Page 67 of Secrets of the Heart

“Oh, yes. The guv’nor’s the best.”

Rachel cast Michael a significant look, one eyebrow raised.

“Well, Cooper, thank you for that encomium,” Michael commented dryly.

“You’re welcome, sir.” The twinkle in Cooper’s eyes told Rachel that perhaps the man was more aware of the undercurrents of their conversation than he let on.

That next afternoon Cooper came to their house. Michael and Rachel met him in Michael’s study, where Cooper set a large box down on Michael’s desk.

Michael cast a wary eye at the box. “What have you got for me? It looks like quite a bit.”

“Aye, that it is, sir,” Cooper agreed cheerfully as he laid a list of names on top of the box. “This list is of all the cases of the sort you wanted that we could remember. No doubt there’s more of ’em, but I reasoned this’d be enough to start you off.”

“I believe so,” Michael replied dryly, casting an eye at the large stack of paperwork.

“I brought the Runner’s report on some of ’em, ones that seemed most like what you wrote me about. Hope you can figure something out about them. If anybody could, it’d be you, I’d wager.”

“Thank you for your confidence, Cooper,” Michael replied, adding, “I am afraid I feel rather less sanguine about my abilities at the moment.”

Cooper took his leave, nodding again to Rachel, then turning and striding out of the room like a man relieved of a great burden. Rachel walked over to Michael’s desk.

“I would say you have your work cut out for you,” she commented.

“We have, my dear, we have.”

Rachel sat down in front of the desk. She did not like to admit how much she wanted to help him with the files. The cases would be far more interesting than calling on anyone or receiving calls, but more than that, she knew that she wanted to spend the afternoon with Michael. It was humiliating, she told herself, that she could still want to be with him after what he had done.

Even if, in the calmer state of mind she was in today, she no longer believed that Michael had perpetrated his charade on her because he wanted to ridicule or humiliate her, she could not overlook the fact that he had kept a large part of his life secret from her almost the entire time they had been married. Clearly she was not someone he trusted, certainly not someone he loved. He was a stranger to her, and six years of marriage had not changed that.

That fact made it even more humiliating that she felt as she did about Michael. Or James. Or whoever it was for whom she had these muddled, yearning emotions! All she knew was that she felt a simmering excitement around him and, at the same time, a quiet contentment…not to mention a hundred other conflicting feelings that made being around him so pleasurable and torturous all at the same time. Yesterday, after going to see Cooper, they had spent the evening discussing the oddities of the case and Michael’s other cases, and she had enjoyed it far more than she would have a party. And when, later, Michael went out to visit the sort of informants whom he could meet only at night in dark and secret places, Rachel had been distinctly disappointed and lonely as she put on her nightgown and climbed into her big, empty bed to sleep.

She knew, deep down, that it was these feelings, more than any concern about helping Anthony, that had really made her agree to stay here—just as, now, they impelled her to sit down across the desk from Michael and agree to help him with the files.

“Shall I read some of them and you others?” she asked.

“Let’s go through them together,” he suggested. “It will be slower, I know, but I think it would be better if we had two minds working on the problem. Here, come sit here beside me.” He pulled up another straight-back chair next to his and placed the files on the desk between the two chairs.

“What are we looking for?” Rachel asked, going around the desk and sitting down beside him. Her pulse quickened, though she managed to keep her voice and face cool and calm.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Some connection. A pattern.”

“We already know that they have one thing in common, right? The person who stood to benefit the most in each could not have committed the crime.”

He nodded. “That, and none of them have been solved.” Michael ran his finger down the list on top of the stack. Ah, here is my most recent, Lord Setworth’s illuminated manuscript. And, yes, further down here is the goldsmith that I told you about. All right, let’s see what else we have.”

Michael set the list aside. “First, we have Harold Benton. Murdered. Hmm.” He scanned down the report, saying, “He was to be a witness in a trial against his former partner in crime, one Bart Mansfield. This Mansfield sounds like a piece of work.” He read down a list of crimes of which the man was accused or suspected.

“My goodness. He seems to be the complete criminal,” Rachel commented. “My guess would be that he was the one who did poor Mr. Benton in, so that he could not testify against him.”

“That would have been Bow Street’s opinion, too, except for the fact that the man was in Newgate, awaiting trial for his misdeeds, when Benton was struck down. So Mansfield could not have done it.” He read some more of the particulars, then added, “Seems the Runner in charge suspects that Mansfield got someone else to do the job for him, but they were unable to prove it.”

He continued to read through the string of investigations—a seemingly endless series of robberies, thefts and homicides, none of them alike except in the fact that they had baffled their investigators.

“Now,” Michael said, picking up the fifth report. “This concerns one Dutton Parkhurst, Esquire. He was stabbed to death one evening as he was walking home from his club. One of his servants went out to look for him when he did not return home, as he was a man of very regular habits, and found him slumped in a doorway. He thought at first that he was drunk, though that was not like him, but then he saw the blood all over the front of his coat. There were no witnesses. Nothing was stolen from his body. His nephew, who inherited his fortune, was with a group of friends all evening. They went first to a play and finished up the evening gambling. There were numerous witnesses to his presence there, and…” He paused, frowning.

“What is it? Did you find something?” Rachel, watching him, sat up straighter.

“No. It’s just…the name of this nephew. It sounds familiar. Roland Ellerby.”