Heartless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 3): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series Read online

  Heartless

  The Scarlet Suffragette Book Three

  Nicola Claire

  Copyright © 2018, Nicola Claire

  All Rights Reserved

  © Cover Art by Cora Graphics

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-473-45706-8

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  About the Author

  Free Download

  Also By Nicola Claire

  1. Hell Is Andrew Kelly’s Struggle With His Murderess Wife

  2. Of Course, I’ll Help You

  3. For Now, I Was On My Own

  4. What Has Happened?

  5. Told You It’d Be Fun

  6. Did She Succeed, Sir?

  7. Right You Are, Miss

  8. I Would Not Countenance Another Failure

  9. We Are Done For The Evening

  10. You Should Know This

  11. We Are In Trouble

  12. I Could Not Do It

  13. I Felt A Stranger In My Own Home

  14. No, This Day Was Not About To Get Any Better, But Whisky Might Help

  15. Why Didn’t You Say?

  16. How Very True

  17. I Held Him Back

  18. For A Second, I Just Stood There

  19. How Disappointed I Was In Myself

  20. Where Was Eliza May Kelly?

  21. He Knew My Heart

  22. I Wondered What Papa Would Say

  23. Find Him!

  24. She Did Not Wave Farewell

  25. You Are Making A Mistake

  26. That Was My Wife

  27. She Raises The Axe Above Our Heads

  28. I Couldn’t Release Anna

  29. I’m Coming With You

  30. Everything Is A Game, Darling

  31. I Thought You’d Never Ask

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  Nicola Claire lives in beautiful Taupo, New Zealand with her husband and two young boys.

  She's tried her hand at being a paramedic, bank teller and medical sales representative, (not all necessarily in that order), but her love of writing keeps calling her back.

  She has a passion for all things suspenseful, spiced up with a good dollop of romance, as long as they include strong characters - alpha males and capable females - and worlds which although make-believe are really quite believable in the end.

  There's nothing better than getting caught up in a compelling, intriguing and romantic book.

  When she's not writing or reading, she's out on her family boat at Lake Taupo, teaching her young boys to fish, showing them the beauty that surrounds them in nature and catching some delicious trout for dinner.

  Creating rich worlds with dynamic characters and unexpected twists that shock and awe has been pure bliss for this author. And just as well, because there's a lot more story yet to tell...

  For more information:

  www.nicolaclairebooks.com

  [email protected]

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  For:

  My father.

  The bookworm;

  It isn’t a Clive Cussler,

  but it is a mystery.

  Rest in peace, Poppa.

  Hell Is Andrew Kelly’s Struggle With His Murderess Wife

  Anna

  Auckland, New Zealand

  January 1893

  The cadaver hadn’t been there when I’d closed my surgery late last night. I stared mutely at the supine form as it rested upon my dissecting table. My tools were laid out to the side; awaiting my attention. The forceps, the steel handled cartilage knife, the enterotome, the brain knife, the reamer; they were all there, laid out in the precise manner in which I had been taught to call on them by my father.

  I took a steadying breath and stepped into the room.

  Mrs Hardwick had laid a fire in the grate, however the wood was naught but smouldering embers. I crossed the wooden floorboards to the body, my shoes clipping, the sound echoing inside the quiet room, and stared down at the naked form, confused.

  If Hardwick had the body brought into the surgery, she would have tended the fire. My housekeeper was nothing if not efficient in her duties.

  I shook my head and peered at the deceased on the slab. Male, European, mid-forties. He had a three-inch laceration to his right cheek, and two puncture wounds an inch apart to his carotid artery. But from the lack of blood at the site, the latter was surprisingly not what had killed him.

  My eyes swept across the gentleman’
s face and down his torso to come to rest on his chest.

  His heart was missing.

  I leaned back and arched my brow.

  “Curious,” I murmured.

  There did not appear to be a note with the delivery. Nor instructions on what the next of kin required. And I hardly believed this to be an offering from the Auckland Police Force. The mystery was, despite my better judgement, garnering my absolute attention.

  I gave the body a cursory glance and then reached for the Coxeter’s forceps and dissecting hook. With practised hands, I pulled the loose flap of skin back above the cadaver’s intercostal space and peered into the hole left by the absent organ. The man’s abdomen and groin seemed to be intact. The only evidence of removal was where the heart should have been.

  I slowly placed the tools back on their tray and thought.

  The slash to the face was to shock him. The punctures to the carotid were to incapacitate him.

  The precise cut to his chest and subsequent cracking of his ribs to allow access to his heart was done perimortem. He may well have not been conscious when his heart had been removed, but he’d been alive.

  I grimaced and walked to my sink, washing my hands even though they had not touched the body. I scrubbed under my fingernails with a determination that bordered on the ridiculous and then forced myself to withdraw from my efforts; sucking in a much-needed breath of air.

  Life had been far too dull of late; I should have known better.

  For two months I’d been expecting the axe to drop; the guillotine to fall on my neck. But two months back in Auckland had not produced the expected results of our Old World endeavours. Eliza May Kelly was meant to have beaten us here and yet upon landing at Queen Street Wharf, we’d discovered little had changed in our Antipodean haven.

  I had, however, changed significantly. And so had my travel companions.

  Inspector Kelly had lingered on the wharf as we’d awaited a hansom, his stoic bearing and striking façade almost my undoing. His deep blue eyes had said everything he’d been unable to say in the presence of Sergeant Blackmore.

  For now, it was best if those things remained unsaid.

  But I’d heard them despite his lips not having moved at all.

