A Bride by Moonlight Read Online Free

than London, the fellow looked as different from a Metropolitan Police officer as chalk from cheese.
    Oh, yes. This one was definitely chalk.
    Napier forced a thin smile, and prayed for the well-being of his just-polished boots.
    The chap tiptoed across the tiled floor. “Y-yes, Assistant Commissioner?”
    “Your first death, is it, Mr. Terry?”
    “F-first one shot, aye,” the young man managed. “Mostly just get drownings here—though last winter we f-found a sailor knifed.”
    “Good man.” Napier gave the constable a firm, bucking-up thump between the shoulder blades. “You’re inured to violent death.”
    “W-well, that chap, ’e was knifed on Deptford Green, then the corpse dumped here,” the lad went on, his eyes following the blood that trailed across the white tile and into the cement spring box, tingeing the water pink.
    Napier dipped his head to catch the shorter fellow’s gaze. “Mr. Terry?”
    He looked up, his wide, pale eyes blinking once. “Y-yes, sir?”
    “You aren’t going to cast up your accounts on our crime scene, are you?”
    Terry’s lips thinned as if to press his mouth shut. He gave a feeble shake of his head.
    “Relieved to hear it.” Napier motioned to a bloody garden spade by the spring box. “Now, what’s that about?”
    “They’re s-saying Sir Wilfred—” The young man swallowed hard, and cut a glance down at the corpse. “That he attacked a lady with it and—”
    “What lady?” Napier demanded.
    “The Indian lady from the fortune-teller’s tent,” said Terry, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Reckon he meant to kill her, but they’re keeping it mum. Awful, in’it, sir?”
    Napier felt a chill run through him. It was true, then, what the butler had said. Lady Anisha Stafford, a woman he greatly esteemed, had been somehow involved.
    “How badly was she hurt?” Napier demanded, his voice gone utterly cold.
    “She . . . she walked away, I heard. But Lord Lazonby rushed her off at once. To protect her from the scandal.”
    “Good for him,” said Napier darkly. And for once, he meant it.
    “But it is a frightful lot of blood, sir,” Terry went on, “when you add it all up, I mean.” This was followed by another heaving grunt. He clapped a hand over his mouth.
    “Damn it, man, get out .” Napier thumbed toward the door.
    With a withering look, the fellow fled back up the steps and into the slanting sun.
    Napier grimly surveyed the old stone structure and its supine corpse again, his eyes missing little. The garden spade. The blood. An overturned stool. A broken crock, tipped off a marble slab beneath the window.
    Damn it all. Violent death was never a good thing, but it was a vast deal worse when the aristocracy was involved. Proving his point, Lazonby remained outside with the lush lady in gray, arrogant as ever and obviously bent on obstructing justice at every turn.
    He felt the rage well up in him again, his hand fisting impotently. Lazonby was nothing but a murderous thug in fine wool worsted who’d run circles around Scotland Yard for years, once even eluding the gallows. He was not fit to shine Lady Anisha’s shoes, let alone court her. And now he’d got her hurt .
    But what could have caused such a sequence of harrowing events?
    Sir Wilfred and Lazonby had once run in the same dangerous circles. Perhaps it had something to do with Lazonby’s past? And after killing Sir Wilfred—or having had him killed—Lazonby had sent for Napier simply to taunt him?
    On the bright side, if Napier could prove that theory, the Crown might give him another crack at putting Lazonby back on the gallows.
    Napier flipped open his black leather folio, and set to work in earnest.
    F rom across the broad swath of grass, the Earl of Lazonby watched as Greenwich’s green-faced constable hastened back up the dairy stairs, gagging, to bolt for the trees—nauseated by Royden Napier’s incessant conceit, no doubt.
    To his left, he could hear Sir Wilfred’s widow