I'm old enough to have known not only your father, Mr. Croft, but your grandfather too. If you take after either, then you're not the sort of man one chooses to cross without consequence."

"And yet, you spoke to a gossip columnist regarding my sister."

"It seemed like the right thing to do, though I'm sure you'll disagree. Which is why you're here, is it not?" She shook her head. "Honestly, I feared what you might do to poor Henson if he tried to send you away."

"No harm would have come to him, Mrs. Riley, I assure you."

"And me?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets, the fingers of his left hand finding the button discarded by Evie's killer. He flicked the item back and forth, felt the uneven texture from the embossed design adorning its surface. "I'm not in the business of hurting women."

She swallowed with visible effort and took a sharp breath. "Then why have you come?"

"For the purpose of understanding exactly what happened." He considered taking a seat but dismissed the idea as quickly as it had formed, preferring the authoritative advantage of towering over her instead. "What did you see the night of the Marsdale ball? And what the devil possessed you to go to the press with it?"

She flinched in response to the sudden hardness of his tone. "I'd gone to the garden for a breath of fresh air and to simply escape all the noise. At my age, peace and quiet is something I savor, which isn't to say that I don't enjoy social functions, simply that I prefer to attend them on my own terms." A frown creased her brow. She took a shaky breath and gave him a hesitant look before adding, "I was nearing the end of the garden path, where the rhododendrons are planted, when I heard them."

"What did you hear, exactly?" However distasteful, Adrian wanted to know.

"A man's voice at first, though I couldn't discern his words." Mrs. Riley shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She clasped her hands together and gave a small shrug while fiddling with her skirt. "A woman's moan followed. It increased in volume while I stood there. And then the man said…things which really don't bear repeating."

Mrs. Riley clamped her mouth shut and angled herself away from him. The flush in her cheeks spoke volumes.

"Unfortunately, I must insist." Even though he wanted to grab her and shake her until the words spilled from her throat, he forced some measure of calm to his voice. "What did the man say?"

She sat, silent and unmoving for so long she started looking like one of the portraits that hung on the wall. Only the subtle twitch of her fingers suggested she might be gathering whatever courage she needed.

And then, when he'd finally found a strange sort of tranquility in the hush bearing down upon him, she whispered, so low he scarcely heard her, "‘Yes, Evie, just like that.' Some panting followed. And then he said, ‘I could shag you forever.' Your sister moaned something I couldn't quite hear and then it sounded as though they both reached their crisis."

Adrian stood, frozen, his feet rooted to the carpeted floor while the world spun around him. Until he recalled the coroner's report and everything settled back into place. A precise kind of focus followed. He let himself breathe.

"What time was this?" he asked with a cool detachment that kept his rage at bay and allowed him to keep moving forward, even when he felt as though he were being pushed back by some invisible force determined to see him destroyed.

"Roughly nine o'clock, if I'm not mistaken."

"And did you actually see my sister engaging in the act you've just described?"

"Yes." Mrs. Riley gave him the sort of pitying look that would have led to a punch in the face, had she been a man. "There was a parting between the shrubs which allowed for a glimpse of dark hair and a light-colored gown."

"But you can't say exactly what color it was?"

"It was dark, Mr. Croft, my visibility impaired."

"What about the man's face?" Adrian pressed with rising irritation. "Did you happen to see who he was?"

"As I said, it was dark and—"

"In other words, you made an assumption based upon what an unidentifiable man said." The impulse to grab her and shake her returned. How much force would it take to crush her bones?

Alarmed by the thought, he retreated a step. Losing control made men reckless, and that had consequences. Consequences he had no intention of facing. So he steeled himself against the urge to allow his fury full reign, and considered visiting Reed's once this call had been completed.

"I know what I saw and what I heard," Mrs. Riley insisted, her head now set at a stubborn angle.

"And you went to The Morning Post with it," Adrian murmured.

"The gossip column's author and I are longtime friends. We met for tea the day after the ball and I mentioned the incident to her."

"And in so doing, you condemned an innocent woman to die."

"I wouldn't say tha—"

"You knew of the murders committed last year, did you not? Of the labels the murderer pinned to each woman? That he remains on the loose?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then it stands to good reason that you bear as much responsibility for my sister's death as whoever related your observations to the public, and the paper who actually printed the lie."

"It wasn't a lie," Mrs. Riley informed him, her voice strong, firm, and filled with so much quiet outrage that Adrian finally understood. Envy made her vindictive. She'd likely suffered an unhappy marriage, had never known the kind of pleasure she'd witnessed between those bushes, and had punished the perpetrators to the best of her ability.

He glared at her. "Consider this then, my dear Mrs. Riley. Marsdale is a close friend of mine. I feel as at home in his house as I do in my own. So on the eve of the ball, when I grew weary of standing about the ballroom, I invited my sister for a tour of his home. A clock chimed while we were in the upstairs gallery. The ninth hour, to be precise, making it physically impossible for my sister to have been in the garden at that exact time. As you've just suggested she was."

Confusion dimmed Mrs. Riley's eyes. She shook her head. "Impossible. Unless I mistook the time."

"What you mistook," Adrian told her darkly, "was the situation as a whole. You heard a name used and fell for a ruse. As a result, a young woman – my beloved sister – is dead."

"No." Mrs. Riley shook her head vehemently.

"Your punishment will be the truth," Adrian continued, not caring what kind of turmoil would sink its talons into this woman as soon as she knew the extent of her blunder. "The coroner made a thorough examination of my sister's body, and do you know what he found, Mrs. Riley? An untouched virgin, innocent of everything you would have her accused of."

Mrs. Riley's stricken expression offered only a marginal piece of satisfaction. "I don't understand."

"Who was the author?" By God, he'd make sure they never wrote anything ever again.

"I…I really can't say."

Anger flashed behind his eyes. "Tell me."

When Mrs. Riley still said nothing, he seethed, "I'll see you cut from Society unless you give me her name, and if that's not enough, then I urge you to think of poor Henson. Wouldn't do for stolen goods to be found in his possession."

Despite visibly trembling, she glared at him as though he were the devil. "Mrs. Thackery."

How easily she'd sacrificed her long-time friend.

Sick of her presence, of the stuffy parlor depriving him of air, and of struggling to rein in his finely controlled temper, Adrian left. Someone had set Evie up by staging the whole bloody thing and using a decoy in her place.

The question preying upon him now, was who and why.