“Kit, you and Cordelia should go home and get some sleep,” she responded. “I shall summon you as soon as Wrex returns.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” offered von Münch.
“Nein,” answered Wrexford. “You, too, should seek some rest.Schlafen Sie wohl.”
“I didn’t know you spoke German, milord.”
“There is a great deal that you don’t know about me,” replied the earl.
“Some men might interpret that as a threat,” murmured von Münch.
Wrexford opened his pistol case. “But only if they were up to no good.”
“Ah.” A smile. “Then I shall sleep with a clear conscience.” He stepped back, losing himself in the shadows of the workroom.
“I assume you’ll soon be serving breakfast . . .” Still slouched in his chair, Henning patted back a prodigious yawn. “So if you don’t mind, I shall trespass on your hospitality and spend the night here.”
“Suit yourself.” The earl was already reloading his weapon while Charlotte brushed the worst of the dust from his overcoat.
He caught her hand and brushed a quick kiss to her knuckles.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
Their eyes met. “Always.”
Wrexford broke away and hurried down to the entrance hall, where Griffin was pacing like a caged lion.
“What the devil is going on?” demanded the earl.
“You’ll see soon enough.” The Runner led the way out to the carriage and climbed in without further explanation.
The earl found Griffin’s silence unsettling. Their first encounter had been adversarial, but mutual suspicion had softened to a grudging partnership, and now, after working together on a number of investigations involving murder, he considered the Runner a friend.
“Given our cooperation in the past, I would have thought that I merited some sort of response to my question,” he said quietly.
“I could say the same to you, milord.” In the flicker of the carriage lamp, Wrexford saw an injured look flit over Griffin’s features. “Please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you didn’t see the letters written in blood by Kendall Garfield’s corpse. And yet you said nothing to me about them when you arranged for me and my men to apprehend the supposed murderer of Jasper Milton earlier this evening at Vauxhall Gardens.”
“You have good reason to be upset with me, but rest assured that my reticence was not due to lack of trust.” Wrexford decided to leave further explanations until later. “I don’t believe that Oliver Carrick is the culprit.”
“That is not for you to decide, milord. You are an earl, not the Almighty.”
Wrexford felt a stab of guilt, knowing that Griffin’s rebuke was absolutely correct. And yet . . . Carrick deserved a fair trial if arrested for the crime. And he had grave doubts as to whether the authorities would follow the letter of the law.
So yes, he thought,perhaps I am playing God. But my conscience can live with that, at least for the moment.
The clatter of the wheels took on a different sound as they turned off the cobbled street and made their way down a side road to a stone pier at the river’s edge.
A wherry was waiting for them.
“Are we returning to Vauxhall Gardens?” he asked.
Griffin shook his head in reply.
Wrexford lapsed back into a stoic silence as two grim-faced boatmen rowed them across to the south bank.
The tide was low, and the cloying smell of decay hung heavy in the air. A fitful breeze stirred through the dark trees lining the bank, setting off a brittle rustling of the autumn leaves, which would soon be falling to join the elemental cycle of birth and death.
The essence of Life was actually frightfully simple, mused the earl,despite all the myriad complexities that we mortals create for ourselves.
