Page 79 of The Devil in Oxford
Why would Reaver bring me to Emmanuel Laurent?
I swallowed hard, not wanting to believe Laurent capable of such a thing. It made no sense. How… why would he? Laurent had been kind. Attentive even. My mind tripped on ahead of me as I turned my head to the side, finding young Jack—the kindly young constable from the police station—sprawled out on the floor alongside me, suffering from a gunshot wound. What washedoing here? Earlier tonight a part of me wondered if he might not have been one of the men who perished on the canal boat, though Jack had always been at odds with the inspector.
Jack’s bloodied palm covered his belly, his eyes wide as he looked up at Reaver, his skin pale from the loss of blood. Reaver cast the young man a pitying look. His own expression softening for a fraction of a second. Was Jack in league with Reaver or was there yet someone else involved in this macabre pantomime?
“I have a trade for you, Laurent! I’ve brought your pet,” Reaver shouted, interrupting my thoughts. “Now give me Leona.”
I had to get free. Had to get myself out of this before Reaver got all of us killed. I tugged against the ropes binding my hands.The slipperiness of my own blood allowed my one thumb to come free right away. I folded my fingers as tight as I could, and my right hand slid a bit farther up the rope. That was something.
Pain shot through my shoulder as I drew myself up on my knees with my hands awkwardly behind me.
“Why would I wanther?” Emmanuel Laurent stood in the doorway, his voice impossibly even as I stared into his dark gray eyes. The color of slate.
The devil’s eyes.
The air left my lungs on a rush. It wasEmmanuel Laurentthat Annabelle had seen, not the inspector at all. My gaze dropped to the gun held casually in his hand as the unlikely truth settled into my gut. My mind raced to catch up with what I already knew without a doubt.
Emmanuel Laurent was the killer.
I should have known. Should have guessed. Frantic, I looked to Jack, whose pained gaze remained fixed upon Reaver—as if somehow the prickly, hardheaded scholar had the power to save us all. The man was more likely to get us all killed than to get us out of this alive.
Foolish, foolish girl.
The answer had been before me all along, I just hadn’t paused to think on it. Laurent been connected to Harker long before the latter’s disgrace and expulsion from Oxford. I’d never even stopped to suspect him of the crime, despite the fact that Laurent had been connected to this whole affair from the very first act.
He knew of the theft of theRadix Maleficarum.
He knew the truth about Ruan.
He’d killed Harker. Killed him and then taken Leona to hide his crimes.
Of course Ruan would have stopped to talk to him. To check the time, not seeing the drug-filled syringe before it was too late.
He’d shot Jack, the young constable. The litany of Laurent’scrimes echoed in my head. It all made perfect sense and I could not understand how I missed it.
I could scarcely breathe, mind running through the last few days, gathering all the things I knew of Laurent—none of which brought me any closer towhya man who had so much to lose would risk it all.
“I would appreciate if you wouldn’t leave her to ruin the rug.” Laurent stepped deeper into the room, his eyes raking over my bloody form. “You see, Frederick, this is precisely why I do not own a cat. They always drag in the most woebegone things, disemboweling them on the floor as if their violence could impress me. I assure you it does not. It took me years to acquire that carpet and nowhowam I to get those stains out? Hmm?”
I glanced down to the bloody splotches I’d left and rubbed my palm on it, adding another rust-colored smudge to the pattern.
“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you shot Jack,” Reaver growled, gesturing to the poor constable bleeding out across from me. Whowasthis man, and was there more to Reaver than met the eye? Yes, he was a scholar—one couldn’t hide that fact—but the way Jack kept looking to him. The almost protective growl in his voice. Reaver cared for the younger man. Almost as one would a protégé. Or someone one was training.
A protégé.
Suddenly the last clue slipped into place. On the night of Lord Amberley’s party, Laurent had occupied Ruan for most of the evening. But at the end—when Reaver and Jonathan Treadway were in conflict—it was Emmanuel Laurent who had been at my elbow.Thatwas the reason for Reaver’s venom that evening. He thought I was in league with Laurent. No wonder the fool man believed I had a hand in Leona’s disappearance and wouldn’t listen to reason. I was often in Laurent’s company, Ruan himself going back and forth between the two homes. Had the roles been reversed, I would have been just as intractable as Reaver.
“Ruan, Leona… where are they?” My voice sounded far stronger than I felt at present.
Reaver’s expression faltered as he looked at me, evidently coming to the same realization as I about our allegiances.
“Perfectly safe. They both are. I take excellent care of my collection.”
“You cannot collect people,” I growled, settling on my haunches, my bound hands numb behind my back.
“Oh, but that is where you are wrong, Miss Vaughn. People are the most valuable and difficult pieces to acquire. You never know what one can do, thepowerone can hold over another.”
“You cannot think you can control a person’s life—”
