NEVER BLOW A KISS

Deleted Prologue

April 1832

Eleanor waited until her sister and her newly minted, boring-as-dust husband were distracted before she slipped away. The ball, like everything the ton did, was as dull as watching paste dry. Who cared about the Season’s fashions? What did it matter who inherited what fortune? Everything the ton thought salacious and gossip-worthy paled in comparison to the shocking truth that a killer was in their midst.

A killer who also happened to be their host.

No one would believe her, of course. She was a girl of sixteen, her voice muted by a sea of men smoking pipes and applauding themselves for jobs rarely well done. Although Eleanor knew she was right about the killer, she needed proof before she revealed her host’s true identity.

She hurried down the corridor, the sounds of the crush receding with each silent footfall. She glanced over both shoulders before she took a deep breath and turned the knob to the marquess’ study. It was unlocked.

Eleanor shook her head. Arrogant man.

Once inside, she paused, her shoulders pressed to the door as she allowed her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Enough moonlight glowed through the diamond-paned windows that she could make out a large wooden desk flanked by file drawers and faced by two stuffed chairs. The study smelled of furniture polish and tobacco: the universal scent of a gentleman’s lair.

Eleanor’s father had headed England’s diplomacy relations for over a decade, and Eleanor knew that very few men were actually gentlemen. Certainly not this one.

Eleanor didn’t know why the newspaper called him the Silk Stalker when he strangled his victims. She thought Silk Strangler would have been more appropriate, but she supposed those tasked with naming such madness feared shocking maidens, as if upper class women weren’t already well aware that the killer’s victims were ladies of the ton.

So far the Silk Stalker had murdered seven women, strangling them with a yellow silk cravat he left tied around their necks. The victims seemingly had nothing in common: they ranged from a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old to a thrice-windowed grandmother. They hailed from all parts of England. Their hair and eye colors varied, and their relationship statuses spanned all degrees of commitment. Their only similarity was their social standing.

Investigators were dumbfounded, but not Eleanor. She’d always been bright. As children, she and her older sister had unraveled, quite without understanding the consequences, their father’s elaborately constructed lies concealing multiple affairs. They had been unruly children, horrifying governesses with their frank questions and spying on their father’s business dealings. Eleanor had been smacked countless times for ditching her needlework for books on astronomy and chemistry, and she’d been devouring mystery novels in secret for years. Eleanor still kept her handy detective notebook stashed away with her childhood doll.

So when Eleanor put it in her auburn head to solve the mystery of the Silk Stalker, she wasn’t terribly surprised when she succeeded.

Eleanor shivered in the cool office air. Had it grown colder? Reaching out with her senses, her steadiness faltered as some instinct bleated danger. She knew she was alone in the room; she’d spied her host caught in the clutches of the Dowager Countess of Tupper, who never let an ear escape until she’d well and truly blistered it.

So why was her skin crawling?

On a shaky breath she crept closer to the desk. In her mystery novels, killers always kept a trophy of some sort from their victims. Wouldn’t it make her life easy if she were to open a drawer and discover a cache of yellow silk cravats?

Eleanor nearly snorted. If her older sister could hear her thoughts she would scold her roundly for such fanciful optimism. In fact, her sister had done just that earlier that the night when she had walked in on Eleanor poring over her murder notebook before the ball. Eleanor was supposed to have been dressing, but she had wanted to review her evidence one last time.

Her sister’s sea-green eyes had fallen on the newspaper clippings and hastily scribbled notes, and her brow had creased with concern. “What are you doing, Ellie?”

“Nothing,” Eleanor had said, quickly shutting the notebook. But her sister’s mind was faster, leaping and sizzling as it made lightning-quick connections.

“That was a clipping from the newspaper about the Silk Stalker’s latest victim.”

“So?” Eleanor had said mulishly. “I find it interesting.”

“It is not interesting. It is a travesty.”

Eleanor had huffed. “You know what I mean. It is interesting how he has managed to murder all these women, and yet no one has a clue who he is.”

Her sister’s expression had turned grave. “Do not tell me you are investigating the murders, Eleanor. I know we played pretend detectives when we were children, but this is not a game. The Silk Stalker, whoever he is, is a monster without compassion. If he were to suspect you were sniffing around—”

Eleanor had practically howled with the absurdity of it. “I am sixteen years of age. How could the murderer possibly know I am saving some silly newspaper clippings?”

Her sister had given her a hard look.

“Maybe I have also asked a few questions here and there.”

“Stop it. Now.”

Although her sister was four years older than Eleanor, they had been more like best friends than sisters growing up. Her sister had rarely pulled senior status, so her order took Eleanor aback.

