Chapter One
October 1884
Leonora Spencer stepped down onto Harrow’s busy train station platform and drew in a steadying breath. The oily scent of machine smoke, the whistles and shouts of porters, and the chatter of dispersing passengers filled the air, and yet, even with all the commotion, Leo immediately felt his eyes upon her. It was a brush of intuition, and one she trusted.
She took a step forward, through a drifting cloud of smoke, her fingers clutched around the handle of her handbag. She was eager to see him, and yet also uncomfortably tense. Nearly four months had passed since she’d last set eyes on Detective Inspector Jasper Reid, and during that time, a small part of her had questioned if she would ever see him again.
In early July, he had taken Leo to dinner—only their second such outing as a couple. Before she’d even sipped her wine, Jasper made an announcement: He’d been seconded to Liverpool. The police there had been struggling to bring down acounterfeiting operation, and they needed greater manpower to get it done. All this Jasper explained as she sat across from him at the small table, the rest of the chophouse becoming a haze in the periphery of her vision. It wasn’t a permanent transfer from the Met. He’d be away two months. Three at the most, he’d said. When he’d stopped speaking, the only thing her stunned and overwhelmed mind could think to ask was: “Did you request this secondment, or was it assigned?”
She now wished she had said anything other than that, for Jasper’s injured expression had permanently seared itself into her memory. A spear of guilt had lanced through her at his reply: “I would never ask to be sent away from you, Leo.”
He’d known why she’d suspected it.
In July, Andrew Carter, the youngest of the five brothers who ran the vicious East Rips gang out of London’s East End had approached Jasper with a warning. Unless the detective inspector bent to his will, in whatever capacity Andrew desired, he would expose what he’d discovered to the public: that Jasper Reid was, in fact, James Carter, Andrew’s cousin who’d supposedly drowned in the Thames sixteen years earlier. Jasper’s blood ties to the East Rips would not only damn his career at Scotland Yard, but when the remainder of the Carter family learned what James had done, his life would be forfeit. The Carters would surely seek revenge for his abandonment and deceit, and Jasper had worried Leo would be caught up in the violence or used as a pawn.
When he’d come to her, explaining the new predicament Andrew Carter had presented, Jasper had tried to end their fledgling relationship, claiming it would be safer for her if he were to keep his distance. She had refused, of course, unwilling to run scared or walk away from him. Jasper had relented, but with the announcement that he’d be leaving for Liverpool,far from Andrew’s reach, Leo couldn’t help but wonder if he’d designed the secondment himself.
Now, after months apart and dozens of letters exchanged between them, Leo still wasn’t sure if he planned to return to London. Jasper was stubborn enough, and fierce enough about protecting her, to think staying away was the right thing to do.
The uncertainty kept her stomach in a rigid knot as she searched for him on the station platform. It was cool and damp, and the autumn sky dark purple with the threat of a storm. She shivered, and then, the prickling of gooseflesh accompanied a deep voice behind her.
“Your train was three minutes late.”
Despite the complaint, Leo’s mouth bowed into a grin. She turned, and the knot in her stomach released. Jasper’s sooty green eyes, the color of the Thames on a rainy day, locked onto her. For the barest moment, she was struck mute. He’d removed his bowler, allowing the strands of his honey-blond hair, longer than usual, to slip forward over his brow. To her astonishment, he’d allowed a beard to come in.
“You cannot blame me for that,” she replied, growing warm under his steady stare. He took in the sight of her, his eyes conveying the same longing she had been plagued with since his departure to Liverpool.
Jasper formed a slow, crooked grin. “You dislike my beard.”
“Not at all.” It was trimmed neatly, and to her surprise, it gave him a distinguished appearance. She suppressed the urge to reach for his cheek and scrub her fingers through the golden bristle, dusted through with darker shades of burnt umber. “You’ve grown a beard in the past.”
“Which I needed to shave when you would handle it and call me a grumpy walrus.”
“I did not handle it!” she exclaimed, even though that was exactly what she’d just been wanting to do.
Leo laughed, her relief at seeing him clear away the hesitance she’d felt while taking the train from London’s Paddington Station to Harrow. It didn’t, however, settle the confusion over why the two of them were here to begin with.
Three days ago, a letter from the solicitor of a Mrs. Francine Stroud had arrived for Leo at her home on Duke Street. Standing in the front hall, wondering who Mrs. Stroud could be, Leo’s pulse had slowed. It turned out to be a summons to Cowper Fields, the sprawling estate that was home to Lord Richard Cowper, the Viscount Cowper.
Cowperwas a name Leo did not often think of. The late Honorable Emmaline Cowper’s father had bitterly disapproved of his daughter’s inequitable marriage to Gregory Reid, a working-class Metropolitan Police officer. His disapproval had turned into loathing when Emmaline and their two young children perished in a disaster on the half-frozen lake at Regent’s Park in 1867.
According to the solicitor’s letter, the viscount’s eldest daughter, Francine, had recently passed away, and Leo was invited to the estate for the reading of her last will and testament.
Other than a date, time, and place—and a postscript note that Jasper Reid had also been summoned—there had been no other information. She couldn’t understand why she was being summoned. She had not even known Emmaline Reid had had a sister. The Inspector, as Leo had always referred to Gregory Reid, had spoken of the animosity between himself and the viscount but hadn’t uttered a single word about anyone else in his late wife’s family.
Later that same evening, Leo received a telegram from Jasper about the strange summons to Cowper Fields, and they had arranged to meet at the Harrow station on the allotted day.
Now, they stood an arm’s length apart, a curious and awkward friction filling the space between them. Leo cleared her throat. “Should we be on our way? Thanks to my train, we’re running late.”
He held out his arm, bent at the elbow, in invitation for her to join him. She hooked her arm through his, and without saying another word, they walked from the platform to the station yard. There, a disorganized queue of carriages, coaches, and wagons awaited passengers. Jasper hailed one such carriage for hire and helped Leo inside just as the first drops of rain fell from the bloated clouds. After directing their driver to Lord Cowper’s home, Jasper slipped onto the bench next to her. With no foot brazier lit on the carriage floor, she was grateful for the small lap blanket she could pull over her legs and feet. Still, she shivered—though she acknowledged that seeing Jasper for the first time in months might have been partly the reason why. That, and the uncertainty of what awaited them at Viscount Cowper’s estate.
They’d been driving for a minute or so when Leo broke the silence. “Do you know anything about Mrs. Francine Stroud?”
That curious topic would be much easier to discuss than how much she’d missed him, or if he was ever planning to return from Liverpool. They had not broached the subject in any of their letters, and Leo counted herself a coward for continuing to avoid the question.
Jasper kept his bowler in his hands, on his lap. “Nothing. My father never mentioned her.”
Though they were not related by blood, the Inspector had been exactly that to Jasper—a father. Since Gregory’s death late last January, it seemed to have become somewhat easier for Jasper to acknowledge this truth. Before that, he’d always appeared a bit uncomfortable being called the Inspector’s son. Perhaps that was because the Inspector did once have a son by birth, Gregory Junior, and Jasper had felt somewhat of animposter. But Leo was convinced that blood did not matter to the Inspector; he’d loved Jasper as he would his own kin.
