Chapter 2
Unsurprisingly, the letter was unsigned.
The handwriting did not match the words, either.
It was a slow, laborious hand, littered with spelling mistakes and crossings-out.
Neil had guessed that Victor had dictated the message, getting one of his thugs to write it himself.
That way, in court, Victor’s handwriting would not match that of the note. Clever.
“It is a trap,” Simon repeated, beginning to sound rather panicked. “You mustn’t go. He’ll have men. It’s a snare—”
“It is most certainly a snare,” Neil admitted, “but I believe Maggie and Emma are there.” He pushed the curls toward Simon as if that small evidence might anchor reason. “And that is where I shall go.”
“Neil—” Simon began again.
“No—listen to me.” Neil rounded on his cousin, hands gripping Simon’s shoulders until the cloth creaked.
“It is a trap. I do not imagine Lord Bramwell supposes it will fool me. But if I arrive with others, he’ll slit their throats before I can even knock on the door, and that simply is not a risk I can take.
” His voice dropped to a steadier, colder register.
“I dare not trust the authorities; Bramwell’s reach is long. Here is what I want you to do, Simon.”
“Neil—”
“Stay,” Neil said, each syllable deliberate.
“Stay here. Keep watch. If I do not return by dawn, then I do not return at all. In that case, you must become the thing the world believes me to be. The Gambling Devil’s name is not whispered without reason; you have the temper for it.
There will be nothing left to protect if they are dead.
Bury us, Simon, and then avenge us—burn Victor Bramwell to ash. Do what must be done.”
A long, dreadful silence followed. Simon’s face had drained of colour; his jaw worked. Neil hated the command he had laid upon his cousin—could hate himself—and yet the decision was driven by a clarity that left no room for doubt.
At last, Simon swallowed and gave a tight, reluctant nod. “Very well. I’ll do as you ask. Only—promise me you will be careful.”
“I give you my word, I shall not act rashly,” Neil answered, stepping back with a strained attempt at a smile. “We shall meet again, old chap. One way or another, we’ll meet again.”
He let out a ragged breath and turned for the door. He halted as the doorway framed two new arrivals. Mrs Thornton stood there, imperturbably composed as ever, and behind her, Crawford looked careworn but resolute. Both had been called, no doubt; word travelled fast when a child was taken.
“If I may make a suggestion, your Grace?” Mrs Thornton asked smoothly.
***
The burlap sack was ripped from Maggie’s head with a suddenness that stole the air from her lungs.
A gasp escaped her before she could think to steady it; the light stabbed into her eyes so fiercely that she had to close them against it.
For a moment, she was not certain whether she had fainted in the carriage from terror or sheer exhaustion, nor how far they had carried her.
When at last she forced her lashes apart, the world swam into shape.
She was in a low-roofed stone room that reeked of damp and mould.
The single, tiny window was set deep into the thick wall and caked with grime; the glass offered no view of the world outside, only a dim, dirty blur.
A candle trembled on a low table, its flame guttering and throwing more shadow than light.
Straw lay strewn across the flagstones, and the dry, crusted mud that clung to it rasped against her skin when she moved.
Whoever had hauled the sack off her head had made no ceremony of leaving; the heavy door—its wood swollen and the ironwork black with age—was shut fast, and the lock clicked ominously from the other side.
“Maggie?” A small voice, thin with fright, whispered from a darker corner.
Relief struck her like warmth. Emma shuffled forward, blinking in the candlelight, her face filthy and streaked with tears. Maggie’s heart contracted; the sight of the child steadied her as nothing else could.
“My darling,” she breathed, voice rough. “You are here. You’re safe.”
Emma crawled to her and buried her face in Maggie’s skirts, trembling so that the little body sought shelter as if against a storm. Maggie, hindered by the ropes that bound her wrists, nevertheless folded what arms she could around the child and drew her close.
“I don’t know where we are,” Emma sobbed into her shoulder. “That man—the one in the carriage—his voice was… it made me afraid. I want to go home, Maggie. I want to go home.”
