By the time she crawled under the blankets, she had worked herself into quite a state once again. On the one hand, she knew Abbie was right, that she had to tell the inspector why she was so certain it hadn’t been Evelyn’s lover who’d killed her, but she still felt stung by what he’d implied.
He’s just doing his job.
She knew it was true, but it had just been so hard to hear such things after the sweet moment of tenderness and sharing that had just passed between them. Now that she was safe in her bed, she had to admit that it had perhaps been the most emotionally charged moment of her life.
Sebastian Ness was nothing she’d ever thought she’d want in a man. He was far below her station, and his career, though necessary, was crass and dangerous. So why had he been on her mind so much since she’d met him?
She closed her eyes, thinking of his beautiful eyes and sensual smile. The way he’d kissed her and given her pleasure. The way he’d held her, making her feel safe for the first time in her life.
Was that it? Did she secretly yearn for someone to make her feel safe? Someone who cared for her enough to keep her from harm?
The only problem with that was the fact that every hurt she’d ever suffered had been caused by a man. She’d thought that both her father and husband would have her best interests at heart, that they’d take care of her and cherish her. But her father had never cared about anything except the connections that her marriage could bring him, and her husband had never cared about anything but getting an heir before he died.
She was foolish to have thought, even for a moment, that Sebastian Ness could be any different.
* * *
AFTER LEAVING JOCELYN, Sebastian took a hack back to his flat in Bethnal Green. As he let himself into the small suite of rooms on the second floor of the brick tenement, he looked around at the faded wallpaper and simple furniture and shook his head in wry amusement that he’d ever thought that a woman from Mayfair might want to be involved with him at any level.
Shivering, he lit a fire in the hearth, then put a pot of water on the stove to make some tea. For a while, the activity kept his mind off what had just happened, but the moment he sat down in his worn yet comfortable chair in front of the fire, Jocelyn’s tear-streaked, furious face haunted his thoughts.
He’d never meant to hurt her, and he still couldn’t believe he’d let his emotions rule him enough to say those things about her sister. His questions had been necessary, but he should have taken her at her word and not pushed it. She’d obviously told him what she thought to be the truth, and no amount of digging was going to get her to change her mind.
If Evelyn Lindsay had taken a lover or gotten herself involved in something far more controversial than participating in the women’s suffrage movement, she hadn’t told her sister about it.
Taking a sip of his tea, he fished the list Jocelyn had made of the people in Evelyn’s life who had the initial M out of his pocket, then reached for the list of members of The Viper Club. He was very aware that Jocelyn’s list might not be complete. Evelyn could have known someone with the initial M that Jocelyn had never met. Still, after a half an hour of poring over the lists, he had seven names that appeared on both.
Unfortunately, Blackwood, his older brother Viscount Danbury, and O’Brien’s brother-in-law Morgan Strathmore were three of those names.
No wonder Blackwood had been so upset the other day.
Sebastian would like to rule the three men out just because he knew them, but even if he did, the other four men were just as powerful, just as untouchable. Two of them had titles, and the other two were the sons of titled men.
He’d have a hard time interviewing any of them.
And experience had taught him that even the people you knew best could do unspeakable things. Did anyone ever truly know even those closest to them?
Anger roiled within him, and he finally tossed the papers aside in frustration. Why would a man like one of these, one who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and never wanted for anything, start murdering young women as a pastime?
Sex. Money. Revenge.
Those seemed to be the main reasons people committed murder, and he and O’Brien had tried to examine The Viper killings from all three angles. The Viper hadn’t raped the girls before killing them, so that ruled out sex. There was no indication that either of the two girls from Mercy House had anything worth stealing, and while Evelyn Lindsay might have had some assets, he didn’t think that the killer had taken anything from her either. He’d have to ask Jocelyn about that... if she ever talked to him again.
Which just left revenge.
O’Brien had said something interesting while they’d been in the morgue. He’d said that the women might all have rejected The Viper, and that made sense from the one lead he had, that Evelyn had been going to meet a man whose proposal she’d once rejected. It certainly fit the motive that had claimed The Viper’s other victims.
His gaze fell once again to the list he’d just made.
Had Evelyn rejected one of these men? Or even all of them? By all accounts, she was a spinster, a bluestocking. To most people, that meant no man had ever wanted her. But was it possible that one of these men had actually asked for her hand and she turned him down? Her father had been an earl. She’d likely had a decent dowry, and though nowhere near as lovely as her sister, she hadn’t been hard on the eyes either.
The more that he thought about it, the odder it seemed that absolutely no one had wanted to marry Evelyn. Why had she chosen to be a bluestocking, rather than choosing a husband from among even the most modest of prospects?
He cursed himself for having tried to ask Jocelyn any questions tonight. If he’d only bid her goodbye after comforting her and had come home and figured this out, he could have gone to see her in the morning with the right question to ask, instead of one that had rightly infuriated her.
Was your sister a whore?
Of course, she was angry. If his new theory was true, it could explain the killer’s anger. No man wanted to believe that a woman would rather die a spinster than accept his suit. And he knew all too well how men liked to believe the worst about women who didn’t find them worthy. Much easier to brand a woman a whore than to accept that she simply didn’t want you.