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Chapter Two

C haos swarmed the lobby as Jasper passed Constable Woodhouse’s now abandoned reception desk. Jasper’s pulse pumped hard, and his breaths came in short puffs. Leo batted at his shoulder with feeble pats and mumbled for him to put her down.

“I can walk,” she wheezed. Her lungs probably hadn’t yet filled back up with air; the force of the explosion would have driven it right out of her.

“Just let me carry you. You’re bleeding,” he said as he continued toward the detective department.

She kicked her legs in objection to his command, albeit weakly. “This is embarrassing. Put me down.”

When he’d heard the explosion, he’d sprinted for the yard, praying Leo had stormed away from him and their brief altercation fast enough to have cleared the bomb. But there she’d been, visible through the thick, gunpowder smoke, sprawled on her back and unconscious.

Jasper hadn’t drawn breath again until he saw her lashes fluttering, her brow pinching in pain, and her head moving side to side. Blood trickled from her left ear, the blast rupturing her eardrum.

Men were running in every direction, and beyond the walls of the building, there was a cacophony of shouts and screams. It appeared Clan na Gael had followed through with the bombing.

They’d sent the first warning months ago, informing them that police headquarters and a few other significant places in London would be bombed.

Several letters like it had arrived every month, but prior threats had never been seen through.

As such, no one had taken the warning letter for the thirtieth of May too seriously. Jasper certainly hadn’t.

He brought Leo into his office and lowered her gently onto a chair. She pressed a hand to her bleeding ear and winced.

“Where else are you injured?” He knelt on the floor before her, checking for more blood, from the crown of her head to the soles of her boots. She’d lost her hat in the blast, and her sable hair had come loose from its pins.

“Nowhere. I’m just sore,” she insisted, speaking loudly to account for the temporary loss of hearing in her ear. She tried to stand but then wobbled and sat back down. “It was John.”

Jasper stood, his breathing returning to its normal cadence now that he was sure she wasn’t badly injured. “John?”

“PC Lloyd. Dita’s beau. Oh no …Dita.” She tried to stand again, and he gripped her arm to keep her from tottering to the side. After momentarily allowing him to steady her, she wrenched free of his grasp.

“Don’t.” Leo shrunk away from him.

Jasper backed up, trying to deflect the sharp stab of insult. Of course, she wouldn’t want his help. She’d made it perfectly clear that she despised him. And he couldn’t entirely blame her.

The last two months had been hell. He’d tried to come to terms with the fact that Leo might never forgive him, that she might never speak to him again, just as she’d promised.

That early morning when he’d awoken to find her in his bedroom on Charles Street still felt surreal.

At first, Jasper hadn’t trusted he was awake.

A part of him believed he was asleep and dreaming as she came silently to the side of his bed.

It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d succumbed to a nighttime fantasy about Leonora Spencer, even though he’d wake from the unbidden dreams with a guilty conscience to some degree, anyway.

But that morning, when she’d pressed her fingers to the scar on his chest, her hazel eyes round with realization, he’d known it was no dream. It was the moment he’d feared for sixteen years.

“Are you certain it was PC Lloyd?” he asked as raised voices in the detective department escalated.

Leo nodded, then winced again. She’d probably hit her head on the ground when she’d been thrown back in the blast. “Yes, I saw him just moments before—” She turned for the open door. “We can’t let Dita go out there.”

She staggered and leaned against the doorjamb just as Sergeant Lewis came through.

“Where is the doctor?” Jasper asked him.

“Treating another man outside,” he answered. Then, after eyeing Leo’s bloody ear and disheveled state, he asked, “Should I fetch him?”

“I don’t need a doctor,” she insisted, though she still clung to the jamb. “I need to find Matron Brooks. Have you seen her?”

Leo’s friend, Dita, was a matron at the Yard, assigned to search and guard female suspects as well as young children when they were brought in for questioning or held for arrest. She would have likely been in the building at the time of the explosion.

“Tomlin has her in an interview room,” Lewis answered in a low voice.

