Free My Lady Quicksilver by Bec McMaster Page B

black velvet, the only sign of color was a ruby stickpin in the stark white cravat at his throat.
    “Barrons.” Lynch nodded, a sign of respect to the young lord. Barrons was often involved in matters requiring an inquisitive mind. Their paths crossed regularly at these events; no doubt the prince consort wished to be kept apprised.
    “Falcone’s up here,” Barrons called, his voice carrying the inflection of the well bred. “He’s still alive.”
    “Still alive?” Lynch hurried up the stairs. Behind him came the swish of skirts and the lemon-and-linen smell he couldn’t quite escape.
    The two men exchanged a look.
    “If you can call it that. I’ve managed to subdue him in the study. I’ll warn you, it’s not pretty,” Barrons said, his gaze drifting over Lynch’s shoulder toward Rosa.
    “It rarely is,” Lynch replied. He had the brief instinct to step in front of her, his shoulders bristling.
    Barrons didn’t have the look of a man eyeing a fine woman, but something about his perusal chilled Lynch to the core. He turned and offered his hand to Rosa to help her up the last three steps.
    She eyed it for a moment, then reached out with her right hand and accepted it. Too late, he recalled her aversion to being touched there. But then her warm, slim fingers were sliding over his, the kid leather beneath his touch smooth and well-worn.
    “Barrons, this is Mrs. Marberry, my new secretary,” he introduced.
    “A pleasure.” Barrons nodded.
    Rosa smiled, but Lynch had the feeling it wasn’t genuine. “The pleasure is mine, my lord. I never expected to be rubbing shoulders with someone from the Council of Dukes itself.”
    Barrons studied her, then glanced away. “An honorary member, my dear. I stand in my father’s place until he recovers.”
    Lynch said nothing. The Duke of Caine had been afflicted with a mysterious illness for years. The chances of him recovering were slim and Barrons knew it.
    The fact that the craving virus was a possessive disease was not unknown. It tolerated no other viruses or illnesses in its host’s body. Yet few dared tell Barrons that to his face. He knew it. The man was no fool, after all.
    Whatever illness afflicted his father, he kept rumors of it under lock and key.
    Barrons gestured toward the study. “Perhaps we’d best view Falcone first. Your men can deal with the bodies. They’re through there.” He gestured behind him, at the library and the bedrooms.
    Though Lynch wanted to see the bodies himself, Falcone was of the greater interest to him. “I was unable to examine Haversham properly. He’d killed himself before we arrived. I thought it guilt at the time.”
    Barrons shot him a sober look. “I don’t believe so. I don’t believe Haversham had enough control of his senses to suffer such an emotion.”
    “Then you think he was murdered? I examined the body myself. The entry and exit wounds seemed consistent with suicide and powder burn was found on his hands and jaw. I could smell other people on his skin, but I assumed they were his victims.”
    “Like I said, I don’t believe Haversham had the faculty to kill himself.”
    They strode along the carpeted hall. It was darker here, a single candle burning in the sconce.
    “What should I expect?” he asked. “Was Falcone close to the Fade?”
    “Falcone’s barely forty.”
    “There’s neither rhyme nor reason to the Fade,” Lynch argued. “Sometimes the virus colonizes a man swifter than it does others. I’ve seen an eighty-year-old with a CV count as low as twenty-three.”
    “There’s no sign of albinism,” Barrons countered. “His skin carries a healthy glow, his hair is still light brown, and his eyes are hazel. If his CV count were higher, his color would have begun to fade before now.”
    Muffled screams began to penetrate. Lynch’s gaze locked on the closed study. “How precisely did you subdue him?”
    “I shot him with a dart of hemlock,” Barrons replied. “It paralyzed him for