Fear closed like a hand around Maggie’s throat.
She should have comforted the child with bright assurances; she should have lied and told Emma that all would be well.
The truth was a bitter, cold thing in her mouth: she did not know where they were, nor whether anyone—anyone at all—would come for them in time.
“I know, love,” she said at last, and the lie stuck in her throat. “But we cannot go home just yet.”
Emma’s tears had been squeezed dry, leaving streaks of mud on her cheeks; she clung tighter.
The candle threw the rest of the room into an uncertain half-light.
Where the flame failed, the corners lurked with shadow—hollows that suggested eyes, or rats, or worse.
As silence pooled, Maggie began to believe she could hear something else: a breath beyond the reach of the candle, a rustle like cloth on stone.
She straightened as much as she was able and planted herself between the child and the gloom. “Who’s there?” she demanded, forcing her voice to carry. “Show yourself at once!”
For a heartbeat, the room offered only silence, and Maggie wondered whether terror had already made her mad.
Then, from the darkest angle, a scraping sound answered: a shuffling, a hand dragged across the floor.
A figure emerged on hands and knees, filthy and thin, clothes once fine now ragged and greyed.
His hair was matted; his beard grew wild.
When he lifted his head, Maggie felt the world tilt.
The light caught a pair of eyes she knew with a pain that surprised her. They were their same green-gold, tired and small beneath the grime.
“Papa.” The word escaped her before she could weigh it.
Thomas Camden offered a hollow, weary smile. “I had not hoped to see you here, Margaret.”
“You left,” Maggie said, the accusation as much a question as a reproach. “I thought you had run and escaped to the country.”
He shook his head, a helpless movement that spoke of defeat rather than defence. “No. I never truly escaped. I know—” he glanced up, shame reddening his cheeks—“I know how it appears, and I have no good answer. I intended to flee to France and send for you after—”
“You abandoned me,” she interjected, the words blunt and cold.
“I planned to send for you, Margaret,” he insisted, and there was pleading in it. “I am the one who owed such sums to Lord Bramwell. I thought I could settle, and then—then things went wrong.”
“And I watched him kill a man,” Maggie said, the memory surfacing with horrid clarity. She had not meant to say the words so plainly, but they lay between them now like a wound.
Thomas flinched. For a moment, he seemed almost a child, bent under the weight of his own actions. “If your mother could see me now—” he began, voice cracked, as if each syllable were a stone dropped into a well.
Before Maggie could untangle the tangle of betrayal and pity she felt, the lock in the door shrieked and the great wooden plank swung inward on its hinges. The sound cut through the small room like a blade. And there, framed in the doorway, stood Victor Bramwell.
He looked as if he had been summoned from some gentleman’s portrait—green velvet cut to perfection, an emerald pin at his cravat that flashed wickedly in the candlelight.
He seemed absurdly, unnervingly splendid in such a place; Maggie could not tell whether he had dressed with grotesque care for the scene or whether he wore such finery whenever he pleased.
Emma let out a frightened squeak and clung to Maggie’s skirts like a small animal. Maggie, though her insides trembled, took a breath and rose as much as the ropes and the straw permitted. Pride stiffened her spine; she would not cower.
“My dear Miss Camden,” Victor purred, his voice smooth as oiled silk. “What a pleasure to see you again. You look a little—disordered, shall we say? Do forgive my silence on our journey; I had matters which required my attention.”
Emma, bereft of politeness and fear’s small courages, sprang from Maggie and pointed an indignant finger at him. “You are wicked!” she cried, the words sharp as a whistle. “My Uncle Neil is coming to save us, and when he gets here, you shall be very sorry!”
Victor’s expression took a moment’s interest, then folded into its habitual insolence. He crouched so that he might meet the child’s eyes, and the candlelight picked out the hollowness in his smile.
“My dear Miss Hartwell,” he crooned. “Your uncle is, in truth, a broken man pretending to menace. They call him a devil, but that is theatre. Real monsters—real men of consequence—do not fear such trifles. They devour pretence for breakfast.”