  Andrew would forsake his marriage vows for me. He would do so in an instant. Something that would change the man I loved beyond all reckoning.

  I had long ago accepted that ours was to be an unfulfilled affair of the heart.

  He’d visited me once since then; in what could be construed as an official capacity, despite the longing he’d failed to hide in his gaze. His visit had been to convey a message.

  His wife had not been spotted on our shores and nor had his exhaustive investigation since returning to Auckland proved otherwise.

  Eliza May was a ghost that haunted us, but she was very, very real. I had letters that proved as much.

  So did Andrew.

  I’d seen him reading one on the promenade of the RMS Oceanic. I’d thought perhaps it was a different one from the missive that had brought him to London in the first place. It hadn’t appeared as crushed for starters; the creases precise as if he’d read it once or twice, but refused to give it further attention.

  My rudimentary investigative skills had concluded that it was a new missive. The scent of jasmine that had wafted on the salty air had told the rest of the horrid story.

  Eliza May was not finished with her estranged husband.

  And yet, the execution’s axe had not fallen.

  I turned around and stared at the heartless body on my dissecting table.

  It was not a peace offering from Superintendent Chalmers. Drummond was very much still the Chief Surgeon for the Auckland Police Force; not that I’d seen the contemptible man since my return. It could well have been the kin of one of my patient’s, but I did not recognise the face.

  Crossing to the door of my surgery, I peered out into the hallway of the house. All was silent. Hardwick would be in the kitchen, and I’d left Mina in the garden; watching butterflies and listening to the native birds sing. It seemed to be the only place my cousin found any peace and quiet.

  She certainly did not find it in her sleep.

  I dusted my hands on my skirt and headed toward the rear of the building, only to stop mid-stride when a sharp rap sounded out on the front door. I turned slowly and stared at the familiar shape of a large form through the dimpled glass; my eyes flicked to the surgery and the door I’d left open.

  I did not like coincidences.

  Mrs Hardwick rushed out of the kitchens, flour dusting her apron and floating in the still air as she tried to untie the garment before greeting our visitor.

  “I’ll see to it,” I offered.

  “’Tis not proper for the lady of the house to open the door, miss,” the housekeeper remonstrated.

  “I believe the visitor is for me, Hardwick.”

  “Not the point, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Please,” I said, stifling a sigh, “see to Mina.” I waited for the stubborn old woman to bob a curtsey and follow my wishes. She eventually disappeared down the hall.

  I turned my attention to graver things. The door to the surgery closed with a soft snick, and I took a moment to gather myself as I stared at my gloveless fingers on the door handle. A closed door would not stop the police should they wish to see inside, but something had me believing it would be for the best if I didn’t tempt my visitor from the front stoop.

  Checking my visage in the looking-glass beside the hat stand, I straightened my back and lifted my chin, and then crossed to the front door. I swung it open and looked up into the startling blue eyes of Chief Inspector Andrew Kelly; Auckland’s finest.

  And my unattainable paramour.

  “Dr Cassidy,” he said in greeting.

  Something shifted behind him. I peered around his broad form and took in the Black Maria and uniformed police officers. Sergeant Blackmore was missing from the tableau, but that did not mean he was missing entirely.

  “Inspector Kelly,” I said, straightening up and arching my brow at the man. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

  He winced slightly at the reminder that he had not visited in some weeks and then gripped his cane tightly, tapping it on the floor between his booted feet.

  “I am here on official business, Doctor,” he said.

  My heart sank and not because I had hoped otherwise. The timing was too precise a thing.

  “I see,” I said. “And what business have you at my home?”

  He stared at me for a long moment, and I could have sworn there was something of regret in the look, but it vanished far too quickly to be certain.

  “May I come in?” he enquired politely.

  I glanced past him to the bobbies and the buggy with its distinctive black bars on the window. For a moment, I couldn’t quite reconcile the scene. The man who stood before me was my Andrew Kelly, of that I had no doubt. But the fact he’d brought a police carriage and two uniformed officers along with him for this visit made little sense to me.

  I looked up at him; let him see the question I hadn’t yet voiced in my eyes. And waited for his answer most desperately.

  He sucked in a breath of air and said, voice low so it wouldn’t carry, “This would be better received in the privacy of your front room.”

  In past times he would have used my name. He would have couched his words, softening them with a deep purr as ‘Anna’ rolled off his lips. Andrew always did sound like he was savouring my name as he said it. But today was apparently not one of those times.

  “Very well,” I said, just as Hardwick appeared at the end of the hallway. My eyes met my housekeeper’s, and I knew in an instant what it was she wanted to convey. She’d worn that look a time or two by now for me to recognise it.

  Sergeant Blackmore was in the garden with Mina again.

  I held the door open for Andrew and as he passed, his limp noticeable but perhaps only to me, I said, “Your m
an is covering the back door, I see. Are you afeared I should make a hasty escape out past the mews, Inspector?”

  The front door shut behind him, leaving his bobbies out in the breeze. Andrew sighed and turned to face me.

  “This was not my idea, but I am under orders,” he said, bluntly.

  “What orders?”

  “There has been a murder.”

  ’Twas definitely not a surprise, but I endeavoured to act as if it were. An arching of my brow was all I could manage, however.

  “Evidence found at the scene of the crime is quite…disturbing.”

  Ah, I thought. I am to be exposed.

  I forced myself not to glance at the door to my surgery and instead headed toward the front parlour.

  “Tea, Hardwick, if you please,” I said to the housekeeper. “And that delightful Queen cake you baked yesterday. I believe we shall need fortification.”