The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,49
with me.”
They hadn’t acknowledged the previous night at all. But if Ellie had enjoyed it — and he knew she had — she was currently more likely to stab him than seduce him. Her eyes narrowed as she said, “We shall address our agreement momentarily. But let us start with why a highwayman wanted to kill you.”
“If I knew why, I wouldn’t be here,” Nick said. He walked over to Lucia and took the cup of tea she had poured for him, then leaned against the wall opposite from where Marcus stood by the fire. “Your guess as to motive is as good as mine.”
Ellie looked at Marcus, who didn’t meet her gaze — he was too busy staring at Lucia. Ellie turned back to Nick. “Between us, we could likely guess a dozen reasons. Where shall we begin?”
“Villains always come to bad ends,” Lucia said, rising and taking Ellie’s cup to her. “If his lordship is no longer in a position to harm you, does the ‘how’ of it matter, my lady?”
“It does if their ends might harm the rest of us,” Ellie mused. She didn’t seem concerned that Lucia saw Nick as the villain in this story — in fact, if Nick hadn’t heard a different note in Ellie’s voice the previous night, he might suspect she agreed with her maid.
He cleared his throat. “Let me share the details. Then you may decide whether I am the villain.”
He started with the three attempts on his life in Madras. The warehouse fire that would have trapped him in his office had he not left half an hour earlier than he always did. The shot during a hunt that had grazed his shoulder — any closer and he might have lost the limb, if not his life, to infection. And the assailant who had come after him with a knife in a Madras bazaar. Trower had stopped that attempt, after tailing Nick without asking permission to guard him.
“Did none of them say who they represented?” Marcus asked.
“There were no witnesses to the warehouse fire or the shot. I didn’t look hard, though. I was still half sure they were accidents. As for the knife-wielder, Trower killed him before he could talk. He appeared to be a Maratha mercenary, though. He would have worked for anyone who paid enough.”
“And those were the only events? Over how much time?” Ellie asked.
She was pale, but her tone was purely business. “Three events over a fortnight,” Nick answered. “Trower and I took the next ship out of Madras a week after the would-be stabbing. Trower didn’t let me out of his sight that whole time, and he hired a dozen men to guard us.”
“Did anything happen aboard your ship, my lord?” Lucia asked. “Or were you guarded there as well?”
“No suspicious events at sea, nor during the week we spent taking on supplies at St. Helena. We had no additional guards, but I own the ship. The captain was most diligent about keeping me alive.”
“As he should be,” Marcus said. “Your connections in India have captured more of the private trade in that country than we had any right to expect a decade ago. If he lost you, his career would be finished. Do you trust the other men in our employ there?”
Nick had considered every single man in the India operation on the long voyage back to England. He nodded once. “There were always a handful whom I had to let go for one reason or another. But the ones currently there — for the most part, I trust them. And I can’t see what any of them would stand to gain by murdering me.”
Ellie pulled out a fresh sheet of paper from the desk, as well as a pen and ink. “Should we discuss who stands to gain something?” she suggested. “Or is that a delicate subject, when those who would gain the most are in the room with you?”
Nick waved an expansive hand. “Please, start. I’m curious to hear who you think my enemies are.”
He watched her write her own name at the top of the sheet in graceful, looping cursive. He laughed. “Is that a confession?”
“Of course not. This is a list of people who might want you dead — not a list of people who likely ordered it.” Then she smiled. “But to save myself forty thousand pounds and the irritation of your return, murder does look cheap.”
“True. But it’s not you. Who is the next suspect?”