He bared his teeth in a grin that made Emma flinch, though she did not whimper. Instead, the little girl straightened and whispered, bravely, “That isn’t true. I have a monster under my bed and he will never let you hurt me or Miss Winter.”
Victor’s attention cooled as quickly as it had warmed. He rose, smoothing a cuff with a deliberate, lazy movement, and looked to Maggie with a practised, admiring leer.
“The child knows nothing,” he remarked. “But you—why, you are as beautiful as when we first met. I confess I was quite happy to marry you for your looks in part; a convenient bargain for your father’s debts.
Yet it is your particular knowledge that is most useful.
Your little head for accounts, my dear—priceless. ”
Maggie shuddered, turning her face away. Victor reached out, hooking one cold finger around her chin, and forced her to look at him.
Maggie felt him take her chin with one cold, patronising finger and turn her to face him.
“You were upstairs, were you not?” he whispered, pupils flaring.
“It seems ridiculous that I did not notice at the time. With your head for figures, it was no surprise that you were going through poor, dear Papa’s accounts, trying to dig him out of the hole he’d gotten himself into. ”
“I didn’t know that you used Papa’s shop for your business assignments,” Maggie hissed. “How could I know?”
The scene flashed back behind her eyes, unstoppable.
She recalled the horror she’d felt at hearing Victor’s voice in the room below the little Accounts Room, down in the storeroom for Papa’s fabrics.
Their business was floundering and seemed to lose more money by the day.
As a ‘lady’, Maggie could not of course be seen to go into her father’s shop, but after night…
well, it was easier to avoid being seen.
She recalled every detail of what she had seen, as well as the frantic dash back to their lodgings.
She had told Papa everything and watched the colour drain from his face.
He had been gone the next morning, leaving her a note to flee the city and that he would contact her soon.
“Victor’s voice cut through her vertigo like a blade. “Did you ever discover the name of the man I killed? The man you saw me kill, through the cracks in the floorboards?”
She shook her head. He smiled again—a smile without warmth.
“Samuel Wellbridge,” he said. “Lord Pemberton’s eldest—can you believe it? Lord P. still doesn’t know what became of his son. I attended a card party at his house quite recently, and the poor fellow had no clue. It was almost amusing.”
Maggie curled her fingers into fists. “Only you would think that amusing.”
Victor smiled. “Samuel tried to blackmail me. He was always a clever boy, too clever for his own good.”
“You stabbed him. Then you strangled him.”
He shrugged. “Stabbing is messy, but I had to be sure. The boy was rather strong, and I am not as young as I was. With the floors scrubbed and cloths burned, Samuel would simply have vanished—were it not for one vigilant little witness; you, my darling.”
His eyes, flat and sharklike, fixed on hers. Maggie’s stomach turned.
“You should release the child,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “She is no part of this.”
Victor’s smile took on a dangerous edge.
“At first you were an inconvenient loose end—a pretty girl whose marriage might abate a debt. Then you became troublesome. The word of a woman posing as a lady would not have stood against men like me, had it been any ordinary case. But Lord Pemberton’s son was missing; that complicates matters.
And,” he added, the smile sharpening, “when you took to befriending the Duke of Burenwood, circumstances altered most inconveniently for me. The duke… well… let us simply say that he is an enemy of mine; therefore, to make him behave, little Miss Hartwell here must remain, I’m afraid. ”
Maggie’s heart beat faster and then froze as she heard the name she feared most misspoken so gently by him.
“Neil will not come,” she said, testing the lie, the defiance.
She knew she’d made a mistake, using his given name. Thomas frowned in the corner, and Victor’s gaze, cold and steely, bored into her.
“Oh, but he will,” Victor said at last, his voice low and menacing.
“He will come because despite his protestations that he has no heart, the Gambling Devil does indeed have a heart. A live, warm, beating one at that. And that heart will lead him straight to you and Miss Hartwell, Maggie—and straight to me.”