Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Office of the Order
Hart Street, Covent Garden
Three days later
Olivia sat on the plush damask sofa in the Order’s drawing room, observing Gabriel as he explained what they’d discovered in the valise.
“The items hold nothing of interest, save for the metal token engraved with a swallow, and the phrase concealed beneath the painted miniature: Beware the Ides of March.”
While Mr Daventry listened like a man equally intrigued by puzzles, she studied her husband’s mouth. Memories filled her mind, the heat, the intimacy, the skill in those tempting lips, but now they moved with careful precision, revealing nothing of the passion she remembered.
“And you think this quote relates to betrayal and your father’s secretive dealings, Lady Rothley?”
Mr Daventry cleared his throat and repeated the question while she sat staring at Gabriel like a bedlamite. Her husband was right. Awakened desire was like an ember that refused to die. The need to stoke the fire had become a quiet obsession.
“Lady Rothley?”
She started. “Forgive me. I’m not accustomed to hearing my new name. Yes, my father was trying to warn me about something.”
“Or someone,” the master of the Order added.
She thought of Justin Lovelace. Where had he been for the last ten years, and why try to kill a woman for a worthless trinket? Assuming the man in the watch-house was Gabriel’s long-lost friend.
Mr Daventry must have read her mind. “I sent Gentry to examine the body found in the cottage. As a doctor, he understands how rigor mortis affects muscles and tissue. I asked that he compare the facial structure to the miniature owned by the countess.”
Gabriel sat forward. “He went without me?”
“Yes. In a professional capacity. Gentry was also Justin’s friend, and I didn’t want the moment clouded by sentiment.”
Gabriel’s laugh rang with derision. “I don’t have a sentimental bone in me.”
She wondered if he knew that was a lie. Was the second chair he’d placed in his private library merely practical? What of the space he’d cleared for her small collection of books?
“I’m glad to hear it,” Mr Daventry said, though his tone held no amusement. “Because resurrectionists stole the body.”
Gabriel shot to his feet. “Stole it? When?”
“The night you visited the watch-house.” Daventry drew a letter from his leather portfolio.
“Barker admits the watch was lax. He said shots were fired as you left. The man must have returned to steal the body, though there are more holes in his statement than a cook’s sieve.
Barker spent the last two days searching for the culprit, hoping to have the corpse returned before the coroner discovered it missing. ”
While Gabriel cursed the watchman’s incompetence, she felt a flood of conflicting emotions. Relief that the devil had met his due. Pity for the countess, who would have no closure. And sadness for Gabriel, who might never know peace.
“That’s not all,” Mr Daventry said, his tone grave.
“Let me guess.” Gabriel returned to his seat, his irritation barely contained. “Your agent failed to find the original inquest report when he visited Cambridge.”
“Apparently, it was lost some years ago.”
A tense silence settled, along with the sense they were merely pawns in a game without rules.
“There’s more.” Mr Daventry met her gaze, and the knot in her stomach tightened. “Someone desecrated your father’s grave. They left evidence to suggest they’re from Whitechapel. And we’re supposed to believe thieves journeyed sixty miles to disturb one plot.”
A pang gripped her chest, sharp, disbelieving. Before she knew it, she reached across the sofa for Gabriel’s hand. He took it without hesitation, their first touch since he’d torn his mouth from hers and broken lust’s spell.
Her fingers clung to his. The room seemed to shrink, the air too thin.
She swallowed to loosen her throat. “They took him?”
“They took whoever was buried there and conveniently left a scrap of cloth with an undertaker’s stamp. We can’t be sure it was your father, just as we can’t be sure what’s been staged for our benefit.”
Gabriel exhaled slowly. “Then we focus on what we do know, on what we can prove, in the hope of understanding what the blazes is going on here.”
Mr Daventry agreed. “Can you recite the poem you mentioned during the drive to Bow Street? The one that led you to World’s End and the mausoleum.”
“I can do better than that.” She released Gabriel’s hand, yet the connection still simmered, the warmth of his touch refusing to fade. Reaching into her reticule, she withdrew a small scroll. “I wrote it out yesterday and made a copy. We spent the evening dissecting every line.”
And sipping wine. Enjoying conversation. But no touches. No kissing. No teasing glances that might be misconstrued.
As Mr Daventry studied the verse, she wondered which lines captured his interest, and what he might see that they had missed.
