Sweet Revenge Read online

  “Robert,” she whispered. “‘Robbie’ for ‘Robert’?”

  Peacock’s gun hand shook. With rage? Victoria sidestepped, closer to Torbel. Apparently she’d struck a nerve.

  “You all missed it,” he said in a savage growl. “Every blasted one of you. Old Goggy never wanted to see and so blinded himself to the truth. One only had to look at the eyes to know. Duffy’s eyes were pale green. Sophie’s were blue green. Most unlikely that a brown-eyed child would spring from that pairing.”

  Oliver Fox’s eyes were blue, Victoria recalled, sliding her hands around Torbel’s left wrist. Only Peacock’s eyes were brown. And the birthmark that Peacock possessed—hadn’t Robbie had a scar in that same place? A scar where something had been removed. Perhaps not a mole, as Zoe had believed, but a telltale mark of parentage. A birthmark to match his father’s.

  Peacock closed the door after them with a click that echoed ominously through the dilapidated hotel. Fog like a netherworld vapor swirled about the windows at the far end of the corridor. Peacock used Clover’s lantern and stayed just out of range behind them.

  “Last room on the left, Torbel,” he ordered.

  His voice, hard as stone, had a passionate quaver in it. So did Victoria’s heart. She shivered as Torbel curled his warm fingers around her cold hand.

  Images, like unstrung puppets, bobbed in her frightened mind. Sophie had described her lover as resembling a “powdery ghost.” Calamine lotion covering a rash that came, not from poison ivy—as Augustus had believed—but from contact with gold. Peacock was allergic to gold.

  “In there,” he barked at them. “No tricks. And you can forget about your lackey Tristan. He’s lying in a pool of his own blood in the lobby. Thus my precipitous departure earlier.”

  Victoria felt physically sick. Torbel looked ready to pounce. His eyes flashed in the amber light cast by the lantern. She felt his muscles tense, and tightened her own grip to hold him back.

  “It’s what he wants,” she whispered.

  “Did you kill Boots, too?” Torbel demanded, ignoring her.

  “Yes.”

  If there’d been a veneer of civility before, it was dissipating now. Peacock’s mouth compressed to a thin white line beneath his immaculate mustache.

  “In the explosion?”

  “He took my place—in uniform. He was dead before the bomb went off.”

  “The gold ring!” Victoria exclaimed, unthinking.

  She would have clamped her mouth shut had Peacock not barked “What ring?”

  “My da read—”

  “Nothing,” Torbel interrupted. “There was a gold ring found at the scene of your murder, along with a tie clip or cuff links. None of us twigged at the time, but with your allergy you wouldn’t have been wearing gold. We should have realized that.”

  “An oversight on my part.” Peacock walked to the window. “I was abnormally busy just then, plotting not only your deaths and Street’s, but my own unfortunate demise, as well.” His teeth gleamed with unexpected wolfishness. “One has to make provision for a flaw or two in any plan. I must say I didn’t think you’d be so bold as to break into old Goggy’s home, otherwise I would never have used Sophie’s name as a ruse on the telephone.”

  The floor creaked loudly as he forced them deeper into the cobwebbed room. The remnants of a bed, heaped with boxes and other refuse, stood directly under the window. Even if Peacock could be distracted, they’d never make it to the outer ledge—assuming there even was one.

  “Why nursery rhymes?” Torbel asked. Victoria noticed that he’d eased himself in front of her. A rush of love and renewed terror poured through her.

  Peacock set the lantern on what might once have been a dresser. “Because Robbie loved them. He had a scribbler as a child. I visited old Goggy’s home on occasion while Robbie was growing up. As a teenager, he had no use for childish rhymes. I doubt if he missed the book.”

  Clearing her throat, Victoria ventured an apprehensive “You never told him you were his father?”

  The quaver returned. “I had hoped his mother would do so in time. I was shocked and devastated when she died in Ireland. I didn’t even realize she’d gone there until I heard from one of her old college friends that she was dead. I…” His voice broke.

  As if galvanized by an emotion too strong for his mind to accept, he let out an agonized cry, then snapped the sagging gun upward. His dark eyes gleamed with fury and no small amount of insanity.

