in the business of fencing stolen goods. And the fob had far greater value as information about the killer. It was a well-crafted, expensive piece. The kind of ornament only a rich and powerful man would wear. Not a footman. “Have you seen this before?”
“No.” Lady Claire creased her perfect brow into a frown, and moved closer to peer at the object before she took it from his hand. “But if I remember my history lessons aright, it will be from the reign of the Emperor Claudius, made in commemoration of the conquest of Britain, somewhere near the year 45, or was it 46?”
Lady Claire’s governess had been thorough and extraordinarily well versed. His well-educated goddess pointed to a particular mark. “You see here, the obverse side, where it says: De Britann ? That’s us, I should think, Britain, or—forgive my ignorance—more correctly ‘of the Britons.’ I believe—that is, if I recall correctly—they have found some coins like this in the excavation of Pompeii. They were shown in that exhibition—” Two tiny vertical lines pleated themselves between her brows as she concentrated, closing her eyes, and shaking her head again, as if she might loosen the thought to tumble down upon her tongue. “Oh, I don’t remember where—Somerset House, or Sir John Soane’s, or somewhere.”
That she was clever as well as kind and beautiful had not seemed possible—too much for a man like him, who lived so entirely at the behest of his relentless brain, to hope for. But the realization that she clearly had a first-class mind hidden behind all that astonishing beauty excited him more completely that all of his inchoate longings from afar never had.
My God—he could talk to her.
“Excellent. Have you seen this fob before? Think of all the gentlemen you’ve danced with in the past week or so.” Tanner himself was sifting through the catalogue of each and every man with whom she had danced in the vast archive of his mind, reviewing mental image after mental image of men with stickpins and fobs gleaming from the fronts of their waistcoats. Family crests, school insignias, regimental badges, honors and seals of office, one after the other, until he came to Lord Peter Rosing.
The catalogue spilled out of him. “Expensively tailored evening clothes. Coat of darkest green superfine from Schweitzer and Davidson on Cork Street—judging from the style of the buttonholes and shining gold buttons. Immaculate white linen and cravat. Snowy satin breeches to catch the light.” Everything designed to appeal to the eye. Dressed to lure. Dressed to rape.
Dressed to kill.
Tanner could calculate to the farthing what that rig had cost and exactly how much it would all fetch at a rag trader’s in Black Swan Alley when Rosing’s valet deemed it was out of fashion. Enough to feed a family of four for a year.
But that waistcoat had been covered almost entirely by the high cut of Rosing’s coat. Tanner’s normally infallible memory provided him with an image of a fashionably white waistcoat—white to match Rosing’s linen and cravat. Not gold-threaded brocade.
Fuck all.
Tanner did not want to believe the evidence. Because he wanted it to be Rosing. Tanner wanted another inexcusable, irrefutable reason to hate the bastard and take his revenge.
Lady Claire was looking at him closely again, the short, sharp lines of a scowl marring her perfect face. “Fancy you should know all that. I never notice what men are wearing. All men have watch fobs, don’t they? How can that mean anything?”
“Everything means something. Everything. Not all men have watch fobs. All the men of your acquaintance, meaning your social peers, who are rich and have the money for such ornaments, have them. Not your butler, nor your footmen—nor Miss Carter’s footman. Jesse Lightfoot, I should think,” he added offhand. “No. Whoever wore this fob, and assaulted Miss Carter and killed her, had money.”
Tanner bent down to take a second look
“No.” Lady Claire creased her perfect brow into a frown, and moved closer to peer at the object before she took it from his hand. “But if I remember my history lessons aright, it will be from the reign of the Emperor Claudius, made in commemoration of the conquest of Britain, somewhere near the year 45, or was it 46?”
Lady Claire’s governess had been thorough and extraordinarily well versed. His well-educated goddess pointed to a particular mark. “You see here, the obverse side, where it says: De Britann ? That’s us, I should think, Britain, or—forgive my ignorance—more correctly ‘of the Britons.’ I believe—that is, if I recall correctly—they have found some coins like this in the excavation of Pompeii. They were shown in that exhibition—” Two tiny vertical lines pleated themselves between her brows as she concentrated, closing her eyes, and shaking her head again, as if she might loosen the thought to tumble down upon her tongue. “Oh, I don’t remember where—Somerset House, or Sir John Soane’s, or somewhere.”
That she was clever as well as kind and beautiful had not seemed possible—too much for a man like him, who lived so entirely at the behest of his relentless brain, to hope for. But the realization that she clearly had a first-class mind hidden behind all that astonishing beauty excited him more completely that all of his inchoate longings from afar never had.
My God—he could talk to her.
“Excellent. Have you seen this fob before? Think of all the gentlemen you’ve danced with in the past week or so.” Tanner himself was sifting through the catalogue of each and every man with whom she had danced in the vast archive of his mind, reviewing mental image after mental image of men with stickpins and fobs gleaming from the fronts of their waistcoats. Family crests, school insignias, regimental badges, honors and seals of office, one after the other, until he came to Lord Peter Rosing.
The catalogue spilled out of him. “Expensively tailored evening clothes. Coat of darkest green superfine from Schweitzer and Davidson on Cork Street—judging from the style of the buttonholes and shining gold buttons. Immaculate white linen and cravat. Snowy satin breeches to catch the light.” Everything designed to appeal to the eye. Dressed to lure. Dressed to rape.
Dressed to kill.
Tanner could calculate to the farthing what that rig had cost and exactly how much it would all fetch at a rag trader’s in Black Swan Alley when Rosing’s valet deemed it was out of fashion. Enough to feed a family of four for a year.
But that waistcoat had been covered almost entirely by the high cut of Rosing’s coat. Tanner’s normally infallible memory provided him with an image of a fashionably white waistcoat—white to match Rosing’s linen and cravat. Not gold-threaded brocade.
Fuck all.
Tanner did not want to believe the evidence. Because he wanted it to be Rosing. Tanner wanted another inexcusable, irrefutable reason to hate the bastard and take his revenge.
Lady Claire was looking at him closely again, the short, sharp lines of a scowl marring her perfect face. “Fancy you should know all that. I never notice what men are wearing. All men have watch fobs, don’t they? How can that mean anything?”
“Everything means something. Everything. Not all men have watch fobs. All the men of your acquaintance, meaning your social peers, who are rich and have the money for such ornaments, have them. Not your butler, nor your footmen—nor Miss Carter’s footman. Jesse Lightfoot, I should think,” he added offhand. “No. Whoever wore this fob, and assaulted Miss Carter and killed her, had money.”
Tanner bent down to take a second look
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