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Chapter Four

I t wasn’t the right night to attend the theatre. Jasper had known it before collecting Miss Constance Hayes from her boardinghouse, and when she appeared on her doorstep, dressed in a glittering dark maroon gown, he wished he’d sent her a note earlier, bowing out.

He wasn’t in the mood for lively entertainment.

The Rising Sun, the pub across the street from the Yard, would be full of fellow officers tonight.

He should be there, commiserating and drinking with them until he blacked out.

The bombing and Constable Lloyd’s death had cast a pall over the central offices for the rest of the day, as they would for many days to come.

Not only had one of their own been killed, but by all appearances, he’d intended to do harm to other officers as well.

Confusion swirled all afternoon at the Yard about Lloyd’s hidden connections to Clan na Gael and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

They’d all been on edge, waiting for more reports of bombs exploding throughout the city, as the letter had warned months ago when it arrived. But no additional blasts had occurred.

Arriving at the Adelphi, Jasper strove to push the chaos of the day to the back of his mind and focus on the young woman he’d been courting for nearly six months.

It wasn’t easy, especially when they settled into their seats, and Constance had yet to inquire about the bombing.

Employed at The Times as a typist for the society pages, she would have almost certainly been privy to the news.

Or perhaps she hadn’t been paying any attention beyond the gossip columns.

Her seeming lack of acknowledgement, however, grated on him, and he’d grown more discomfited as the first act, then the second played out on stage.

At last, after the final curtain, they hired a cab to return Constance to her lodgings.

Once they’d settled into the enclosed bench seat, the driver perched high behind them, Jasper at last broached the subject.

“Did you hear about the bombing at Scotland Yard today?” He tried to keep his tone conversational.

She twisted in the seat next to him as the small cab bore them away from the busy street outside the theatre.

She was strikingly pretty, with blonde hair, large and expressive blue eyes, and a figure that turned men’s heads.

As the daughter of a viscount’s younger brother, she wasn’t titled, but she was still an aristocrat.

She was also Oliver Hayes’s cousin, which was how Jasper had been introduced to her back in the autumn.

Oliver, the Viscount Hayes, and Jasper and Constance often went out on the town together.

It was easy to sit back and let the two of them do all the talking—all the laughing and socializing too.

Constance’s lips popped open, but instead of noticing the rosy fullness of them, he noted how she suddenly appeared remorseful.

“Oh, yes, I had heard. A man was killed, wasn’t he?”

It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted. An aloof claim to this being the first she’d heard of it wouldn’t have fallen through him as hollowly. She’d known about the attack, that a fellow officer had died, and yet she hadn’t thought to ask him about any of it.

“A police constable, yes,” he replied solemnly.

Constance slipped her arm through his. “Is it true that he was trying to bring the bomb into your building?”

“Allegedly.”

The remnants of the suitcase Lloyd had been carrying, which Leo had been certain belonged to a woman, had been inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Explosives, Colonel Derring Majendie.

Highly esteemed as the country’s best bomb analyst, he’d been called to the Yard to investigate the remains of the leather case.

Jasper had gotten it from Lewis, who’d heard from Detective Sergeant LaChance, that the case did appear to belong to a woman.

Some of the pink and white striped silk interior cloth remained on the strips of leather after the blast, and when pieced together, it was embellished with floral embroidery, along with a partial monogram: GL.

“Well then, I’m not sorry he’s dead,” Constance said. “If he intended to kill other officers, he deserves what happened to him.”

Jasper stiffened at the unfeeling, pejorative comment.

It wasn’t the first of its kind that she’d made to him.

The more he’d come to know her, the more she’d begun to express them.

While she was usually merry and brisk with a laugh or observation, there were times when she appeared to lack deeper feeling or concern.

He’d been brushing off these moments for a few months now, explaining them away as a product of her privileged and sheltered upbringing.

But they were becoming more and more difficult to dismiss.