“Leave it alone, Eleanor. Trust me when I say the Silk Stalker will be caught.”

She had said it with such certainty that for one mad moment Eleanor had wondered if her sister knew more than she was sharing.

“Promise me,” her sister had demanded.

Eleanor had sulked, because that was what her sister would expect, and then she had promised to stop asking questions. And she would keep her word, because there were no more questions to ask. She already knew who he was.

Not that Eleanor would have felt guilty even if she had lied. What did her sister know, anyway? Her sister had once sat with Eleanor under their apple tree, their skirts hitched over their ankles, and promised she would find a way for the two of them to live together as old spinsters. They would even open their own detective agency! They would have to use men’s names of course, but if the assignments were by correspondence, it could be done.

Then without warning, her sister had turned into a grinding bore. One day she had put away her detective notebook, and then it seemed the next she was betrothed to a man with thin, sandy hair and the braying laugh of a donkey. It was a sodding shame. Her sister was frighteningly intelligent. She could have been more than some man’s wife.

Her sister may have broken her promise to Eleanor and abandoned her detective dream, but Eleanor had not. She was going to make a name for herself by revealing the identity of the Silk Stalker, and she would prove that she was more than childbearing hips and red hair.

Eleanor slid open the first desk drawer and it snicked softly on its tracks. Her eyes darted to the closed door and she risked lighting a match to lift over the drawer. She scanned the contents, her disappointment mounting as she catalogued each mundane item: tin of snuff, jar of ink, scraps of paper, a folded linen cravat, tobacco, and a few seashells. She tried three more drawers, with similar results, until she reached the bottom left-hand drawer. It was locked.

Excitement thrummed through her veins, crowding out her earlier anxiety even as the match burned out. In her mystery novels it was always the locked drawer that held the damning evidence. Fortunately she excelled at finding keys. Hadn’t she discovered the key to the wine cellar at the age of twelve?

Relying on the moonlight, Eleanor ran her gloved fingers over the top of the mantle, under the edge of the desk, and around the rims of the oil paintings on the walls. At last she stood back and studied the shelves of books. A smile curved her lips. Two copies of Nicholas Nickleby.

She pulled out both books by their spines. The first copy was exactly as it appeared. The second had been hollowed out, and hidden inside the scooped-out pages was an ornate desk key.

Grinning widely, Eleanor hurried to the drawer. She had just slid the key into the lock when an emotionless voice said, “If you open that drawer, I will have to kill you.”

Eleanor gasped and whipped straight, frantically probing the corners of the room with her eyes. At last she spotted him by the French windows, which he’d opened from the small eave outside. He was leaning bonelessly against the wall, arms crossed, all liquid grace and ineffable charm.

But Eleanor knew what monster lurked beneath the beauty, and her heart gave a vicious thump of fright.

“I am sorry,” she said, her voice pitched higher than usual. She swallowed twice, forcing her tone an octave lower. “It was so hot in the ballroom. I only needed a place to take some air.”

It was the first excuse that came to mind, and even she knew it was pathetic.

He smiled. His eyeteeth appeared canine in the weak light. “I know who you are, Miss Eleanor. You never dance at balls and you always have your nose in a book.”

“That is me, naught but a silly girl.” She began backing in a slow circle to the study door.

He clucked his tongue. “I am surprised, truly. I thought it was your sister I had to worry about.”

She paused in astonishment. “My sister? Why do you say that? She does not know anything about this.”

He pushed off the wall, and although he was shorter than many of his peers, an inky air of danger surrounded him. He’d been born with power, and the money he’d amassed had only secured him more of it.

“You really do not know?” he asked, his black and silvered brows arching.

Chills slipped down Eleanor’s back.

“How very interesting. It seems your sister may have more secrets than you.”

Doubtful, Eleanor thought, but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was escaping this mad man. She resumed her slow retreat to the door.

“Neither of us has secrets,” she said. Keep him talking. Keep him distracted. “We are normal, everyday girls. Boring. Silly. Impulsive. Prone to snooping.” She wished she’d stashed her father’s small pistol in her reticule.

The man reached inside his coat. Eleanor saw stars when he pulled out a long stretch of yellow silk, running it lovingly through his fingers.

“Impulsive, yes. But not so silly.”

He leapt forward. Eleanor lost all sense of stealth and turned her back to him, scrabbling for the doorknob. It was locked.

She screamed, long and loud. Her sister was in the ballroom. If she could hear her, she would come.

The silk swished over Eleanor’s head and kissed her throat before pulling taut. The marquess bent forward, his breath scalding her ear, and sang a child’s lullaby.