The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“What? What is it?”

Alex said, “I have heard it said that Lilac enjoys the more titillating sorts of lovemaking.”

Her husband gave her a ferocious frown. “What the hell does ‘titillating’ mean? Something that you and I don’t do on a regular basis? Are you keeping some new and perverse sort of pleasure from me, Alexandra?”

She went red to her earlobes. She pressed her palms to her cheeks. She took an extra moment to clear her throat. “I don’t wish to pursue it at this time, Douglas. Now, Spenser, let me tell you about the twins.”

After five minutes of hearing about the most brilliant, most beautiful twosome of children in all of England, Lord Beecham said, “If I were some other man, perhaps I should not mind having twins. One to sit on each knee. One to hold with each hand.”

Both Sherbrookes stared at him.

“If they yelled their heads off,” Douglas said, “what would you do if you were this other man?”

“What do you do, Douglas?”

“I take them riding.”

Lord Beecham frowned as he looked out the carriage window. He didn’t know why he had said that. It didn’t matter. It was not relevant to him or his life, at least for another ten years or so. Forty-five would be a good age to bring his heir into the world.

The British Museum was vast in size and very dim inside. Every footstep on the stone floors replayed itself a dozen times all around, each new echo more menacing than the last. It was also damp. There was no need for Douglas to tell his wife to keep her cloak shut, she was fisting it tightly beneath her chin.

“It is better in the back rooms,” Lord Beecham said. “There are fires and many branches of candles. It’s downright cozy in the room where I usually meet Reverend Mathers.”

“A few more windows might make this place less dreary,” Alexandra said. “Perhaps some warm draperies.”

“Only very serious gentlemen come here,” Douglas said, nodding to the porter. “They need only their intellectual fervor and they’re content. Show the stoics a warm drapery and they would doubtless shudder.”

It took them five more minutes to walk through the large rooms, all of them empty as gourds. They paused every couple of steps to look at some artifact on display, but mainly, it was so dreary and chill, they just kept walking. There were perhaps a dozen men dotted throughout the rooms, speaking in small groups or hunched over manuscripts.

Lord Beecham veered off to a small room off the main sweep of the museum. The door was shut. Lord Beecham lightly knocked, then opened it. He was suddenly haloed in warmth. He saw the brisk fire burning in the fireplace, casting shadows throughout the room.

“Reverend Mathers?”

There was no answer.

They all stepped into the room. There was a long table running along the entire side of the room, several branches of candles set at intervals along the table. There were dozens of books, in haphazard stacks, some piled neatly by a clerk’s hand, others sitting alone, one very ancient tome still settling in its dust, its pages parted as if fingers had just roved through them to find a certain section.

“Oh, dear,” Alexandra said and stepped back against her husband.

Reverend Mathers was seated at the far end of the bench, in the shadows. He was hunched forward over a blood-red, very large vellum-bound book. But he wasn’t studying or reading or writing with the sharpened quill held loosely in his right hand.

He looked to be sleeping, but they knew he wasn’t.

He was dead, a thin stiletto stuck out of the middle of his back.

“Lord Hobbs will be here any moment,” Lord Beecham said quietly to Alexandra and Douglas. “He became a magistrate on Bow Street not long ago. He is a good man, intelligent enough to know when he doesn’t have the experience to deal well with something, and he doesn’t give up. Do you remember the theft of Lady Melton’s ruby necklace some six months ago? Lord Hobbs came himself, spoke with everyone present, then assigned one of his runners to ferret out the facts of the case.”

“Were the rubies recovered?” Alexandra asked as she took another drink of very strong India tea. She was sitting in on a pale-green brocade sofa, her husband next to her. Lord Beecham was watching a tall, very thin man, dressed all in a soft pearl gray, being ushered into the drawing

room by his acting butler, Claude, who was looking particularly tight about the mouth. “A murder,” Lord Beecham had heard him whisper to himself earlier. “What will become of all of us with the master involved in a murder?”

Lord Beecham stepped forward as he said to Alexandra, “Oh, yes. The Bow Street Runners, for the most part, are canny and know all the villains and criminals who roam the London alleys. Lord Hobbs is one of the gentlemen who keeps them assigned to cases.”

“Lord Hobbs.”

There were pleasantries, always at least twoscore polite words before one eased into things, Lord Beecham thought, as he mouthed his own feelings about King George III going mad for the last time and his eldest son, yet another George who was a fat, very unpopular buffoon, being appointed Regent.

There was no chance to continue on to Reverend Mathers’s murder, for there was Claude, clearing his throat at the drawing room door.