Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hugh was already in high dudgeon when he saw Reddy pacing in the palace corridor.
“I thought you might turn up if I gave it a few minutes,” Reddy said grimly, clasping his hands behind his back. Seeing Hugh’s
arched brow, he explained, “Elly missed our standing appointment to go riding. I thought it best to see why.”
“And?”
“There are police guarding the door to her apartments,” Reddy said, disgruntled. “I tried both bribing and threatening, but
they’re too terrified of Glenmoor. I went to find her usual guards, but they’ve been sent out to other royal residences, as
has her lady’s maid and several of the courtiers she trusted.”
Hugh’s temper was on a fraying leash, and that only heated his blood. He stalked down the servants’ corridor, struggling to
master his breathing.
“We may be able to take the police together—one looks a bit soft in the gut and the other like he can’t count past three,”
Reddy said, falling in step beside him, “though I suspect you’ve come up with a different plan, given the searing look of
determination on your face.”
“Something of the sort.”
Hugh was in no mood to banter; he wanted to see to Eleanor’s safety and return home immediately. Viola’s look of uncertainty
as he departed after breakfast had haunted him the entire ride to the palace, as terrible as the scratches she’d left on her
neck and face.
No—he couldn’t think about her just now. Not without losing what little grip he had on his fury. Viola was safe at home with
the others. He needed to see to Elly now.
“Wait,” Reddy began, seeing Hugh slow beside a floor-length portrait of Queen Juliana. “There isn’t a passage to her rooms.”
“Of course there is.”
“Does she know that?” Reddy asked, a new edge to his tone.
Hugh gave him a bland look as he felt along the portrait’s gilded frame, feeling for the hidden latch. “She would have known when it was relevant.”
“That little wife of yours was absolutely right,” Reddy muttered. “You really think you know best.”
Hugh froze at the word wife, letting it pierce his heart like the lance it was. With a glance down the hall to ensure they weren’t being observed, Hugh
swung the disguised doorway open, revealing a narrow passage blacker than his heart.
“Congratulations, by the way,” Reddy whispered, shutting the door firmly behind them. “Though I’m hurt not to have received
an invitation to that particular disaster.”
Hugh paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark and his mind to orient him. Ten yards straight, then to the right,
where they’d find the necessary stairs to the upper floors.
Uncle Giles had ensured both he and Reddy knew the hidden corridors within the walls of Summerland Palace as well as the veins
on the backs of their hands. He’d locked them inside the vast web of narrow halls until they could navigate them in utter
darkness, to avoid candlelight flashing in the viewing holes.
The pathways had originally been built for royals to escape revolution or assassination or, Hugh supposed, loathsome guests,
but they had been forgotten by everyone but the succession of spymasters who had served them. There were no existing maps,
and knowledge of them was passed only in whispers.
Meaning there was every chance Glenmoor didn’t know of them. One small advantage, at least.
The memory of Viola’s face contorted with agony flashed in his mind, vivid in the dark. Hugh’s hands curled at his sides as
he swung right and hurried up the rickety stairs.
“Has there been any word from Mrs. Silver’s sister yet?” Reddy asked, at least remembering to keep his bloody voice down.
“On Gallia’s involvement in the poisoning?”
Hugh grunted, drowning in his own frustration on the matter. “No.”
“Fox,” Reddy began after a moment, “are you quite all right? I understand that yesterday may have frightened you—”
Hugh whirled back on him, nearly sending Reddy tumbling down the stairs.
“You understand nothing,” he ground out.
“I understand that you’ve let yourself become unfocused,” Reddy challenged. “You were always the first to remind me of Foxcourt’s favorite line: No distractions, no mistakes. Kingdom before all. Am I supposed to stand back and say nothing while I watch you unravel the vow we made to him?”
But, of course, the grievance ran deeper than that: in taking a wife, however fleetingly, Hugh was straying from the path
both swore they would follow, forgoing a more traditional life. The vow they’d made to Foxcourt, and to Albion, to dedicate
their hearts only to the kingdom. Now, he had abandoned Reddy to it. They were going to have to address it eventually—grit
their teeth and wade through emotional depths no man wished to confront.
Perhaps he’d die before then, Hugh thought hopefully.
“Damn it, man, don’t make me be the responsible one. You know I despise it.” Reddy shook his head. “Keyes says you aren’t
sleeping.”
Hugh ran a hand back through his sweat-damp hair. “I don’t have time to sleep.”