  “It was your fault, Torbel,” he said, his voice tight with rage. He took an unsteady step toward them. “Robbie shouldn’t have died that night on the docks. He was going to give up a career in law to join your criminal band. I—I couldn’t let that happen. I followed him to the docks. I knew I had to do something.”

  Her eyes focused on his changing face, Victoria whispered, “What’s he saying?”

  “What are you saying, Peacock?” Torbel demanded.

  The man halted, swaying slightly. Perhaps vivid memories made a person dizzy. Or maybe madness did that. Victoria’s fingers crawled up Torbel’s forearm and dug in.

  “I had to stop him,” Peacock said, blinking as if at a bright light. “He would have ruined his life. I thought, I’ll get rid of the source of the problem. That’s what you do, you know. You destroy a creeping cancer at its source. I called the storehouse on a false pretense and was told that you would be on the docks that night. I went there myself with a knife. Difficult to trace, knives. Then I hid, and waited for you. When I saw you, I burst from my hiding place and plunged the knife deep into your spine.”

  “Oh, God.” Victoria pressed her forehead into Torbel’s arm.

  The chortling laughter of a broken mind bubbled from Peacock’s throat. “I know what you’re thinking, Victoria. You think that I stabbed my own son, but I assure you I did not. I stabbed Torbel. Same brown curls and wiry build from the back. Same height, same weight. It was Torbel.” Beads of perspiration gleamed on his forehead and cheeks. “But when I turned the body over, I saw Robbie’s face. I knew then that it was true what the locals said about Torbel’s magic. He used it that night to trade places with Robbie, just long enough for my son to die in his place.”

  Victoria was aghast. “You killed Robbie?”

  “No!” Peacock’s face contorted. “Torbel did it. And Street backed him up. And you and Hobday and that slimy assistant of his aided them.” He came toward them, his features alight, his voice a parody of madness. “It was nothing to do with me at all. You people are the culprits. You must pay the price for your crimes.”

  The gun rose. The floor let out a high-pitched scream and gave a mighty crack.

  Seizing his chance, Torbel went for him. But Peacock’s finger was already on the trigger. He squeezed off a single shot even as he snared Victoria’s arm and yanked her around.

  Through a haze of instinctive reaction and splintered floorboards, she felt his knife press into her. Scratching at his face, she twisted free and endeavored to locate Torbel.

  She tripped over something on the floor and looked swiftly down. “Torbel!” she screamed, and would have gone to her knees had the long fingers of Peacock’s hand not suddenly clamped themselves onto her throat.

  He spun her around until her back was plastered to his front. The hand on her throat remained tight despite her clawing fingers. A moment later, the tip of his knife jabbed hard into her breastbone.

  “One more sound,” Peacock snarled, “and what breath I don’t choke out of you, I’ll release from your lungs with my knife. Your champion’s dead, Victoria. And once we reach the place where my son was taken from me, you’ll be joining him.”

  “TORBEL!”

  Dazed and disoriented, he felt someone shaking him.

  “Come on, wake up. He’s taken Victoria down to the water.”

  Victoria! Torbel’s eyes snapped open. Jaw set, he levered himself upright. His left shoulder felt on fire. His brow furrowed. What the hell—was it Zoe hauling him to his knees?


  He couldn’t see her clearly, but her clothes were black and her flaming red hair was messily confined in a ponytail.

  Grunting, he rolled over. “It’s Peacock,” he said thickly. “He’ll kill her.”

  With Zoe’s help, he climbed unsteadily to his feet. Hair and blood mingled on his forehead. He drew sticky fingers away, frowning. “Which way?”

  “Toward Myrtle’s, but probably not as far as that. There’s a good patch of deserted docks between here and there.”

  “He’ll take her to where Robbie was killed,” Torbel concluded grimly. He staggered as he headed for the door. “Bloody hell,” he swore, unable now to move his shoulder. “Did he shoot me with an elephant gun?”

  “No, a .45.” Zoe nodded toward the bed. “He must have dropped it. He had Victoria at knife point when I saw him. And if you’re wondering what I’m doing here, I wormed the information out of Rate’s assistant. I, er…” She swallowed. “I also saw Tristan.”

