Lamp on the desk, half-burned. Scent of Octavian’s favorite tobacco. And something else...
Gabriel unsheathed his blades, the metal glinting. He scanned the room. No movement. No hiding place. Keeping close to the wall, he crept forward—and saw the hand on the ground by the bookshelves. Another three steps brought the body, which had been obscured by the desk, into full view. A grey-haired figure lying on his belly, one arm outstretched, his face turned to the side and pale eyes unseeing.
Octavian.
Emotion welled; at the same time, Gabriel’s training kicked in. Sleet coated his insides, blocking out sentiment as his brain analyzed details with detached clarity. The spymaster’s throat had been slit. From behind and without warning, judging from the clean incision. The poor bastard hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t struggled. There were no signs of forced entry. The murderer had come and gone like a ghost.
Clinging to the last thread of life, Octavian had had perhaps a minute or two before he’d suffocated in his own blood. The trail of scarlet indicated that he’d taken that precious time, used monumental effort, to drag himself the distance from the desk to the bookshelf.
Why?
Crouching, Gabriel rolled the body over. Saw the book clutched in his mentor’s hand, fingers curled between the pages. With care, he freed the leather volume from Octavian’s death grip.
Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar. Gabriel scanned the marked page. Act III, Scene I, Caesar’s words anointed with Octavian’s blood.Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!
Caesar’s famous words denouncing the ultimate betrayal by a member of his inner circle. Had Octavian, too, been deceived by someone close to him? The spymaster had no surviving relatives or friends and over the past years had become a virtual recluse. He belonged to no group, except the one that, like Caesar, he’d led.
The Quorum.
Ice ran through Gabriel’s veins. Why would one of the Quorum—one of Gabriel’s former colleagues—want Octavian dead? Had the old spymaster known that danger was coming? Was that the reason behind his mysterious summons to Gabriel this eve?
Gabriel ran a gloved hand over his mentor’s eyes, closing them.
“Rest now, old friend,” he said quietly. “Your travails are over.”
His own had just begun. He left the way he came, through the window and into the garden. Blending into the shadows, he went in search of answers.
Chapter Two
Three weeks later
Passing the entrance gate, Dorothea Kent took in the gardens of the Zoological Society with wide-eyed wonder. Located at the eastern edge of Regent’s Park, the collection of animals stretched as far as the eye could see. All around her, creatures sporting fur, feathers, or scales roamed in pens of sun-gilded grass. Up ahead, she spied fluttering shapes within a glass-domed aviary and, to the left of it, exotic beasts of burden grazing around an Arabian-styled house.
“This is thetops.” Violet, Thea’s middle sister, stood on tiptoe, chestnut curls bobbing as she craned her neck to get a better view. “Let’s see the leopards first. No, make that the bears.”
“We’ve all afternoon, Vi.” Their eldest sister Emma shook out the map she’d purchased at the entry hut. “If we follow the walking path in a clockwise manner, then we’ll be sure to see everything—”
“Gadzooks, are thosellamas?” With a shriek of excitement, Vi bounded off.
“Shall I follow her, pet?” the Duke of Strathaven quirked an eyebrow.
Tall, dark, and wickedly handsome, Strathaven had married Emma last year. It was clear to all—and a source of some amusement amongst theton—that the former rake adored his bride. Emma had recently given birth to their daughter, Olivia, and Thea had never seen her sister happier.
“I suppose you’d better,” Emma said, wrinkling her nose, “before someone mistakes Vi for a wild creature and locks her in a cage.”
With a lazy grin, Strathaven kissed his duchess before striding off after Violet.
Cheeks pink, Emma adjusted her cottage bonnet. “Shall we, girls?”
Their youngest sister Polly and niece Primrose, both seventeen, chorused, “Yes, please,” and wandered ahead on the path arm-in-arm, white muslin skirts swaying as they took in the live exhibits. Strolling behind with Emma, Thea noted more than one gentleman casting looks in the girls’ direction. Polly didn’t seem to notice the attention whilst Rosie’s dimples deepened. A blond beauty possessed of a vivacious temperament, the latter was well accustomed to admiration.
Thea wondered what it would be like to draw such attention. She was an observer by nature, more comfortable watching than being watched. The sole exception was when there was a pianoforte in front of her. Then everything—the audience, the world—melted away to the smooth glide of ivory beneath her fingertips, the immersion into a realm beyond the ordinary, where only soul-deep sensation existed.
She often got so lost in the music that the applause startled her out of her reverie. At times, guests called for an encore. But only one man had ever truly heard her.
Her hands curled in her gloves, her fingers tingling with the memory of thick, tawny locks sliding between them. The dark, delicious flavor of her first kiss drenched her senses. The familiar mix of longing and humiliation rushed through her.
Don’t be a ninny,she chided herself.If he wanted you, he would not have left. He would not have disappeared without a word for three months.