And whenever he tried, she was there.
It had begun innocuously enough. A flash of her smiling at him from across the coach just before waking. Lifting a bottle
of oil to her prim little nose and inhaling with utter delight. Then, less innocuously: Cast in the pub’s firelight, smiling
smugly at her victory. The memory of her body pressed against his in the alley. How soft her skin had felt beneath his lips.
And now: Screaming. Begging for him to kill her. The blood dripping from her nose, her mouth; weeping from her terrified eyes. That thought, screaming
through him like an unholy blaze, filling his mind with snow and blood and terror: Not again, not her—
Hugh pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting for the band of pressure around his chest to ease. Damn Reddy. Damn himself.
“You’re being careless,” Reddy continued. “Do you know how much I had to pay the gossip sheets to twist the news of your marriage
into something other than a wicked seductress enchanting you with her perfumes?”
Less than the “donation” Hugh had paid the young priest and Saint Mere’s Church to swallow his tongue about what had happened after the ceremony, certainly.
Hugh had enjoyed tossing all the gossip rags into the fire that morning before Viola had come down for breakfast, but he was haunted by one of them, how close the writer had come to the truth: He is half mad with longing for his new bride and desperate for her company.
There was no perfume needed to encourage the
ardentness of the E of F’s affections, for once he met her it is said he knew he was gazing upon his own heart. He swears
her innocence.
Hugh scowled, starting up the stairs again. “Could you have possibly been less maudlin? It’s not even in line with the blundering
rakehell caricature you’ve invented for me.”
Reddy followed him, undaunted. “Does threatening to scoop out a jeweler’s intestines with a spoon unless he finished making
a special quizzing glass in an hour line up with that caricature?”
Hugh’s scowl deepened. That had been perfectly reasonable. “She needed it for her work.”
“And did she also need you to disappear half of Fairgate’s guards and its governor?”
Hugh would not stand for that one. “They were abusing the prisoners. That goes against all moral decency and the law.”
“It’s a prison, Fox,” Reddy said. “What did you think would happen when you sent her there?”
“I—” Hugh caught the words before they exploded from him. “I thought she would be . . . left to think about her situation.”
No, that wasn’t true. Hugh knew what happened in Fairgate and the other prisons; he had damned enough souls to their dark
hells, and he had taken the most satisfying pleasure in doing so. But those had been criminals, traitors, murderers, and,
on occasion, people he meant to scare into giving up their secrets. He had never had cause to question the morality of it,
because Albion’s safety had always justified it.
Until now.
The absolute last thing he needed was to grow a conscience right when it was least convenient. As Uncle Giles had said, The kingdom does not need more heroes—it needs shadows willing to kill their souls so that others might live.
“The guards and prison governor could have revealed her stay there,” Hugh insisted. “You make it sound as though I permanently
solved the issue.”
He’d meted out only the sort of punishment that had been given to her, then sent them fleeing for their lives. Really, the
one odious guard only had a few weeks left, and those days would be far more painful than any end Hugh could have delivered
to the pig.
“And retrieving her mother’s portrait?” Reddy pressed. “Stalking the dodgiest streets in all of Linden to find an old doxy? Infuriating the prime minister? Sending the boys back into the Brickbats?”
“Are you really criticizing me for caring about children being abducted?”
“I wasn’t aware we did anything out of the kindness of our hearts—in fact, I specifically remember us being trained not to,”
Reddy said. “And I notice you did not attempt to dispute the first three examples.”
Hugh’s scowl deepened. “I am making amends.”
“And did any of it make you feel less guilty about what you did to her?” Reddy pressed. “Did it actually solve any of the
issues we’re facing?”
Hugh’s heart twisted violently in his chest. “No.”
He was sick with it. The knowledge lived in him like a festering sore, burning with each smile or glance from her.
“Can you honestly say that you aren’t preoccupied with more than just protecting her?” Reddy continued.
Preoccupied. Hugh resisted a dark laugh. If only it was a preoccupation.
Just last night, instead of working out a plan, he’d found himself staring at the wall, silently pleading to God to bring
her back to his cold bed after he’d returned her to her own. His pathetic, desperate heart had almost beaten itself free from
his chest when, no more than an hour later, his door had creaked open and she’d slid beneath the bedclothes. He’d sighed,
his soul settling, as she’d curled her warm, soft form against his back. Neither said a word. They hadn’t needed to.