  “I know.” Fighting a spate of dizziness, Torbel groped his way into the corridor. He could not, would not, collapse.

  A thump penetrated the fog in his brain. Zoe’s head swiveled. “What was that?”

  “Peacock’s prisoners. Two or three of them.” He still wasn’t sure of the count, but at the moment he didn’t care. “Check them out, Zoe,” he told her. “Ratz is hurt. I don’t know how badly. See to him, then send Chivers for the police.”

  “Chivers!” She’d guided him to the top of the staircase. Now she stared at him in disbelief. “What was old Goggy plotting in that warped little mind of his?”

  “Same as Peacock,” Torbel said bleakly. He brought the stairs into focus and started down. “Old Goggy’s reasons are more complicated, Zoe, but dead’s dead any way you look at it, and—” he steeled himself to utter the words “—Peacock’s got the woman I love.”

  “JUST A FEW MORE STEPS,” Peacock promised in a silky tone.

  He was angry again. He’d been alternating between anger and anguish for the ten interminable minutes it had taken to drag her out of the Pierpont and along this stretch of deserted, fog-shrouded dock. It was so isolated that Victoria could barely hear the traffic on West Ferry and Manchester roads.

  Her mind worked feverishly. He might not have killed Torbel. In his frenzied state, he hadn’t checked, and if anybody knew how to dodge a bullet, it was Torbel.

  “Stop dragging your feet,” Peacock snapped as she stumbled over a large split in the pavement. “It won’t do you a bit of good.”

  Still clawing at his hand—she knew she’d drawn blood—Victoria made one last attempt at reason. “This makes no sense, Sergeant. Killing me won’t bring Robbie back. And…” she choked as his grip on her throat tightened. “I can’t believe Sophie would have wanted this.” His hold slackened fractionally, and she gasped for air. “I read her diary. She disliked her father’s tyrannical attitude, but otherwise she didn’t have a vindictive bone in her body.”

  “That,” he said, his mouth next to her ear, “was her problem.”

  She couldn’t stave off the shiver of revulsion that swept over her. How could Sophie have loved this monster?

  “Here we are,” he announced, yanking her around in an unceremonious arc. “The place where he died. My only son, whose murderer you helped to escape justice.”

  “He’ll still be dead when we’re gone,” Victoria cried. “What will you have gained?”

  His narrow features, what she could glimpse of them, grew mournful. “Satisfaction,” he replied, then pulled her tightly back against him and jerked her sideways. Victoria felt his head tip backward. “Soon, Sophie,” he promised, “the three of us will be together. And for once in his life, old Goggy will be grateful to someone else.”

  Victoria’s skin prickled. Perspiration slid along her spine. Would he stab her in the back? It seemed likely. But to do that, he would need to create an air pocket between them.

  She waited only until he loosened his grip, then, using two parts of her body at once, she brought her heel back hard into his shin and jammed her right elbow into his stomach.

  He yelped but didn’t release her completely. His fingers managed to catch her wrist in a bloodless grip. Then he stopped. His features froze. A pained whisper emerged from his throat. “Bugger that…” he croaked.

  To Victoria’s shock, he staggered into her arm, unbalancing her. A funny gurgling noise accompanied his drunken movements. The knife skimmed across Victoria’s rib cage, slicing her jacket and tank top. For a dreadful, unexpected moment, his hand shot back up to her neck and squeezed, cutting off her breath. Then suddenly it was gone and she was free, panting as she dropped to her knees and fought to refill her lungs.

  Before she could scramble away, a pair of hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her sideways. In her peripheral vision, she saw Peacock’s shocked face and the military knife hovering uncertainly next to his head. His mouth gaped open; his brown eyes bulged; the knife clattered to the ground.

  The last sound he made was a raspy “Robbie…” before he pitched backward onto the badly cracked pavement.

  Victoria recognized Torbel’s touch instantly. On his knees behind her, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her firmly back against him.

  Feelings of love and relief swamped her, the strongest sensations she’d ever known. They mingled with pity and a residual trace of fear as she beheld Peacock’s startled, staring face.

  It wasn’t until she glanced lower and spied the knife protruding from his chest that she realized what Torbel had done. “Thank you,” she said, and turning, pressed her cheek against his.