“And you joined the ladies at The Burnished Jade because of the words in this poem?” he clarified.
“Yes, and because I longed for company of an evening. I feel as if I’ve been alone most of my life.” Those nights at the countess’s club had been among her happiest. It was where she’d first seen Gabriel, aloof and unreadable, yet under his gaze she’d never felt so alive.
“You had a maid,” Gabriel said.
“Not when I first came to London.” She had been more than capable of dressing herself and stoking the fire. “But a man followed me home when I lived in Clerkenwell. He spent an hour skulking in the doorway across the street.”
After that, she’d hired a maid for protection, not propriety.
Mr Daventry glanced up from the poem. “That was before the burglary, when the intruder stole your mother’s jewellery box?”
“Yes, but the box didn’t belong to my mother. I bought it for five shillings at the pawnbroker’s, along with the paste brooch, comb and earrings, a distraction for a would-be thief. The man who attacked me at the mausoleum was the same one who broke into my home and stole the box.”
“The same dead man found in the cottage,” Gabriel stated.
Mr Daventry took up his notebook and pencil and copied several lines of the poem. “Where did you hire the maid?”
“The Servants’ Registry in Bishopsgate.”
“Near The Burnished Jade?”
“Yes.” When Mr Daventry glanced at the poem again, she knew what he was thinking. “You believe my attacker knew I would visit The Jade?”
It was Gabriel who answered. “London is too vast for it to be a coincidence. The person expected you to visit the countess. Probably because Justin Lovelace was involved.”
There were so many probablys, how were they ever to learn the truth? “The clues must be in the poem. That’s what led me here. And something in the valise holds the answers we need.”
“Or something in the mausoleum,” Mr Daventry said. “The key was meant to lead you to the right place.” He went on to recite a few lines of verse to prove his point.
This crypt, built to entomb the dead,
Is now a prison for a living thought.
A secret buried with a future dread,
“It’s poor prose,” she said, “but the message is clear.”
“I shall have an agent investigate those who are buried there.”
She sensed Gabriel’s frustration before he spoke. “We’ll not sit idle. I suggest we question Mrs Hodge. She discovered the body and may have witnessed something important.”
Mr Daventry consulted his notes. “She claims she worked for Sir Randall Ferguson. You should verify her account.”
“I planned to call on him this afternoon.”
Mr Daventry asked her to explain again what she’d witnessed while living at home with her father.
“So your mother died in the fire, but her body was never recovered,” he said, making a brief notation. Then he stole the air from her lungs with a final question. “Might she have left, or been taken by this fraternity?”
Olivia sat with her thoughts, recalling the day with morbid clarity.
If she’d known it was the last time she’d see her mother, she would have stayed longer.
Said all the things that mattered. “My father called my absence a fortunate twist of fate.” The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow.
But lately, she’d begun to wonder. “What if it wasn’t luck? What if it happened by design?”
“You were sent away,” Mr Daventry stated, sounding certain.
“To run an errand that should have taken an hour.”
“But there was an unexpected delay.”
“Yes. When I took the basket to Mrs Jenkins in the next village, two of her children were ill. I fetched the doctor and stayed to cut linens and bring clean water.”
“Your father was landed gentry.” Mr Daventry, it seemed, had wasted no time gathering evidence. “Your childhood home in Lewes came with fifty acres, yet no servants died in the fire.”
A small mercy no one questioned.
“He rented the land to local farmers, and we kept a small staff of three at my father’s insistence. It was their half-day.”
“Like your husband, perhaps he knew servants could be bought.”
Gabriel shifted. “It’s why I don’t keep a butler. I’ve yet to meet one I can trust.”
“You’ve yet to meet anyone you can trust,” Mr Daventry quipped before returning to his original question. “Do the events of that day seem suspicious to you now, my lady?”
“Everything seems suspicious to me now.”
“Then you and Rothley have much in common.”
“Common ground is where all good friendships are built.”
Mr Daventry glanced between them and gave a lopsided smirk. “My wife would agree. She’s been my constant in a world of uncertainty.”
Olivia managed a faint smile. Gabriel could never say that about her. The thought pressed heavily on her chest, an ache beneath her ribs, a reminder there was still something she hadn’t told him.
Something he deserved to know.
Something that might change everything.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late.