Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The air was so cold, Olivia could see her own breath, short bursts of white mist against the gloom of the cell. Beneath her, the cot was damp. The musty blankets weren’t fit for a dog. The pounding in her head refused to cease, and the lump behind her ear was the size of a plum.
Yet her thoughts were not for herself, but for Gabriel.
He would have heard how upset she’d been, that in a moment of jealousy, she had packed her valise and left Studland Park. Left him. Left him for good.
The ache in her chest hurt more than the one in her skull.
If she died here, among this band of revolutionaries, he would spend the rest of his life wondering, never knowing the truth.
That she loved him.
That the days with him had been her happiest.
That she would trade her life for his.
She pulled her wrapper tighter across her chest, closed her eyes, and willed him to find her. He had come to her aid when she’d needed him most. She had every faith he would do so again.
Except how would he know where to look?
She could be a hundred miles away.
She could be a stone’s throw in Islington.
The echo of booted steps beyond the iron door stilled her breath. Since her arrival, she’d seen no one but Miss Bourne and the hulking brute who had struck her with a cudgel.
The clatter of metal on stone said her gaoler had dropped the key. His biting curse told her to expect a man.
She clutched the edge of the coarse blanket.
Her captors had tried the soft approach. Miss Bourne had swept into the room, her hair a halo of gold, grasped Olivia’s hands, and pleaded, “Tell me where to find the valise, and I swear no harm shall come to Gabriel. Tell us, and you have my word you’ll walk free.”
It was the greatest lie she’d told.
Her tone had lacked conviction. She was not so confident now, like a predator who’d become the prey.
What options were left to them?
Threats? Torture?
God help her if they chose the latter.
The man who entered the cell stole her breath. She’d expected the flat-nosed brute, not someone with kind eyes and a sculpted jaw. Not someone who looked remarkably like the corpse in the watch-house.
Recognition slammed into her, hard and bitter.
Rage followed close behind.
“Mr Lovelace. You look considerably better than the last time I saw you. Though clearly that wasn’t you dead in the box.”
His hair was more golden than straw blonde, his ears smaller, his brow less heavy. The likeness was uncanny, but now she understood why Gabriel had reservations.
She came to her feet as he shut the door, waited for him to step that bit closer, then slapped his face with all the strength she could summon.
His head whipped to the side. The crack rang through the stone chamber, her palm throbbing with the force of it.
“That’s for my husband. For ten years of lies and cowardice. For letting a better man suffer while you hid like a worm underground.”
Mr Lovelace rubbed his cheek, red from the sting, but when he faced her, tears welled in his eyes. “He deserves satisfaction. Has every right to call me out. My death was staged to save him questions, not cause more.”
“Then you don’t know him as I do.” Emotion gathered, swelling in her chest. “He believed you betrayed him, yet still fell asleep at night hoping he might save you.”
Ever desperate to put the world right.
Mr Lovelace glanced away. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I did betray him.” His voice broke, his throat working. “I stole Kate’s heart. Though I swear I never meant to.”
The confession came as no shock. The two people closest to Gabriel had left within months of each other. One dead. One vanished with his father’s bribe. No wonder he was so guarded.
“He would have understood. He would have stepped aside. He wouldn’t have married a woman who didn’t want him.”
Yet he had married her.
A woman who had refused his first offer, who had bargained the second time he asked. Yet the spark had been there since the start. He’d felt it too, and somehow found the faith to trust her. To trust in them.
She touched her wedding ring, her thumb tracing the band.
What had he inscribed inside?
She couldn’t look.
Not now.
Not when she needed her wits.
“Rothley would have shot me at dawn,” Mr Lovelace said.
“Wounded you, not killed you. You know the value he places on honour. The truth would have served you better in the end.”
Silence filled the cell.
She wished Gabriel were here to see the sorrow in his old friend’s eyes, to feel the regret that hung in the air. If she survived this, she needed answers. Not to see these villains punished, but to ease Gabriel’s restless mind.
“And now you’re part of this fraternity of fools who waste their days trying to destabilise the government.
” She thought of her life with Gabriel, a cosy night reading by the fire, the heat of their bodies in bed.
“You let Miss Bourne risk her neck to cause civil unrest. Is that what you call love, Mr Lovelace?”
