Then tugged and led her away, wordlessly.
“Tristan...?” she said. She cast a wide-eyed wondering look over her shoulder at the ladies.
He didn’t turn around.
So she allowed him to lead her, as she would follow him anywhere. Up the stairs they went, and into the foyer, into the pink reception room, where he finally released her hand.
He closed the door.
“Tristan, what on—”
He drew her into his arms. Tucked his face in her neck. Then his arms tightened.
“I just...” he murmured against her hair. “I just needed to... when I saw all those bodies on the floor... when I heard the screaming...”
She understood.
She held him tightly, too.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I love you, too,” she soothed. “It’s all right. You are my heart.”
She would never forget the way he’d roared her name. In fury and terror and pure love.
His arms tightened on her. She fancied she couldfeel his heart beat against hers, but they were one and the same now, so it was difficult to know.
A little later, just before dinner and while Mr. Bellingham lay in the throes of laudanum sleep, Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt went through his coat to see if they could determine definitively whether this was, in fact, poor Mr. Bellingham. Since no one else had yet arrived, the assumption seemed, unfortunately, a safe one.
The first thing they found was a gun.
“What on earth is a vicar doing with a W.A. Jones with a saw-handled butt? It’s like mine,” Lucien marveled.
And it was a beauty. It looked startlingly polished and well used, as though the butt of it snuggled into the man’s palm all the time. It wasn’t an idle target shooting sort of pistol. It was the sort one could use to kill highway robbers and the like.
It was loaded with powder and shot, too.
They set it aside.
“Pity the poor sod couldn’t get it out in time. Look in his boots. I have a hunch,” Captain Hardy said dryly.
They’d gotten his boots off. In them they found a boot pistol and a beautiful sheathed knife so sharp and sturdy it could have skinned a deer. Or skewered a vicar.
“And what vices do you suppose our vicar has that require that much money?” Captain Hardy displayed the thick wad of English paper notes and a jingle purse of coins.
A further search revealed a fine gold pocket watch with a simple fob and what appeared to be a hotel room key.
Lucien frowned faintly. “Quite a watch for a vicar to possess. If it was an heirloom, you’d think it would have been engraved.”
But they found no initials on it. Nor on the handkerchief they found. It looked new.
“So somebody tried to kill him but it wasn’t for his money. Or his watch,” Hardy mused.
“Perhaps he’s been dispatched by his friends in the country to buy gifts from London,” Lucien suggested. “That’s common enough. Hence the money.”
“That makes sense, I suppose. And perhaps his attacker didn’t get an opportunity to loot his pockets after he stabbed him. Someone came upon him, or our friend Bellingham got away. Or maybe he had yet another knife up his sleeve and somewhere nearby there’s a dead man lying about with a vicar’s knife in him.”
“No trunk,” Lucien said. “Unless it was stolen during the initial chaos. Christ, poor bastard, if that’s the case. That’s what I call a bad day. Good cheroots, though.” He sniffed them. “A man’s entitled to his pleasures. And this doesn’t quite look like a letter of introduction, but if it was...”
He produced half a sheet of foolscap which was mostly covered in blood and entirely illegible.
