Regardless of the nature of his demise—indeed, even more so because of it—they should have turned out, one and all.
Yet not one gentleman had appeared. As a comment on a life lived within the ton, that was extraordinary.
Admittedly the ton were only just returning to the capital for the autumn session of Parliament, and perhaps some who might have known Randall had yet to hear of his death, yet this absolute dearth of acquaintances seemed bizarre.
As he left the graveyard, Christian heavily underscored his earlier mental note—he had to find out more, a lot more, about George Martin Randall.
Chapter 5
Later that evening, deliberately later than a gentleman would normally call on a lady, Christian rapped on the door of the house in South Audley Street.
Mellon opened the door and promptly looked scandalized.
Christian ignored him and walked in. “Please inform your mistress that Lord Dearne requests a few minutes of her time.”
Mellon blinked, then recalled himself and bowed. “Ah…I believe her ladyship has already retired, my lord.”
All the better to rattle her. “I doubt she’ll be abed yet.” Christian looked down his nose at the obsequious Mellon, then raised one brow. “My message?”
Flustered, Mellon turned to the drawing room. “If you’ll wait in—”
Christian strolled toward the front parlor. “I’ll wait in here.”
Mellon dithered, then surrendered and flapped away toward the stairs.
Smiling intently, Christian walked into Letitia’s domain and looked around. On the end of one sofa table, a candelabra still burned, bathing the silk rug in golden light and shadows.
The sight brought the phantom scent of jasmine back to his senses. Tightened his belly and his groin.
He drew in a breath and looked around the room, and felt her there, around him. While he waited—he knew she wouldn’t hurry—he studied her things, searching for some insight into how she’d changed in the twelve years they’d been apart, but there was nothing he saw that seemed in any way different. More intense, more powerful, more well-defined, perhaps, but in all respects she was still the same Letitia Vaux he’d fallen completely and irrevocably in love with more than thirteen years before.
She’d grown, matured, but she hadn’t changed.
Presumably that meant that the same rules applied—that the ways he’d used to deal with her in the past would still work.
He had to learn more about Randall, and most especially about Letitia’s marriage to the man. Whatever else Justin Vaux was, he was sharply intelligent; he had to have had some compelling reason to believe Letitia had killed Randall. Christian needed to learn what that reason was in order to do what Justin had obviously felt needed to be done—protect Letitia from suspicion.
That was his logical, rational reason for what he was about to do.
His emotional reason had nothing to do with Randall’s murder, but everything to do with his marriage.
“He’s what?” In her bedchamber, seated before her dressing table mirror, still in her black gown but with her long hair tumbling about her shoulders and back, Letitia turned to stare at Mellon.
“He said he’d wait in the front parlor.” Mellon all but sniffed. “Quite at home he seemed.”
Letitia felt her temper stir. “I daresay.” Turning back to the dressing table, she set down her brush. She held her own gaze in the mirror for an instant, then said, “Tell him I’ll see him in the library. Show him in there, and shut the doors to the front parlor.”
In the mirror she watched as Mellon, his lips pinched in disapproval, bowed and withdrew.
Her lips quirked; ironic that in this she agreed with Mellon. If he could have told her how to avoid Christian Allardyce, now Marquess of Dearne—a nobleman accustomed to getting what he wanted and ensuring he always did—she would happily fall in with any plan.
But she knew how futile running from a large and powerful predator was; he would only pursue her all the more intently. And from past experience she knew that if pushed, he could, and would, act with a supreme disregard for convention every bit the equal of her own.
They were who they were; society’s rules only applied if and when they chose.
As the door closed behind Mellon, her dresser, Esme, engaged in laying out her nightclothes on the bed, straightened. “Do you want me to go down with you, my lady? It is late, and you being so recently widowed and all.”
Letitia glanced at her and smiled fondly. Esme, whom she’d brought with her on her marriage, tall, lanky, and rather severe, but an excellent dresser, was the only servant in the household she trusted. “Thank you, but no.”