He reeled from the bite in those words. “Kate is my wife. I joined this godforsaken group to protect her. So yes, my lady. I’ve sacrificed much in the name of love.”
His wife? They’d spent years wrapped in each other’s arms while Gabriel had denied himself the pleasure? She felt like taking her fist to his face.
But her mind jumped to the only question that mattered. If Miss Bourne had joined the fraternity before him, who had recruited her? Because that person had likely signed her father’s death warrant.
“So your wife lied. She hasn’t recently returned from France.”
“That’s not your concern,” he said sharply, casting a quick glance at the door. Suddenly, he leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We were permitted to leave as long as we returned when summoned. To prevent Rothley from pursuing the matter.”
The pieces were falling into place, none of them pleasant.
Had Miss Bourne been part of this fraternity for a decade? Had she taken the bribe to ensure Gabriel would always blame his father for their separation?
“What do you want from me?” she snapped, in case anyone had their ear to the door.
“Your father’s valise. The evidence that implicates us all.”
She almost told him the truth—that there was no evidence, or none they’d managed to find. But she refused to die in a gaol cell. If they wanted answers, she’d give them just enough to survive.
“The evidence is a series of complex clues. I’m the only one who can decipher them.
Gabriel has the items, and I have the knowledge.
He can’t do it without me. I can’t do it without him.
” A wave of panic rose. What if the fraternity killed them both and buried the truth forever?
“We’re close to solving it. You need us alive, unless you’re willing to risk someone else getting there first.”
Mr Lovelace fell silent. He seemed to debate the possibility that she might be of use, but he delivered a stark warning instead.
“They’ll kill us if we give them the evidence,” he mouthed. “They’ll kill us if we don’t. Either way, there’s little hope. In a bid to save you, your father has doomed us all.”
A chill threaded down her spine. There was only one man who might protect them now. One man her father trusted. One man who had risked everything for her, and would again if only she could reach him.
She had to get back to Gabriel.
Somehow, she had to convince them to let her return to Studland Park before it was too late.
Gabriel paced the study, the draught slipping under the door, as cold and insidious as the one weaving through his heart. Rain pelted the windows. A darker storm was coming. A tragedy waiting to unfold.
“Swallows?” Mrs Boswell frowned. Doubtless, she thought he’d lost his faculties, that grief had clouded his mind. “A room of swallows? Like an aviary?”
“No, not like an aviary.” Cursed saints. Every second mattered. “On the wallpaper. Failing that, an old painting or tapestry.”
The weight of Gentry’s hand on his arm was a calming force. “Give her a moment. There are two hundred rooms. And she hasn’t slept since Olivia was taken.”
“We have a Peacock Room,” Gabriel said. The thought of Olivia weeping there pierced something vital. “Do we have a room of swallows?”
“Your grandmother was fond of birds,” Mrs Boswell muttered. “And there was an aviary in the garden when you were a boy.”
“I recall the aviary.”
God help him. Time was running out. There had been no contact, no demands. He could only pray Mrs Hodge was right. That while the evidence remained within their grasp, Olivia might still be alive.
“Wait. I locked the sample in the desk drawer.” He crossed to the desk, vowing to curse her father if it led to another clue. “Perhaps it might jog your memory.”
He was out of options. Mrs Hodge was dead. Reverend Clay had been no help. The man had been visibly shaken when Gabriel roused him from bed to search the rectory, under the guise of hunting her killer.
He dug into his waistcoat pocket for the key—but paused at a sudden sound.
A woman’s voice.
Faint, but unmistakable.
She was calling his name.
“Quiet for a moment.” He motioned to his friends, who were devising a plan to search every room. “Do you hear that? A woman speaking?”
They all cocked their heads and listened.
Dalton shook his. “Sounds like the wind.”
“It could be a maid,” Mrs Boswell offered.
Was he so steeped in grief he’d taken to hearing voices?
While his housekeeper opened the study door and peered into the corridor, he turned to the window. Rain blurred the glass, the garden beyond slick and shifting in the early light. He strained to see, certain he’d heard it again, somewhere beyond the manicured topiary, near the fountain.
Then he saw it. A flutter of grey. Perhaps the hood of a cloak.
He blinked hard.
Was it the laudanum? Or the brandy still thick in his blood?
Or not the drink at all, but a vision born of longing.
A desperate, aching hope playing tricks on his eyes.