  His mouth moved against her hair. “Anytime.”

  They remained that way for several minutes, unspeaking, taking and receiving what comfort they could under the circumstances.

  “I didn’t know you carried a knife,” she said finally, wincing as he stood and she spied the blood on his forehead and shoulder.

  He gave her a weak smile. “I keep it as a memento of worse times.” His fingers traced the line of his scar. “It belongs to Augustus Hollyburn.”

  Shocked, Victoria breathed, “He did that to you?”

  “I told you, he wasn’t as frail ten years ago.”

  She touched the scar, then his injured forehead. “Why, Torbel? What happened between you that made him hate you so much.”

  Bending, Torbel closed Peacock’s lifeless eyes. Crouched there, he brought his gaze back up to hers and said calmly, “Blodwyn.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Torbel wasn’t sure why he’d brought her here. Possibly because he really did love her, and he hadn’t realized how deeply until he thought he might lose her to a homicidal maniac. Now that the nightmare was over, it was time to reveal to her the single biggest secret in his life.

  Even Keiran didn’t know this one. His mother had, of course, and so, he reflected cynically, had old Goggy—for more than thirty-seven years.

  The old judge, clad in a burgundy dressing gown, shuffled into the parlor of his home to glare at them, or more specifically, at him. Victoria was incidental in this. Torbel was now and had for years been the focal point of his hatred.

  “What do you want?” the old man demanded without preface. “Get out!” he snapped at a heavyset man in his midfifties, the new butler, Torbel presumed. It didn’t matter. Victoria had used her connections on Bouverie Street to find Chivers a new and far healthier position.

  “Would you believe me if I told you we wanted to see how you were doing?” Torbel retorted with exaggerated courtesy.

  Scowling, Augustus massaged his chest. “No.”

  “It’s true,” Victoria put in.

  “Bull,” said Clover from the door. She wore a drabber version of her grandfather’s bathrobe. “You came to gloat Admit it. Your testimony got me booted off the force. And what was all that rubbish about my having a split personality? Me and Zoe, one? You’re crazier than Peacock, the pair of you.”

  “And you’re lucky
that booted off the force is all you got,” Victoria countered. “You’d have been charged with attempted murder if it weren’t for your grandfather’s clout and the absolute guarantee of psychiatric help.”

  “You little—” Clover began.

  “Shut up,” Augustus barked. His gaze shifted. “What is it now, Smythe?”

  “Another visitor, sir.”

  “Send him away.”

  “Her,” Zoe said, strolling through the door. She regarded Victoria. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Get out,” Augustus and Clover ordered as one.

  “Not until I’m clear on a few important points.” Arms folded, she eyed her grandfather shrewdly. “Just how much of Peacock’s plan were you aware of?”

  “None of your business.”

  “It came out at the inquest,” Torbel told her. He was grateful for Victoria’s hand gently stroking his leg. “Your grandfather received the same notes we did. I don’t think he knew it was Peacock before the last night.”

  “Did he know that Peacock was Robbie’s father?”

  Torbel shrugged. “I doubt it.”

  “He was not Robbie’s father,” the old man choked. “Peacock was off his stick. He didn’t know up from down in the end.”

  “The police found chimney sweep clothing inside a navy trunk belonging to Robert Peacock in a cellar room near the river,” Victoria reminded him. “There was also a beggar’s outfit—and a red hat,” she added with a shudder. “Peacock killed Boots, planned attacks on Torbel and me, poisoned Lenny Street and didn’t get caught doing any of it until the end. He knew up from down, Judge Hollyburn. He was mad—who wouldn’t be after killing their own child?—but very, very smart.”

  The old man’s lips trembled. “None of that makes him Robbie’s father.”

  Zoe pulled Sophie’s diary out of her pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table. “Read this, then,” she challenged. “The truth fairly leaps out at you.”

  “Her ‘even foxier’ lover wasn’t Oliver Fox,” Victoria said. “Her lover was foxier than Fox.”

  “You have no proof,” Augustus rasped, desperate to maintain the illusion. “Robbie was not the spawn of a madman. He was Duffy’s child, a Hollyburn through and through.”