The Edge of Desire (Bastion Club 7)

Girding his loins, he allowed Meadows to show him in.

“Christian, dear boy!” Seated at the end of the smaller table—still long enough to seat twelve—Cordelia waved him to her. A still handsome woman now in her late fifties, she was surprisingly energetic and remained a force to be reckoned with among the ton—even with the improbably blond curls that framed her face.

He obliged, crossing to her chair and placing a dutiful kiss on the cheek she offered, then circled her to perform the same greeting with the sweeter tempered Ermina, a milder version of Cordelia but no less observant.

“Come and sit!” Cordelia waved imperiously to the chair on her left. Meadows was already setting a place there. “As you’re here and we’re lunching, you can lunch, too.”

Although he hadn’t intended to, he was happy enough to fall in with her wishes; Cordelia’s chefs were invariably excellent, although they never lasted long.

He sat, then eyed the dishes the footmen Meadows waved in placed before them. “You’re new chef is Austrian.”

“Clever boy! Yes, indeed, Frederick is my new find. Quite a novel craze, Austrian dishes. They

say Wellington and the others brought back the taste after the Congress of Vienna. The congress was a complete failure, of course, but the food, apparently, was excellent.” Cordelia glanced at Meadows as the last dish was set in place. “Leave us, please, Meadows. I’ll ring if we need you.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Meadows bowed low. “My lord.” With a second deferential bow to Christian, Meadows retreated.

The instant the door closed behind him, Cordelia fixed Christian with an interrogative eye, the same gray hue as his own. “Well, my boy—what do you need to know?”

The direct attack had him blinking.

Ermina smiled gently—and closed in for the kill. “Well, dear, you never do appear without a summons, not unless you need something from us, which is usually information.”

Her earnest soft gray gaze was quite enough to make him inwardly squirm.

Ermina’s smile deepened as she shook out her napkin. “I daresay it’s about Letitia and this dreadful business of Randall’s murder.”

Christian glanced from her to Cordelia. From the eager gleam in Cordelia’s eye, she was only too ready to answer whatever questions he had; clearly, delicacy and tact would be wasted. “Indeed.” Delicacy and tact aside, he wanted to reveal as little as possible; his aunts rated among the most well-connected gossips in the ton. “As you say, Randall has been murdered, and so the question of whether Letitia has a lover, and whether together or separately, for the obvious reason, they killed him, naturally arises.”

Both his aunts stared at him. Their expressions initially suggested shocked surprise; that was quickly replaced by censure.

Cordelia snorted. “For men the question might ‘naturally arise,’ but I assure you no such nonsensical thought has surfaced in any female brain within the ton.” With that statement, uttered in a tone even he would think carefully about questioning, Cordelia returned her attention to her plate.

From across the table, Ermina shook her head at him. “No, dear—you’re quite wrong in even suggesting such a thing. Even putting such an outrageous suggestion into words.”

It hadn’t seemed outrageous to him—Letitia was a highly passionate woman—but there was clear rebuke beneath Ermina’s words.

“Letitia is a Vaux, after all,” Ermina informed him with not a little dignity. “I would have thought you would know what that means. She has taken no lover—absolutely not—not in all the years since she wed that man. We never did approve of him, of course—there was something not quite right there, as I’ve always said.”

Chewing, Cordelia nodded. She swallowed, then said, “Not that he—Randall—was ever anything other than polite. He always behaved just as he ought, but…” She waggled the beringed fingers of one hand. “There was just something that didn’t feel quite right about him.” She mulled for a moment, then rallied. “But enough about him—he’s dead and gone. As for Letitia, as Ermina said, she’s a Vaux, for heaven’s sake—they’re sound, fury, and high drama on the surface, but absolutely unshakable rock beneath. A vow for them is sacred. Nothing would induce them to break one, and Lord knows you must have noticed how stubborn they are.”

He’d known that, all that, but…Letitia had broken her vow to him. Why not her vows to Randall? He felt a pang of unaccustomed jealousy…for a dead man.

Shaking off the feeling, burying it, he returned to the point at hand. “So, no lover?”

Cordelia snorted. “Absolutely not.”

Late that afternoon, his mind grappling with a number of irreconcilable “facts,” Christian stood in the graveyard of the church in South Audley Street and watched George Martin Randall’s earthly remains laid to rest a mere two blocks from his house and close to the center of the ton’s world.

Given that, the lack of mourners was remarkable.

The short service in the church had been brief. Very brief. No one had come forward to read the eulogy. Letitia, it transpired, hadn’t known any of Randall’s friends, and as none had called or written to convey their condolences, the minister made the best job of it he could, but his knowledge of Randall was cursory.

Letitia, Hermione, Letitia’s aunt Agnes, and Randall’s servants had made up the congregation in the church; other than Christian, no one else had attended. As was customary, all the females and the younger males had returned to the house at the close of the service, leaving Christian, Mellon, and two older footmen to observe the interment.

The only other observer was Barton, the Bow Street runner. Christian spied him watching proceedings from the shadow of a monument, no doubt imagining he was inconspicuous. Barton scanned the cemetery, as did Christian rather less obviously, but no one else appeared at any time—not even after the sods had been cast and the mourners drifted from the grave.

Christian found it difficult to comprehend the startling absence of any friends. Given that Randall had been murdered, the ton’s ladies—those who would otherwise have been present to support Letitia in her grief—had not been expected, but where were Randall’s male acquaintances, let alone friends?