“Already?” Jasper asked, astounded by the rapidity with which the Special Irish Branch detective inspector had summoned her.

“He is questioning her?” Leo released her grip on the doorjamb and started across the department toward the collection of desks assigned to Tomlin and his detectives. From there, a corridor led to a few interview rooms.

“You cannot just barge into an interview, Leo,” Jasper told her, staying on her heels, but she didn’t slow.

Detective Inspector Bruce Tomlin and his team of investigators were not only assigned to every case that involved Irish terrorists plaguing the city, but they also worked to infiltrate and subdue political militant groups before they could wreak havoc.

Undercover detectives would go so far as to assume false identities to join gangs and run with known Fenians, all to gain insight into their operations.

Sometimes, they would foil a planned attack because of the intelligence they’d gathered.

Tomlin would not handle this attack against the Yard well. Especially since a Met constable appeared to have been behind it.

Lewis kept pace with Jasper. “They’re saying it was PC Lloyd. That he’s with Clan na Gael.”

“That isn’t true.” Leo threw a scolding glance over her shoulder, but it put her off balance. She shot out a hand to grip a nearby chair to steady herself.

Instinctively, Jasper reached for her to help keep her upright. But again, she shrugged him off. “I don’t need your assistance,” she snapped.

Lewis raised a brow. He and some other officers had noticed Leo’s recent absence, though the detective sergeant hadn’t commented beyond a few prodding inquiries such as How is Miss Spencer these days? and Did Miss Spencer deliver that postmortem report yet?

Jasper fielded her current rejection of him by biting his tongue and gesturing for her to continue toward the interview rooms. Tomlin wasn’t going to take kindly to her interrupting him, but she was too bloody stubborn to be persuaded to leave off.

The corridor was mobbed with detectives speaking to people who appeared to have witnessed the blast. Some were bloodied, pressing handkerchiefs to their wounded heads; others looked unharmed but were wide-eyed with shock.

Leo staggered to a stop outside the first interview room. The door was shut, and a pane of frosted glass obscured the people inside for privacy.

“Leo—” Jasper began, but she twisted the knob without so much as a knock.

He groaned as she swept inside. Inspector Tomlin was standing next to Miss Brooks’s chair, looming over her. Detective Sergeant LaChance was seated at the small table across from Miss Brooks, who shot to her feet. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks wet.

“They’re saying it was John,” Miss Brooks said as she and Leo gravitated toward each other and then embraced. “I can’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Leo said as the matron sobbed fresh tears.

Inspector Tomlin directed his outrage toward Jasper. “Reid, get this woman out of my interview room.”

Bruce Tomlin was roughly forty years of age, with boot-black hair and an established beard cut through with gray. Standing at over six feet, he’d likely used his height to intimidate the matron into giving up anything she might know about the blast.

“Miss Spencer was injured in the explosion,” Jasper said, “and was concerned for her friend. I’m sure now that she sees Miss Brooks is well?—”

She peeled away from Leo, distraught. “You’re injured?”

“Not significantly. A ruptured eardrum, which will mend,” she replied.

“Well, do hear this, Miss Spencer,” Tomlin said, his voice rising. “You will wait outside this room until I have finished questioning Matron Brooks.”

“They think John is a Fenian,” the matron said, still clinging to Leo’s arms. “But he would never have done this.”

“Dita, had you seen him at all today? Did you notice his injuries?” Leo asked.

Tomlin growled, “I am the one asking the questions here.”

“Then you should inquire if Miss Brooks knows how PC Lloyd received the black eye and gashes to his face that I noticed just before the explosion,” Leo suggested in a clipped voice.

Jasper exhaled, bracing himself for Tomlin’s wrath. He was accustomed to fielding Leo’s insolence, but Tomlin wasn’t. Slowly, Lewis backed out of the doorway and made himself scarce. Lucky bastard.

“I will ask the questions I decide are important,” the inspector replied sharply. “Wiley!”

