Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
The Ledger of the Dead
The Commissioner’s note lay folded on the table like a stain, the words still echoing in my head as though I had not merely read them but swallowed them whole.
Another body was found on the Thames.
Beyond the curtains of Steele’s study, London slept on—oblivious, indifferent, and safe in its ignorance. But I could not forget the river. The Thames herself had become an accomplice.
Steele’s gaze held mine across the table, steady and unflinching. His certainty should have comforted me. Instead, it only sharpened the urgency until I could scarcely bear to sit still another moment.
“Where was the body taken?” I asked. “Exactly?”
“The Lambeth Parish mortuary.”
I rose before I could think better of it. “Then we must go there.”
“It is nearly one.”
“Then we must go now.”
He hesitated for a heartbeat. “Rosalynd,” he said carefully, “you need not see her.”
My spine stiffened. I did not look away. “Yes, I do.”
His jaw tightened. I knew that expression. I had seen it before, in another mortuary, when he had tried—with all the authority of his title and all the force of his will—to keep me from looking death in the face.
It had not worked then. It would not work now.
“A body pulled from the river will be…” He seemed to search for the word that might turn me aside. “…grievous.”
“I have no intention of being protected from the truth,” I said. “Not when another girl has been left to rot in the water.”
For a moment he studied me, as though weighing whether to fight harder. Then something shifted in his eyes—resignation, perhaps, or the hard acceptance that I would not be moved.
He gave a single nod. “I’ll have the carriage brought round.”
While he spoke to Milford, I gathered my cloak with fingers that trembled only slightly. The clasp at my throat refused to cooperate. Steele stepped closer and fastened it with practiced ease, his hands steady, his touch brief—and intimate.
“If she is one of Sister Margaret’s girls—” My voice caught.
“We will know soon,” he said.
It was some time before Milford returned. “The carriage awaits by the back door, Your Grace. Lady Rosalynd.”
We slipped into the cold night, where the shadows of the mews wrapped around us.
The air smelled of damp brick and horses and something faintly metallic—London’s restless midnight scent.
Steele helped me into the carriage. The door shut, and the lamplight vanished, leaving us with the hush of velvet darkness and the steady weight of what awaited.
We rode without lamps. Without words.
Only the rumble of wheels along the streets marked our passage. I watched the city slide by: shuttered shops, the occasional drunk stumbling home, the glow of distant gas lamps wavering in the wind.
“Do you think this body will show the same marks?” I asked finally.
Steele’s answer came low and steady. “We will need to wait and see.”
“If she does,” I said, “the Yard cannot dismiss this.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t,” he replied. “Not this time.”
We reached the rougher streets along the south bank, where warehouses leaned close, and the river’s cold breath curled around the corners. The air smelled of wet timber and coal smoke, and the mud of the foreshore clung to everything.
The Lambeth Parish mortuary stood behind the coroner’s offices—dark timber, narrow windows, a lantern burning like a single eye in the gloom.
Steele stepped down first and offered his hand. I accepted it, letting him steady me as I descended. The wheels creaked softly as the carriage rocked, then settled.
“I’ll remain with the carriage,” the driver murmured, touching his hat.
Steele did not answer. He was already leading me toward the door.
Inside, the smell met us at once—carbolic and cold stone, and something sorrowful beneath both. A constable straightened when he saw Steele, recognition flaring in his eyes. Then his gaze flicked to me, and his face changed entirely.
“Your Grace—sir—” he began, visibly flustered. “You brought—”
“A lady,” Steele supplied, his tone warning.
The constable’s ears reddened. He swallowed. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace. This isn’t a place for… for—”
“Is the coroner present?” Steele cut in.
“Yes, sir, but he’s…occupied.”
“Then he will be interrupted,” Steele said, already moving past him.
I followed.
The examination room felt colder than the night outside. A surgeon stood beside the long table, hands damp from washing, spectacles low on his nose. A sheet draped the body beneath it.
At a smaller table nearby, another man waited with papers and a pen, watching with practiced stillness. He looked up sharply at our entrance, irritation already forming. “Sir, you cannot simply—”
The constable hurried forward, clearing his throat. “Mr. Hargreaves—this is the Duke of Steele.”
Hargreaves froze. His gaze flicked over Steele only then, taking in his bearing, his coat, the unmistakable authority of him.
“I see,” he said, his tone shifting at once. “Your Grace. This is hardly a place for—”
His eyes moved to me. He faltered.
“—a lady,” he finished, a moment later.
“Mr. Hargreaves is the coroner for the parish,” the constable blurted out before gesturing to the figure at the large table. “And Dr. Barclay is the surgeon.”
“Gentlemen,” I said. “I am here and will not leave.”
The coroner cleared his throat, drew himself up, and fixed his attention squarely on Steele as if I were no more than a troublesome piece of furniture.
“What is your business here, if I may ask, Your Grace?” he said, with brittle politeness. “This is an official examination. You cannot simply arrive in the middle of it and—” his gaze flicked, unwillingly, toward me “—bring company.”
