A Bride by Moonlight Read Online Free PDF

then.”
    “Napier, old fellow, do drop your voice.” Lazonby laid a hand on his arm. “Yes, I sent for you, because—”
    “By God, Lazonby, if you’ve murdered another innocent man, I vow to see you hanged for it—hanged this time ’til you’re bloody well dead .”
    At this, the woman leapt off the bench. “But Lazonby didn’t murder anyone!” she insisted. “He never did, don’t you see? And there was nothing innocent about Wilfred Leeton. Nothing! He was an evil, deceitful devil!”
    Her vehemence struck Napier as oddly familiar. “Madam, calm yourself.”
    “No! My God. Can’t you see?” Miss Ashton’s husky voice was tremulous with rage now, as if something inside her had finally snapped. “This—all of this—is the result of . . . of lies and incompetence!” she went on. “Of vain assumptions and callous greed! Leeton made fools of us all, Mr. Napier— your sainted father included. ”
    “Oh?” Napier’s foreboding sense of familiarity was deepening. “So did you shoot Sir Wilfred?”
    She dragged in a ragged breath. “I—I—”
    “Here is what we are going to say,” interjected Lazonby, cutting Napier a dark glance. “Her brother shot Sir Wilfred. Accidentally.”
    Here, the lady shocked Napier by collapsing into the grass, sobbing as though her world had ended, her skirts puddling around her in a pool of shimmering gray silk.
    “Ah!” Napier waved a hand around the lawn. “And this mysterious brother, just where might he be?”
    “Spooked and ran.” Lazonby had knelt to console the sobbing woman. “By the way, he’s Jack Coldwater with the Morning Chronicle ,” he said, flicking a cool glance up at Napier. “You’ll want to write that down in your interview notes.”
    “Jack Coldwater —? That hot-penned, red-haired radical reporter who keeps churning up your murder conviction in the newspapers? Lazonby, that makes no sense.”
    “Well, that’s how it was,” he said as Napier helped him lift the sobbing, shaking woman to her feet. “And just before the shots rang out—as the penny dreadfuls so cleverly put it—Sir Wilfred confessed to stabbing the very chap your father had me sent to Newgate for killing.”
    “You must be quite mad.”
    “He—he is not mad.” Miss Ashton’s remarkable eyes had gone soft, tears streaming down her cheeks.
    “Indeed, I am perfectly sane—as I have been for all the years since old Hanging Nick Napier managed to get me convicted of murder.” Lazonby gingerly urged Miss Ashton back onto the bench. “I’ve told you time and again I’d nothing to do with it. And now here is your proof.”
    “Proof?” Napier exploded. “There is no proof!”
    But Miss Ashton had seemingly gathered herself. “There is proof,” she said, her voice still low and tremulous. “I overheard Sir Wilfred confess everything. Apparently Lady Anisha had become suspicious of him. I don’t know why, exactly. But Sir Wilfred hit her in the head with a garden spade, and dragged her in there to drown her in the spring box.”
    Napier’s gaze narrowed. “And you’d know this . . . how ?”
    “I followed them.”
    “Indeed? Why?”
    “Let’s just say she was looking for her brother,” Lazonby interjected. “Jack Coldwater had followed them, too.”
    “Well, that must have been quite a parade!” Napier shook his head, as if it might clear his vision.
    “No, it’s really quite simple,” said Lazonby—and Napier knew it was anything but. “We are going to put it about that Miss Ashton saw her brother in the crowd, and guessed that Coldwater had come looking for Sir Wilfred.”
    “ We are going to put it about ?” Amidst all the confusion, Lazonby’s weasel-words were finally coming clear to Napier. “No, by God, I’ll have the truth—from the both of you.”
    “And the truth is, Jack Coldwater was in that dairy because he’d been investigating that old murder case, just like Anisha,” Lazonby reminded Napier almost accusingly. “