Elizabeth Thornton - [Special Branch 02] by Princess Charming Page A

we’d be trying to bring round. Will you stop your caterwauling?” This last was to the runner Jason had kicked in the groin.
    “He kicked me in the balls!” came the choked reply.
    “What did you expect—a fair fight? These are west-end gents we’re dealing with, lads.
Real gentlemen
, and they’re the worst kind. Just remember, they only plays fair among themselves. Now, let’s get him to the saloon or whatever they calls it with the others.

    When Jason came to himself, he discovered that it wasn’t a raid, or it hadn’t started out that way. It was much more serious. A young man named Johnny Rowland had been found dead on the servants’ staircase. He’d been strangled with a length of butcher’s twine. Everyone in that house was a suspect in a murder case.

Chapter 6
    T he Right Honorable Hugo Gerrard made a considerable effort to control his voice, but it was obvious he was incensed. “You’re sure Johnny Rowland was the man who tried to help my wife get away?”
    The man on the other side of the desk nodded. “We were sure even before we picked up his trail. I told you, the groundsmen saw him and recognized him when lightning flashed. It was Rowland in the boat all right.”
    “They could have been mistaken. It was raining hard.”
    “He admitted it … under duress.”
    “Then I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
    Ralph Wheatley wasn’t surprised at the older man’s virulence. Johnny Rowland had once been a footman in Gerrard’s household, but some months ago he’d left to take up a position with less money and more respect. Gerrard could not abide disloyalty. That Johnny had returned only to assist Gerrard’s runaway wife, had put him beyond the pale.
    Wheatley still had trouble believing that Lady Mary, that pathetic nonentity who was almost invisible, had found it in herself to rebel against her husband.A week ago, during a ferocious thunderstorm, she’d crept out of the house with her maid, Gracie, and had almost made it to the boat that was waiting for her on the river. Johnny was in the boat.
    The groundsmen had raised the alarm, and Gerrard had ordered them to let loose the dogs. Only Rowland and the maid got away. Lady Mary was now heavily sedated and locked up in the tower room.
    A runaway wife was one thing, but it was a lot worse than that. She had some sort of hold over Gerrard—Wheatley didn’t know what—a paper of some sort that she’d concealed in the back of a miniature portrait of herself. All he knew was that some friend was holding it for her, and would use it to ruin Gerrard if anything happened to Lady Mary.
    He had as much to lose as Gerrard. He was Gerrard’s attorney and right-hand man. He was also his natural son. That’s what really tied him to Gerrard. Lady Mary was childless and one day, so Gerrard promised, all this would come to him.
    He allowed his gaze to wander around the library of Gerrard’s house on the Strand. Persian rugs covered the parquet floor. The books that lined the walls were priceless. But dominating the room, like another presence, was the portrait above the mantelpiece. It was a portrait of Gerrard’s late father-in-law, the earl.
    And when he became master here, thought Wheatley with a shudder, the first thing he would do would be to get rid of that damn portrait. It always made him feel as though a dead man were looking over his shoulder.
    Gerrard said, “Tell me again what happened, and leave nothing out.”
    It was two o’clock in the morning and Wheatley was ready for his bed. He didn’t know where Gerrard got his energy, but he looked as though he was allspruced up to go out for the evening. They might be father and son, but no one would have known it to look at them. Gerrard could have passed for a Roman centurion if he’d worn a toga. And he had the presence for it. He, Wheatley, knew he wasn’t nearly as handsome as Gerrard, and he felt sweaty and crumpled after being roused from his bed by the news of Rowland’s murder.