She laid her head against his shoulder. “I’m glad you weren’t injured.”

While he appreciated the belated remark, no inquiry was made about other possible victims or injuries. Leo came to mind.

All day, he’d bristled with stifled fury when he thought of how close she had been to Lloyd when the bomb detonated.

Had Jasper not detained her in the lobby and kept her from leaving for another minute, she might have been right next to the constable at the time of the blast. She might have been killed.

Jasper had wanted to stop by the morgue on his way home to be sure she was recovering well. But after some vacillating, he decided to stay away. She had made it clear she didn’t want to see him or accept his help.

Leo had always claimed to have no recollection of the awful night when her family had been slain.

She’d certainly never revealed that she’d received help during the ordeal.

But Jasper always suspected that it was a lie.

She had a perfect memory, and yet the night of February 16, 1867, as well as much of her life before then, was a blur to her.

Jasper had been left to wonder what would happen if she ever did work out that it had been him in the attic.

That he was related to her family’s killers.

He’d assumed it would be total excommunication, and he’d been correct.

A part of him had also questioned if she would be angry enough to reveal who he truly was to other people—Scotland Yard, specifically. But so far, she hadn’t.

Constance’s hand settled upon his, lifting him from his thoughts. She wove her fingers through his. Softly, she said, “Why don’t you tell the cabbie to take us to Charles Street instead of my boardinghouse?”

Jasper went rigid in his seat. When the urge to remove her hand from his struck, he knew the problems he’d been acknowledging lately, then dismissing, could no longer be ignored.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he replied.

This last month, she’d become more forward in her affections, and with some guilt, he’d willingly received them.

More ardent kisses, a few salacious explorations with her hands.

Nothing so bold that she would be ruined or debased, but these moments certainly all pointed toward an official betrothal in the near future.

In two weeks, her parents and younger brother were due to arrive in London, and though she hadn’t expressly said it, Constance expected Jasper to ask her father for her hand in marriage.

The man Jasper thought of as his father, Gregory Reid, had married well above his station too. The Honorable Emmaline Cowper, the daughter of a viscount, had gone against her family’s wishes and married a police inspector.

Given his own career at Scotland Yard and his courtship with a lady of status, Jasper seemed to be walking in his father’s footsteps.

But there was a significant difference between them, one that Jasper could no longer deny.

Gregory Reid had been desperately in love with Emmaline.

Jasper simply did not feel the same way for Constance.

“You know I am a thoroughly modern woman,” she said with a small laugh. “So modern, in fact, that I plan to tell my parents all about my job at the paper. I no longer care what they will do. I am a woman who makes her own decisions.”

And her decision that they should go to his home on Charles Street wasn’t something that could be misconstrued.

As much as he’d enjoy a tumble in bed—it had been a hell of a long time since he’d been with a woman—he couldn’t do it.

After that, he’d have no choice but to propose. He’d have to marry her.

Hell.

“I’ve been needing to speak to you about something, Constance,” he said, haltingly. “I should have long before now.”

He’d been selfish to allow their relationship to go on. Part of him had hoped that with time, the certainty that she was right for him would come. It hadn’t. And he could no longer pretend that it would.

Constance peeled herself from his side with evident apprehension. After weeks and weeks of suppressing his doubts and avoiding a decision, it arrived in an unfettered rush.

“I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you,” he began, “but this needs to end.”

She held still a moment, staring at him in disbelief. Then, in horror. She shot backward along the seat, away from him entirely. “You…you no longer wish to court me?”

Christ . He was a sodding bastard.

“I care for you, Constance, and I thought our courtship was what I wanted, but…”

“How long have you known you would not propose?”

No longer stunned, she now appeared furious. As she had every right to be. And when he swallowed the honest answer to her question— for some time now —Jasper knew he was low and vile, and everything he despised in certain types of men. A type he’d never considered himself to be. Shame consumed him.

