The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,21
it was anyone but Lady Clifford, I wouldn’t trouble myself much about it, but her ladyship knows what she’s about, and she’s trained those girls to be as clever as she is.”
“Clever under the best of circumstances. Ruthless, even dangerous, in the worst of them, especially when you throw Daniel Brixton into the mix.”
“What, was Brixton on the roof, too?”
“No. He wasn’t at Everly’s or St. Clement Dane’s, but he did make an appearance.”
“Yes, he generally does whenever the Clifford School is involved.”
“I can’t imagine Lady Clifford was pleased when Jeremy Ives was taken up for Henry’s…for murder. I heard Ives has been with her since he was a lad, and is one of her favorites.”
“No, I don’t believe she was pleased,” Willis muttered, fiddling with a quill on his desk.
“No, and likely not reconciled to his arrest, either. There’s every reason to suspect she’s up to something, and with Kit Benjamin’s assistance, she’s a formidable enemy.”
Willis’s gaze shifted from the quill to Tristan’s face. “You believe the rumors about Lady Clifford and Benjamin, then?”
“It’s difficult to say, but if they’re not lovers, they’re certainly friends. There’s no other explanation for Lady Clifford’s amazingly…shall we say, comprehensive knowledge of London’s nefarious element. If the good alderman isn’t providing her with information, who is?”
Kit Benjamin was well-respected in legal circles and purportedly an honest, upright gentleman, but he was also clever and ambitious. If there was a man in London who had his fingers into every secret, dirty corner of the city’s inner workings, it was Benjamin. Such a man as that could prove invaluable to a woman like Lady Clifford, who knew how to use whatever information she had to great advantage.
“There isn’t any doubt whatsoever Ives is guilty. I saw him myself, Gray, sprawled next to the body, fairly dripping in Gerrard’s blood. Lady Clifford isn’t one to trifle with, but I don’t see how even she can do anything to help Ives now.”
Tristan didn’t appreciate Willis’s unnecessarily lurid description of Henry’s murder scene, but he swallowed his ire. “Perhaps not, but that won’t stop her from trying. Why else would she send one of her girls after Sharpe?”
“Hmmm.” Willis sat quietly for some moments with his hands folded over his belly, frowning. “Where did Sharpe lead the girl?”
“St. Clement Dane’s Church.”
Up until this point Willis had taken Tristan’s news in a surprisingly desultory fashion, but at the mention of St. Clement Dane’s he straightened in his chair. “Ah, now that is interesting. Do you have any idea what Sharpe was doing there?”
“None at all, only that he didn’t appear to be doing anything illegal.”
“Hmmm. Was he alone?”
Tristan shrugged. “As far as I know.”
“I see, I see. Tell me, Gray, did you happen to get the young woman’s name?”
“Just her first name. Sophia. As you can imagine, she wasn’t particularly forthcoming.”
“No, I imagine she wasn’t. You’d recognize her if you saw her again, though? You remember her face?”
Green eyes flashed in Tristan’s mind. The better question was, would he be able to forget her? It was damn unlucky he’d thought her a boy at first. If he’d known she was a woman right away, it would have saved him that dramatic moment when her hair fell over her shoulders and he got his first glimpse of a face that now haunted his dreams. The suddenness of her appearance before him was, in a word, inconvenient.
But then a pretty face might hide a multitude of sins, and despite those wide green eyes, she was far from innocent. Innocent ladies didn’t scale townhouse facades. They didn’t slip through the bars of a wrought iron fence as if they were made of mist, and they didn’t navigate the streets and alleyways of London with the ease of a master moving pieces across a chessboard.
Tristan met Willis’s gaze. “Certainly. I’ll have her full name soon enough, as well.”
Willis eyed him. “Are you needed in Oxfordshire at once? Or is it possible for you to remain in London a while longer? It might be wise for us to keep a close eye on this young woman. Nip any mischief she might cause in the bud before Lady Clifford manages to set it all atilt, you understand.”
“I do. That’s why I’m here.” His mother would put up a fuss, but there was no way Tristan was going to scamper off to Oxfordshire and let Lady Clifford interfere with Jeremy Ives’s appointment with the scaffold.