His father reddened with temper. “Absolutely. A disgusting affair. Use your head, Tobias. Why would anyone kill one of the family?”
“Why indeed?” Tobias asked, letting a smidgen of sarcasm into his tone. There were footmen on every door now. His father was nowhere near as confident as he was trying to appear. “I do notice you’re not whisking your nearest and dearest to the safety of the country seat.”
“And broadcast to all of Society that we have something to fear?” Lord Bancroft tapped the papers on his desk impatiently. “This unfortunate incident must never become common gossip. Keating will wield it like a sword.”
Tobias unfolded the paper, checking the other pages. “He doesn’t appear to have done so yet. There’s no mention of it in the press.”
“That is the one boon of that buffoonery at the opera. It has made an admirable distraction in everyone’s minds. Utterly ridiculous.”
His father’s glare quelled his enthusiasm. “I find nothing admirable in that degree of pointless destruction. And there are more important considerations at hand.”
Tobias lowered the paper. “Such as?”
His father narrowed his eyes. “Murder. Ruin.”
“Oh, that.”
“Do try to concentrate.” He father leaned forward, his face intent. “If news of a murder under our roof gets abroad, the chances of Imogen making a good match this Season will wither on the vine. And that would just be the first of our troubles. Once Society scents blood, they turn like rabid dogs. If you love your mother and sisters, your life and this house—if you love
Tobias fell silent, thinking about Grace. Her beautiful eyes, when she looked up at him last night, asking for help. Then her dead eyes, staring up from the floor as Evelina searched the corpse. The alteration had been horrific. It had happened in—what?—mere minutes? Less time than it took him to achieve a perfect knot in his tie.
As for loving his father … He’d always wanted to, more than anything, but his pater didn’t make it easy. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
“There is a potential problem I have tried to anticipate. I want you to take care of it.”
Tobias narrowed his eyes. As always, whenever he stopped resenting his father and began listening, he felt adrift between conflicting tides. Family loyalty. Justice. Honor. Pride. The desire for approval. They should all be pulling the same way, but they never were.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
Lord Bancroft rose and paced to the window. “That Cooper girl was examining the body last night. You know who her uncle is, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Then the breath stopped in Tobias’s chest. “Oh.”
“See to it that there is no investigation. I don’t need to know how you accomplish it.”
“She has no reason to interfere, much less invite her uncle to do so.”
“She was curious.” Lord Bancroft tapped his foot, a sign of nervousness that told more than anything else. “I would appreciate it if you distracted her. I assume you know how to hold the attention of a young woman?”
Tobias’s gut began to knot. “What do you mean?” He rose from his chair, suddenly uneasy. He knew very well what his father wanted, and it made his stomach fold itself inside out. Evelina was innocent. Socially beneath him, certainly, but she was educated, pretty, and respectable—deserving of all the protection her status as guest commanded. And he wanted her in a way that kept him staring at the ceiling all night, which made this conversation all the more confusing.
Lord Bancroft said nothing, continuing to stare out the window.
“You want me to seduce her.”
His father’s tall, straight form didn’t move. The clock ticked heavily, beating out the minutes of Tobias’s life. Lord Bancroft reached for the decanter on his desk, poured himself a measure. He didn’t offer any to his son.
When it became apparent that Lord Bancroft wouldn’t say anything more, Tobias left the room.
Bancroft watched his son exit, and then turned back to the window. The April wind tossed the branches of the old oak tree, plucking a few of the pale green leaves and scattering them to the lawn.
Hilliard House had once been a large estate, but before Bancroft’s time, it had been whittled down piece by piece over the years, one street or square at a time. Now only the core of the place remained, a green and gracious oasis in the middle of the West End where terraced homes, one cheek-by-jowl to the next, were the norm. Bancroft had bought the house and its extended garden on his return from Austria, a showplace to go with his new title and fresh ambitions. The previous owner had been a different viscount, one who had been ruined by the Gold King and forced to sell. Whenever Bancroft ran into the steam baron, the jumped-up mushroom always managed to remind him of that detail.
Bancroft began to pace slowly, moving from the window to the desk and back again. The tiger’s head above his desk watched, unimpressed by the restless human.
The years as ambassador to Austria had ended gradually. Tobias had gone to England first to attend school, then, sometime later, Bancroft’s wife and daughters. Just two years ago, Bancroft had come home to find the Empire he’d left a quarter century before had been taken over by the steam barons and their greed.
Right at that moment, his life had taken a sharp turn. No man of good conscience—and considerable political ambition—could stand by and watch upstarts take the reins of power, bit by bit, from the peers of the realm. And the Empire’s leaders had all but lost the struggle for political supremacy. They might not sit in Parliament or the House of Lords, but they could buy almost everyone who did. In short, the barons were meaner, smarter, and richer than any duke in the land.
And, oh, how grateful those dukes would be if someone came along and put the barons in their place! So, with an eye on making an even greater fortune, Bancroft had put his talent for back-room deals to use. Harter’s was only his most public scheme. There were others, buried deeper—the rebellion Tobias had alluded to was more than just talk—but the success of those depended on gold and secrecy. And both were difficult to get.
“And the very last thing I need is Sherlock Holmes or his niece investigating my affairs,” he said to the tiger. The yellow eyes glared back.
He’s dismissed Evelina Cooper as his daughter’s hanger-on. What he knew about her could be written on a calling card. The mother’s elopement, of course. The harridan grandmother. The famous uncles. That was all. He didn’t concern himself with schoolgirls. But it seemed that he was going to have to pay more attention—she’d been all over the corpse like a bitch on a scent. Cool as ice. Obviously, she had investigative ambitions of her own.
Bancroft’s lip curled in distaste. Well, Tobias could keep the Cooper girl busy. She played coy, but anyone could see she fancied him.
When he looked at Tobias, he saw far too much of himself.
Bancroft had made exactly the same judgment when it came to Grace.
His glass was empty, so he refilled it and drained it again, letting the harsh, sweet burn flame down his throat.
It had seemed the easiest thing in the world, looking into her beautiful face, to convince himself that he