Several moments later, the Criminal Investigation Department’s desk constable shot into the small interview room, his chest puffed up and his cheeks red.

When he saw Leo, his expression changed instantly to one of derision.

She and Horace Wiley were at constant odds, and though Jasper generally disliked the constable, he chose to overlook him whenever possible. Leo, however, chose to needle him.

“Escort Miss Spencer out of the building,” Tomlin ordered Wiley.

A smug glint of pleasure crossed Wiley’s expression, and he reached for Leo’s arm. Jasper intercepted, clasping the constable’s forearm before he could touch her. “Don’t,” was all he said, though even to his own ears, the sound of his voice was as menacing as pond ice splintering underfoot.

Wiley wrenched his arm away and glared daggers at him but didn’t try to take her arm again.

“Someone, escort her out of here,” Tomlin demanded, a vein that cut through his forehead becoming more visible by the second.

“He was carrying a valise.” Leo’s comment severed the growing tension. “Constable Lloyd was about ten or fifteen paces away from me when I saw him. He appeared unsettled. Nervous. He looked to be fresh from a fist fight, and he was carrying a brown leather valise.”

“A leather case housed the bomb,” Sergeant LaChance confirmed. “We’ve found remnants of it near Lloyd’s body.”

Miss Brooks let out a small wail and returned to her seat, her trembling hands clasped over her mouth.

Jasper clenched his hands into fists. Christ . Ten or fifteen paces? Any closer, and Leo would have surely been killed.

“The valise wasn’t his,” she continued.

“How could you possibly know that?” Tomlin asked. “Did you speak to him?”

“No,” she answered. “In fact, when he saw me, he turned and started walking away from the Yard. But I’d already seen that it was a woman’s valise.

The leather was heavily embroidered and embellished down the center with a floral pattern.

When he stopped and turned, I believe I saw a monogram embroidered on it too.

Why would he have had a lady’s case when he lived alone in bachelor’s rooms?

And by his visible apprehension, I think it’s possible he?—”

“You’ve suffered an injury, Miss Spencer. Hit your head in the blast, it looks like,” Tomlin interrupted. “Go home. If I need more of a statement from you, you will be summoned. This isn’t a request.” He glared at Jasper with an unspoken order to remove her at once.

Jasper held the inspector’s glare, but he had no standing to object. This would be Tomlin’s case, not his. That rationale didn’t stop him from feeling stymied, however, as he stood aside and gestured for Leo to leave the room. She did, albeit unhappily.

“That man is a bully,” she seethed, once the door had slammed shut behind them.

“That may be, but as this is a bombing, he’ll be leading the investigation into it.”

“Do you think Constable Lloyd’s remains will be brought to Spring Street?” she asked as they wove back through the busy department.

As it was the closest morgue, Jasper suspected the remains would indeed be delivered there. No autopsy would be ordered, as cause of death was more than evident. But there could be more to learn from the man’s remains.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t assist Claude with this one,” Jasper said. Leo wasn’t affected by dead bodies, but John Lloyd had been an acquaintance. Not to mention, she’d seen him die.

“I’ll decide that for myself, thank you.” She picked up her speed, walking toward the department’s exit.

He overtook her to block her path. “I know what you are thinking, but this is not an investigation you can force your way into.”

“He was Dita’s beau. They were about to become engaged to marry. He wouldn’t have done this willingly,” she said, ignoring him as she was wont to do.

“Then let Inspector Tomlin and his men find out what really happened. You need to stay out of it this time.”

It was a mistake; he knew it the second the order flew off his tongue. Leo drew her shoulders back, her eyes glazing over with impenetrable hardness.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Inspector Reid.”

She pushed past him and strode away.

He sighed, letting her go. “I never got to tell you what to do to begin with,” he muttered.

Behind him, Lewis let out a low whistle from his desk, where he’d retreated earlier. “I don’t know what you did, guv, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for mercy.”

Jasper raked his fingers through his hair and, without responding to the detective sergeant, returned to his office.