Page 2 of What Cannot Be Said

“Sixteen, according to her young cousins. The wife of one of the keepers has them at her cottage—the children, I mean. Seemed best to get them away from here.”

“Quite right.” Lovejoy felt his throat thicken as he stared down at the winsome young girl. Her dark hair was fashionably cropped to curl around her face, her features even, her nose small and almost childlike, her mouth wide. The shot that killed the girl had been fired so close to her chest that the cloth of her muslin gown was charred.

Lovejoy glanced over to where the two young gentlemen who’d found the bodies now sat in the grass, their forearms resting on bent knees, their heads bowed. The younger lad, Ben, had been sick several times. His older brother was thus far managing to keep down his wine, although he kept puffing up his cheeks and then blowing out his breath, hard.

“You say the brothers just happened upon this?”

“Well, they heard the shots and came to investigate.”

“But saw no one?”

“Only Lady McInnis’s young niece and nephew, who came along right afterward.”

“Those poor children.”

“Aye.”

Drawing a deep breath, Lovejoy forced himself to look again at the bodies before him. The mother and her daughter hadn’t died this way; they’d been posed—carefully, deliberately posed by their killer. Lovejoy had seen such a thing only once before, fourteen years ago.

Oh, Julia; Julia, Julia, he thought. How can it be? How can it possibly be?

His head jerked around at the sound of rapid hoofbeats. A gentleman’s curricle was approaching at a spanking pace, drawn by a splendidly matched pair of fine chestnuts and driven by a rakish-looking man in a lightweight summer duster with shoulder capes and a stylish beaver hat set at a reckless angle. He drew up where the narrow lane began to curve away again and handed the reins to his young groom, or tiger, before hopping down to the road. He said something to the boy, then turned to walk toward them, his gait slightly marred by the leg wound from which he was still recovering.

A tall, lean man in his early thirties with dark hair, fine features, and the strangest feral-looking yellow eyes Lovejoy had ever seen, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, was the only surviving son and heir of the powerful Earl of Hendon. He’d returned to England some four or five years before, after serving as a cavalry officer in the wars. There’d been a time when his lordship had been accused of murder and Lovejoy assigned the task of bringing him to justice. But in the years since, the two men had forged a strong friendship, and as soon as Lovejoy heard the identities of today’s victims, he had sent for Devlin. Murder investigations involving the aristocracy were always delicate. And this murder... Ah, this murder.

“Sir Henry,” said Devlin, walking up to him. Then his gaze fell on the dead mother and girl and he said, “Christ.”

“Did you know Lady McInnis?”

“Not well, although I have met her. She’s a friend of Lady Devlin.”

“Ah. I am sorry.”

Devlin’s brows drew together in a disturbed frown. “They were found like this?”

“They were, yes.” Lovejoy cleared his throat. “You should know that two other women were killed here in the park fourteen years ago—a woman in her early forties and her young daughter, both shot in the chest and their bodies deliberately positioned exactly like this: feet to feet, hands brought together as if in prayer.”

“Good God. Do you know who they were?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lovejoy in a voice that sounded strange even to his own ears. “Julia and Madeline Lovejoy.” He paused, then somehow managed to add, “My wife and seventeen-year-old daughter.”

Chapter 3

Sebastian drew a slow, even breath as he studied the magistrate’s tightly held features. He’d known this man for four years. Over the course of more murder investigations than he liked to think about, the two men had talked for endless hours, sharing some of their deepest thoughts and secrets. Sebastian knew Lovejoy’s wife and daughter had died suddenly; knew that those deaths had altered the path of his life and profoundly impacted his spiritual beliefs. So how could he not have known this?

For a moment, he found himself at a loss for words.

Lovejoy said, “It can’t be a coincidence.”

“No.” Sebastian gazed down at the oddly posed bodies. Their postures reminded him of the stone effigies one often saw atop medieval tombs, and he wondered if the echo was deliberate. “No one was ever arrested for their murders?”

“Oh, yes; someone was arrested—a one-armed ex-soldier named Daniel O’Toole who’d been menacing other people in the area. He was remanded into custody, tried, convicted, and hanged.”

Sebastian glanced over at his friend. “You’re thinking they hanged the wrong man?”

Lovejoy’s small, dark eyes were filled with silent anguish. “What else can one think? The man did die shouting his innocence from the scaffold.”

“Someone could have learned the details of the previous murders and patterned this after them. We’ve seen it before.”

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