Steele did not so much as glance in my direction. He remained perfectly still, as though the coroner’s objection were a gust of wind and nothing more.
“I have reason to believe this death is connected to others currently under investigation,” he said. “You will proceed, Mr. Hargreaves. And you will answer my questions as they arise.”
The coroner’s mouth tightened. “That is not how an inquest—”
“No,” Steele cut in, his voice low and absolute. “It is how this one will be conducted. Now show us what you have found.”
For a moment, Mr. Hargreaves held himself rigid, color rising in his cheeks.
I could see the protest trembling on the edge of his tongue—could see, too, the calculation that followed.
A parish coroner might bristle at interference, but he did not have the luxury of defying a duke. Not if he wished to keep his post.
At last, he gave a stiff nod, as though granting permission rather than yielding it.
“Very well,” he said, each word clipped. Then he turned and inclined his head toward the surgeon. “Dr. Barclay.”
Dr. Barclay did not speak. He merely stepped closer and, with practiced hands, folded the sheet back to the girl’s shoulders.
The first sight struck me like a physical blow.
She was so young. Younger than Chrissie. Younger than I had been when my parents died.
A child wearing the shape of a woman.
The river had done its work. Her skin held an awful bluish-grey—part pallor, part stain, as though the Thames itself had claimed her. A lock of dark hair clung to her temple, flattened there as if it had only just been brushed aside.
The smell reached me a heartbeat later. Not merely carbolic, but cold water and silt, riverweed and decay—something dank and metallic that caught at the back of my throat.
My stomach lurched. The room shifted, treacherously, beneath my feet.
I gripped the edge of the table to keep my balance.
Steele shifted at my side. Without looking at me, he laid his hand over mine—firm, warm, unmoving. “Steady,” he murmured, so softly only I could hear.
I swallowed and forced my voice steady. “Any bruising?”
He paused, then slid the cloth aside at her wrists, exposing a narrow strip of forearm.
“Linear abrasions,” he said, indicating the marks with two fingers.
Rope. She had been tied.
Cold spread through my veins. “Anywhere else?”
“Here.” He let the sheet fall back into place, then moved to the lower end of the table.
With the same deliberate restraint, he folded the cloth back to reveal her thighs—no more than necessary.
His touch was light, clinical. “Here.” He touched her thigh lightly.
“And there are bruises on her arms as well. Some older than others.”
I shut my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, the girl had not changed. Her suffering lay etched upon her body like a confession carved into stone.
“There are also signs of…” Dr. Barclay swallowed. “Sexual violation.”
Steele said nothing, but the tension in him altered—no longer coiled, but sharpened, as though something inside him had gone cold and precise.
“And then there is this,” Dr. Barclay added quietly.
He adjusted the sheet once more and, with deliberate care, turned the girl onto her side, then onto her front. The movement was gentle, almost reverent. When the cloth was drawn back from her shoulders, the truth revealed itself at once.
Clear, parallel marks crossed her back—angry lines laid there with intention. Too even to be accidental. Too familiar to be mistaken.
The room seemed to contract around us.
My breath caught painfully. “Whipped,” I said, the word tasting bitter.
Steele’s hand tightened where it rested at my side.
He did not move closer, did not speak, but I felt the change in him as surely as if the air itself had shifted.
His gaze fixed on the marks with a terrible stillness, as though he were seeing not one back, but another—long ago, unhealed, and never forgotten.
“Yes,” Dr. Barclay said. “With a belt or similar implement. Some of the marks are recent. Others are not.”
I could not look away. “She was punished,” I whispered. “As if she were property.”
Steele’s voice, when it came, was very low. “As if she belonged to him.”
Dr. Barclay nodded once. “That would be my assessment.”
He covered her again with care, restoring what dignity he could. But the damage had already been done—not only to her, but to the room itself.
“She never had a chance,” I whispered.
“No,” Dr. Barclay agreed softly. “She did not.”
A silence followed, broken only by the ticking of a clock somewhere in the corridor.
“Does she have a name?” I asked.
“Too soon to know,” the coroner answered. “We will have to search through the missing reports.”
She had been alive at some time in the past. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s friend. And now she was a ledger entry the Yard would be content to ignore.
“Will you keep her here? For a little while?” I asked. “In case she can be identified?”
Barclay nodded. “Yes, my lady. Of course.”
“Thank you.”
I stepped back from the table, steadying myself with a breath. The cold of the room seeped into my bones.
Steele touched my arm gently. “We have seen enough.”
“Enough for tonight,” I said.
We left the mortuary, the night air harsh against my cheeks. Across the darkened yard, the river shimmered faintly beyond the buildings—a silent conspirator to too many secrets.
At the carriage, I stopped. Steele turned toward me, waiting.
“The next girl might not be dead yet,” I said.
His answer came without hesitation. “She will not be. We’ll find her first.”
I met his gaze. A vow formed between us—wordless, fierce, absolute.
We climbed into the carriage, leaving the mortuary behind, though its weight came with us.
London slept while the river flowed, and a girl lay nameless on a metal table.
And Steele and I rode into the darkness, determined to break the cycle before another body washed ashore.