Page 88 of In Compromise with the Earl
Pulling away from him she started to grow uneasy. Aphrodite swallowed, “I should…I should get back to the Hall. He might be there already. Thank you for your help, Leo.”
As she hurried out, she shot a look over her shoulder to Leo and clumsily bumped into the table with the dagger. “I’m sorry…sorry,” she said while stepping away and rushing through the door.
With one last glance she saw that Leo had a narrow-eyed, calculating look on his face and it sent shivers down her spine at how cold his gaze had become.
I need to find the Constables now and tell them who killed Claire.
* * *
“Say again, Countess Tennesley,” a Bow Street Constable named Davis said, his eyes narrowed, and his lips thinned.
Another officer name Toole stood by them, as alert and invested in what Aphrodite had told him about Leo Bristol, the presiding Priest at St. Bride’s Church.
“I swear to you, he has the same dagger,” Aphrodite stressed. “If what you have written is true, about the dagger being one of a pair, and you have that dagger in your possession, I do not think you will find another of its kind in London.”
The Constable looked to his fellow, then trained his eyes back to her. “It is a rare instrument and in all our searching we have not found its second.”
“You will find the other in his office,” Aphrodite said, “I promise you. I do not know for truth if Leo did the despicable deed, but if he has the dagger, it will be a good place to start.”
Nodding curtly, Davis reached for his hat. “We’ll see to it right away, My Lady, thank you for coming forward.”
Nervously, Aphrodite stood. “Please, put this matter to rest. My husband is still grieving this issue because no one was found guilty of it.”
“We give you our assurance, My Lady,” Toole said. “It is about time this had been put to bed.”
The two walked with her to her carriage and then went off to their carriage, and while they headed to the church, Aphrodite took the opposite way. She had been apprehensive that the men would not listen to her but thankfully, they had and were now acting on what she knew.
Her hands twisted in her skirts as she traveled home in the nighttime and felt more anxious when she descended the carriage and asked the footman at the door if Oswald was home.
“Yes, My Lady, he came home a few hours ago,” the man bowed.
Happy but still apprehensive Aphrodite went to her chamber to do away with the extra layers and then went to find Oswald, who was most likely in his study. Before she went, she went to the Dowager’s drawing room and took up a paper that was neatly set back in the box it had come in.
She headed to his study, glad to see light coming from the door and pushed it in. “Oswald—”
Jerking to a stop at the sight before her, her fingers went lax and the paper fluttered to the floor. Leo was there and Oswald, battered and bruised, with a bloodied lip and a swollen eyes was tied to a chair. The Dowager was similarly restrained, but what had Aphrodite’s heart in her throat was the serpentine dagger embedded in Oswald’s arm.
Leo reached for the dagger and slowly pried it out of the bleeding flesh. “Wonderful that you’re home.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The blood slipping from his arm was nothing but a metallic liquid staining his clothes as Oswald felt nothing. Leo had forced a drink, laced with laudanum between his lips half an hour ago, right after he had ambushed Oswald and his mother.
It boggled his mind that Leo had turned into this deviant, hitting his Aunt across the face and pummeling a weakened Oswald, who had done his best to fight back. Now he watched as the blade, the same make as the one that had killed Claire was dragged from his arm.
“Please, take a seat,” Leo gestured to Aphrodite. “You will want to hear this since you have figured out my game.”
“Game?” Oswald asked. “What deuced game?”
“To get rid of you and take over the Earldom myself,” Leo said, casually wiping the blood off on Oswald’s clothes. “It might have been your birthright, but you were never worthy of it. It pained me to have step back and bite my tongue every time you did something foolish with the power you were given.”
“I was born into it,” Oswald replied. “It’s not like I had a choice. You are not of my father’s bloodline. The Estate will revert to the Crown if I die without issue. It was never yours to inherit.”
“You were given everything you wanted,” Leo’s said harshly. “Your father took the little my father was given and left me with nothing. Nothing! I nearly had to beg on the street before yourMother,my dearAunt,found some pity in her heart and took me in like as if she was doing me a favor. When all this should have been part mine.”
“You were hardly homeless or hopeless,” Oswald argued. “You had—”
“A pittance,” Leo snapped. “After my whore mother ran off and my father gave up on life and squandered every pound to buy blue ruin, I lived on pennies.”
