Page 1 of Her Magnificent Mistake (Surprised Heirs #1)

PROLOGUE

T he curtains were down, blocking all view into the second-floor window of the office used by the Lindsay Group. This could mean one of three things:

Her brother had been out carousing last night, and hadn’t yet managed to stumble to his desk and throw open the sash and let in the crisp late-April air, despite it being almost noon.

He was still carousing, and the light hurt his eyes.

Bull had received some bad news and, as he always did, drew the curtains in case anyone outside—like a particularly well-sighted pigeon meandering past—might see him as he brooded.

S ighing, Lady Marcia Calderbank, daughter of the Duke of Peasgoode, hefted the stack of newspapers against her hip and stomped toward the front steps of the red brick townhouse.

She just knew it was the third option, and it would be up to her to drag the news out of Bull.

Then drag him from his brooding.

“Hello, Mrs. Cartledge!” she called as she let herself in the front door. “Just me. Is my brother awake?”

From the back of the building, the older woman called, “Good morning, dear. I brought him up his tea and toast hours ago, along with the post.”

Damnation . That meant whatever had Bull so worried had come by mail.

Shaking her head, Marcia climbed the stairs.

Bull was completely capable of taking care of himself, but he rented a suite of rooms on the second floor of this perfectly respectable house from the elderly widow downstairs. Not because he needed her fetching him his meals and fussing over him but—Marcia suspected—because he liked the company.

“You had better be decent,” she growled as she knocked on his door, trying to force from her mind the Great Shirtless Interruption of last spring. Without giving him time to answer, she clomped into his sitting room and dropped the heavy pile of papers by his door. Then she crossed to the office that fronted the street and normally let in lovely light. “Why are you hiding in here?”

Sure enough, her older brother was sitting with his back to the window, the curtains pulled tight behind him, slouched in his chair with a frown. His nimble fingers—never still—tapped a heavy envelope against the desk. With each tap, he’d turn the envelope a half-turn, so it seemed to rotate across the desktop.

It was a sign of how engrossed he was with his bad news that Bull startled at her voice, turning his irritated frown on her.

Bull’s situational awareness was what had kept him—and once or twice, her —alive this long, and the fact he hadn’t heard her come up the stairs or even into his home was…alarming.

So, it wasn’t pique. It was real, whatever this was.

Marcia forced her tone to calm as she crossed behind him toward the window. “What is wrong? I was making enough noise to wake the dead.”

“Aye,” he muttered, returning his frown to the small fire in the hearth. “Ye need new shoes. Those are too big. Sliding off yer heel and hitting the ground too early.”

Snorting to hide how impressed she was—his sartorial knowledge was second to none—Marcia threw open the curtains.

Her brother merely grunted and turned away, as if his shadow could somehow hide the contents of that envelope from any possible spy pigeons roosting outside.

I suppose it is good he did not hiss and shy away from the light, like a spooked vampire.

“For your information, these are new shoes,” she declared haughtily, trying to shuffle instead of stomp as she moved to one of the free chairs on the other side of his desk. “I am trying to break them in. But the socks are old.”

Bull nodded distractedly. “I’ll get ye some new ones.”

“Brother, I am thirty-two years old. I am perfectly capable of buying myself some socks which are not worn at the heels.”

“Aye, Marsh, but ye’ll choose boring brown .” Finally, a glimpse of the brother she loved, when he sent her a crooked smile. “Ye ken what I think of brown . Nae sense of style.”

“I have a perfectly adequate sense of style,” she sniffed, settling into the chair and meeting his smirk with a brow lifted in challenge. “It just happens to be one which does not think of brown as a fashion crime. In fact, my latest purchase is a brown gown. With brown trimmings.”

As she’d hoped, such a horror pulled Bull from his doldrums. He mimed a dagger plunging into his heart, then gasped and slumped in his chair.

Marcia hid her grin.

So often, in the last two decades, it had been the two of them against the world.

It is not as though the daughter of a duke has much to complain about .

It was the truth: she didn’t. Da and Flick were loving parents who’d raised their children to stay true to their hearts…even if that meant Marcia had turned down every offer of marriage and scandalized the whole country by starting her own career.

The sign out front— Bull Lindsay Detective Group —had been the only thing Da had stood firm on. When Marcia and Bull had announced they planned to open their own agency, the Bull Lindsay and Lady Marcia Detective Group, with the help of Bull’s contacts and Marcia’s brains, their father had put his foot down.

And when the foot was down, it stayed down.

I ken something about being a target , he’d growled at them, with Flick’s support. If ye’re both determined to go through with this, and we trust ye’ve considered the risks, then ye still cannae use yer name, Marcia. It’s too dangerous.

Unfortunately, Bull had agreed, hence the simplified organization name. He’d wanted his head to be the only one with a target on it, if their cases turned sour or an enemy wanted revenge.

Or—Marcia remembered the times her brother had returned to the office bruised and bleeding—a client did.

But this place was hers as much as it was Bull’s, despite the fact his name was on the sign and he lived in the next room. Not that she was concerned; she much preferred her chambers in Peasgoode House in Belgravia, anyhow.