He didn’t reply, but no doubt Constance heard the answer in his silence. She sat tall, her body rigid, as she faced forward through the cab’s open front.

“What we have isn’t enough on which to base a marriage,” he said. He owed her some semblance of an explanation, at least.

She pursed her lips, still staring ahead. “Is it because of her ?”

The carriage wheels lurched and fell, jostling them. Without needing to think, Jasper knew to whom Constance referred. Nonetheless, he bit his tongue, refusing to acknowledge it.

Constance twisted suddenly to spear him with a hateful glare.

“Is it because of your precious Leo ?” She spat the name with unabashed animosity.

She’d never uttered Leonora’s nickname before, and without so many words, she made it clear that she disapproved of Jasper’s use of it.

And that she suspected he felt more for Leo than he claimed.

“Tell me you aren’t throwing me over for a bizarre woman who works in a deadhouse!”

He was indisputably at fault for disappointing Constance, for possibly even breaking her heart—though he couldn’t quite convince himself she felt as deeply as that for him. But her outburst kindled his temper.

“She has nothing to do with my decision to end things.”

“Spare me your lies. I’m not a fool,” she snapped. “Although perhaps I have been. I wanted to believe you only felt obliged to tolerate her because of your father.”

She scoffed as the hansom pulled alongside the pavement outside her boardinghouse. She gathered her wrap closer around her shoulders. “Oliver warned me.”

Jasper peered at her, dismayed. “Warned you about what?”

“That you would never be free of her. That you didn’t truly wish to be.”

The driver stepped down to open the cab door. Free of Leo? As if she had some hold on him, or he was under some spell of hers.

“Leave Leonora out of this,” he rasped.

The door opened, and Constance poised herself to leap down. Glancing over her shoulder at him, she hissed, “I’m only grateful I won’t ever have to hear about her again.”

She continued to her boardinghouse door without a second backward glance. Jasper scrubbed his jaw and, aware the cabbie was waiting for a new destination, directed, “Scotland Yard.”

He’d go where he ought to have gone in the first place.

The Rising Sun would still be busy, and there would be some coppers there he could have a pint with.

He could make a start at forgetting the last few hours and easing the knot in his gut.

It hadn’t formed because he’d just ended things with Constance.

It was her comments about Leo that bothered him.

She’d made it sound as though he rattled off at the mouth all the time about her.

It wasn’t so. In fact, over the past two months, he hadn’t spoken her name at all.

He’d thought of her though. Perhaps too much.

Jasper yearned to just talk to Leo. He’d happily endure an interrogation from her about his deception for the chance to explain himself.

She hadn’t asked him a single question about his past, and knowing her mind, she must have dozens of them.

Jasper wanted to have it out with her, and afterward, if she still despised him, then so be it.

The cabbie dropped him off outside Number 4 Whitehall Place, between the front facade of Scotland Yard headquarters and the Rising Sun public house.

As he’d hoped, the tavern was a lively spot, with gasoliers inside spilling their warm, yellow light through the windows lining the street.

Inside, he wasn’t surprised not to see Lewis, who would be at home with his wife and their two young sons by now.

But he spotted PC Warnock and DS LaChance seated at a table near a window.

Unlike Tomlin, LaChance did not imagine a rivalry between the larger CID and the Special Irish Branch and would often socialize with constables from the other departments.

Warnock and LaChance hailed Jasper to join them.

He hadn’t taken four strides in their direction when a rumbling shook the floorboards.

Then, an explosion and a bright ball of flame lit the darkened street outside.

Glass blew inward as the windows of the tavern shattered.

Jasper hit the floor, arms up over his head to shield himself from the gust of the blast and the cutting shards.

An uproar of voices immediately followed the blast, and Jasper got to his feet and joined the surge of men as they hurried into the street. Flames burned in a field of debris scattered before them, and one corner of the wall at Scotland Yard headquarters lay in a pile of rubble.

Another bomb had detonated.