But bothering him. Ah, yes. She smiled, let her gaze drop beneath her heavy lashes. It helped to think of him as a man, not a blue blood, to pretend that he was only human.
If she pretended he was only a man, then she could admit that he was quite a fine figure of one. It was no wonder she felt this odd attraction. The thought eased her nervousness. It meant nothing. Lynch’s silence was troubling. Expression flickered over his face when she looked up, but so minutely that she could not decipher it. He was an observer, she realized. Always watching, always thinking. She wondered what conclusions he drew as he examined her. Wondered if he could see right through her.
“I’ll say this once,” he said quietly. “If I suspect you are having inappropriate relations with any of my men, the position will be forfeit immediately.”
“So I’m not allowed to smile at any of them?”
Stillness. Then: “Of course you are.”
“For that is all it was,” she replied tersely. “Garrett holds no interest for me as a man. He laughs too much and he wears far too much cologne.” She gathered her skirts. “Now, if that is settled, shall we?”
Lynch’s lips thinned. “Follow me then, Rosa. If you feel the urge to cast up your accounts, please don’t do it on the bodies.”
With that he strode past her, his broad shoulders framed by the elegant chandelier in the entry. Rosalind licked her lips and gave a frustrated sigh as she hurried after him. The man was infuriating.
“Bloody hell,” Garrett muttered, standing in the middle of the foyer and turning in circles as he examined the scene.
Lynch moved slowly, cataloging each inch of room and analyzing it. One of the servants lay on the grand staircase. She’d obviously tried to flee before Lord Falcone got to her. The woman lay sprawled across the carpeted stairs in her mobcap and apron, blood dripping from the torn gash in her throat. It was messy—made with blunt teeth and not a blade.
The butler had almost made it to the door before he too was cut down. A spreading pool of blood beneath his crumpled body soaked into the carpet. Lynch’s brows drew together. “It’s the same as the Haversham case,” he murmured. “Falcone was more interested in killing them by this stage. No doubt he glutted himself upstairs.” Kneeling down, he touched the sticky pool beneath the butler. His vision blurred momentarily, his sense of smell heightening even as his mouth watered. He wanted to touch his fingertip to his tongue but years of control had taught him better.
Behind him, Rosa scribbled furiously in her notepad, taking down his words. Her skin was pale, her lips compressed, but she gave no other sign that this scene bothered her—or she was determined not to.
Rubbing his fingertips together, he looked up the stairs. Golden lamplight bathed the walls. Falcone had not bothered to update to modern conveniences like gaslight. Some of the older blue bloods were like that.
Perry slipped silently into the room, her dark hair slicked back beneath a cap. “A bloodbath,” she murmured, exchanging an uneasy glance with Garrett. Her nostrils flared, scenting the air, the blood. As one of the five who made up Lynch’s Hand—his best—she needed to be on scene. Perry had gifts of her own, beyond driving a steam carriage through hairpin turns at breakneck speed. With one sniff she could place a man to the London borough he came from.
“Find Falcone,” Lynch commanded. “I want a full CV count by morning.” If Falcone had been close to the Fade, Lynch needed to know.
Barrons appeared at the top of the stairs, lean and moving with a swordsman’s grace. Dressed in black velvet, the only sign of color was a ruby stickpin in the stark white cravat at his throat.
“Barrons.” Lynch nodded, a sign of respect to the young lord. Barrons was often involved in matters requiring an inquisitive mind. Their paths crossed regularly at these events; no doubt the prince consort wished to be kept apprised.
“Falcone’s up here,” Barrons called, his voice carrying the inflection of the well bred. “He’s still alive.”
“Still alive?” Lynch hurried up the stairs. Behind him came the swish of skirts and the lemon-and-linen smell he couldn’t quite escape.
The two men exchanged a look.
“If you can call it that. I’ve managed to subdue him in the study. I’ll warn you, it’s not pretty,” Barrons said, his gaze drifting over Lynch’s shoulder toward Rosa.
“It rarely is,” Lynch replied. He had the brief instinct to step in front of her, his shoulders bristling.
Barrons didn’t have the look of a man eyeing a fine woman, but something about his perusal chilled Lynch to the core. He turned and offered his hand to Rosa to help her up the last three steps.
She eyed it for a moment, then reached out with her right hand and accepted it. Too late, he recalled her aversion to being touched there. But then her warm, slim fingers were sliding over his, the kid leather beneath his touch smooth and well-worn.
“Barrons, this is Mrs. Marberry, my new secretary,” he introduced.
“A pleasure.” Barrons nodded.
Rosa smiled, but Lynch had the feeling it wasn’t genuine. “The pleasure is mine, my lord. I never expected to be rubbing shoulders with someone from the Council of Dukes itself.”
Barrons studied her, then glanced away. “An honorary member, my dear. I stand in my father’s place until he recovers.”
Lynch said nothing. The Duke of Caine had been afflicted with a mysterious illness for years. The chances of him recovering were slim and Barrons knew it.
The fact that the craving virus was a possessive disease was not unknown. It tolerated no other viruses or illnesses in its host’s body. Yet few dared tell Barrons that to his face. He knew it. The man was no fool, after all.
Whatever illness afflicted his father, he kept rumors of it under lock and key.
Barrons gestured toward the study. “Perhaps we’d best view Falcone first. Your men can deal with the bodies. They’re through there.” He gestured behind him, at the library and the bedrooms.
Though Lynch wanted to see the bodies himself, Falcone was of the greater interest to him. “I was unable to examine Haversham properly. He’d killed himself before we arrived. I thought it guilt at the time.”
Barrons shot him a sober look. “I don’t believe so. I don’t believe Haversham had enough control of his senses to suffer such an emotion.”
“Then you think he was murdered? I examined the body myself. The entry and exit wounds seemed consistent with suicide and powder burn was found on his hands and jaw. I could smell other people on his skin, but I assumed they were his victims.”
“Like I said, I don’t believe Haversham had the faculty to kill himself.”
They strode along the carpeted hall. It was darker here, a single candle burning in the sconce.
“What should I expect?” he asked. “Was Falcone close to the Fade?”
“Falcone’s barely forty.”
“There’s neither rhyme nor reason to the Fade,” Lynch argued. “Sometimes the virus colonizes a man swifter than it does others. I’ve seen an eighty-year-old with a CV count as low as twenty-three.”
“There’s no sign of albinism,” Barrons countered. “His skin carries a healthy glow, his hair is still light brown, and his eyes are hazel. If his CV count were higher, his color would have begun to fade before now.”
Muffled screams began to penetrate. Lynch’s gaze locked on the closed study. “How precisely did you subdue him?”
“I shot him with a dart of hemlock,” Barrons replied. “It paralyzed him for barely a minute.”
“A minute?” Rosa blurted.
Lynch had almost forgotten her. Almost.
The two men looked back.
“My apologies,” she said. “I’ve read of these new hemlock concoctions in a scientific journal. I thought they paralyzed a blue blood for nearly ten minutes?”