“So.” Marcia made a show of lifting her new boot and planting her heel on the desk, then leaning back in the chair and lifting the other to cross her ankles. “Bad news.”

“Nay,” he scowled scowlishly. “I’m just thinking.”

“Thinking about bad news.” She didn’t give him time to object. “You know that no one can see you from outside, right? Those windows are twelve feet off the ground, and there is a glare on the glass.”

“I think better in the dark.”

“Bullshite,” she shot right back with a grin. “What is in the letter?”

He hesitated, and the realization sent a bolt of dread to her stomach. Marcia’s shoulders tensed and she regretted her too-relaxed, too-nonchalant pose.

But then, with a sigh, Bull leaned forward and flicked the envelope to her. “The Crown needs our help.”

Eighteen years ago, Bull had saved the life of one of the royal princesses. It had been part of the culmination of a case that their father and his friends had been working on for years, and Bull’s timely knife-throw had helped things along. Despite being only a lad, he’d very much come to Princess Louise’s attention as someone intelligent, nimble, and capable.

At the time, they hadn’t realized she was the center of a spiderweb of information gathering.

Marcia had never been certain how much of the impetus for the Lindsay Group had come from Bull, and how much had come from their royal patroness, who occasionally needed civilian help in her investigations. But the result was the same; when the Crown said Take this case …they took the case.

“I hope this one will pay as well as the last one,” she murmured, trying to pull out the thin paper inside. How had Bull managed to refold it so neatly? “What is it this time?”

“The Tostinham murder.”

Well that jerked her attention away from the envelope. “Murder?” she repeated, brows raised. “So the autopsy is complete?”

A fortnight before, the new Baron Tostinham had died in his sleep—the third Baron Tostinham to have died in the last fourteen months, all of them equally abruptly.

Bull nodded grimly, his never-still fingers tapping a pattern against the arm of his chair. “The Crown wants them all treated as murder, even if there’s been nae evidence. She—I mean, our contact thinks the coincidences are too…coincidental.”

Now it was Marcia’s turn to tap the envelope against the desk thoughtfully. Talking things over with Bull was better than reading some secretary’s scratching handwriting anyway.

“The first Baron died childless. His younger brother inherited.”

She knew the details better than her brother did, but Bull nodded anyhow and picked up the tale. “And when he keeled over while riding, their uncle inherited.”

“The most recent dead man had a son and two daughters, but the son died years ago,” she supplied.

“When he was barely more than a lad,” Bull finished. “Sad, but likely not murder—at least, no’ related to this spate. No’ unless our—the murderer was incredibly good at planning. And fortune telling.”

Marcia nodded along, always enjoying the way she and her brother worked together. “There was no evidence of foul play. The most recent Baron was rotund, a heavy drinker and smoker. Possibly he just died of his excess?”

“Or an excess of poison,” Bull added grimly.

“Again, no evidence.”

Her brother sighed and scrubbed a hand through his too-long auburn hair. “What is it ye say? If there’s nae how , but there’s a why , we should investigate?” He nodded to the envelope in her hand. “That’s what the Crown believes too.”

“I suppose I do not have to ask the why . Suspicion falls on the heir, I assume. The next one. The new Baron Tostinham. But last I heard, his name had not been announced because one of the daughters petitioned for the holding.”

“Nay, it’s been too chaotic.” Bull shook his head grimly. “But the Crown kens. And aye, the puir bastard is our suspect. She—my contact is certain he is guilty. She wants us to get close to him, figure out how he did it.”

“If he did it,” Marcia corrected.

To her surprise, her brother’s gray gaze turned tortured for a moment, before he turned back to face the hearth once more. “ How he did it,” he muttered.

Bull seemed certain, which meant the Princess was certain. After all, their silent patroness, the Princess Louise, was an intelligent woman.

Frowning thoughtfully, Marcia set to work opening the letter. “Who is it, this heir?”

It wasn’t until she had the letter—yes, it was full of scratchy handwriting, as she’d feared—opened and ready to read that she realized her brother hadn’t answered.

She lifted her gaze to him, more concerned with the way he was acting than the identity of their suspect.

Bull’s brows were drawn in, his stormy gaze locked on the hearth. There was… something…

“Bull?”

Her brother squeezed his eyes shut, then turned to her and straightened. When he opened his eyes, the regret—and anger—in his gray gaze shot right to her heart.

“It’s Hawk,” he announced dully. “Hawk is our murderer.”

The letter—chicken scratch and all—fluttered to the desk as Marcia’s arms went numb. All of her went numb, the shock chilling. She stared across the desk, eyes wide, lips unable to form any words.

Hawk.

Maxwell Hawthorne, known as Hawk to his very closest friends.

Maxwell Hawthorne, apparently the new Baron Tostinham.

Maxwell Hawthorne, her brother’s best friend.

Maxwell Hawthorne , her first—and only—love.

The man whose guilt the Crown had just ordered them to prove.

“Oh no,” Marcia whispered. Oh no.