Chapter 2 #2
“And for that you refused to send for his solicitor?” Audrey replied, her temper simmering anew. He’d been thrown into this dank, dark cell. Accused of murder. Why on earth should he cooperate?
“I assure you, had he supplied his solicitor’s name, I would have sent for him straightaway. However,” said the man, whom she could only assume was another Bow Street officer, “His Grace has not uttered one coherent word since I found him in Seven Dials, drenched in blood.”
Audrey looked again at her husband’s borrowed clothing.
He’d been given these rags because his clothes had been covered in blood?
And disposed of? She dearly hoped not. If she could touch his things, close her eyes, and concentrate, allowing the energy they held to enter her, she might be able to see the truth.
Any item—large or small, metal or glass, stone or fabric—retained a bit of energy, and for some reason, one Audrey had long ago stopped questioning, she could not only feel this energy, she could see it.
The energy appeared as images, gasps of memories.
If she could hold her husband’s clothing, she might be able to see what occurred before this austere officer had thrown him into the tavern’s cellar.
“The Seven Dials?” Michael scoffed. “Absurd. The duke has no business in that part of London.”
He was right. The Dials was a seedy neighborhood, rife with thieves and vagrants. Her husband wouldn’t venture there. Unless, of course, he’d taken up his old habit. Audrey frowned. No. He’d promised he was finished with that business.
“Whose blood?” she asked.
The Bow Street officer hesitated, as if considering withholding the answer. Audrey was ready to demand a response when he finally replied, “Miss Belladora Lovejoy. An opera singer at Drury Lane.”
The mention of the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane gave her pause, but with the officer’s eyes hinged on her, she knew to keep her expression unaffected. Philip had a box at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden and enjoyed attending—much more than she did. Had he known this woman?
“And you believe my husband killed her?”
“Yes.”
“What proof do you have?”
“That is for me to present to the magistrate when he arrives in the morning.”
The man’s refusal to answer kicked like an insult—something Audrey, as Duchess of Fournier for the past few years, was not accustomed to.
“As acting counsel for His Grace at present, you will disclose to me what led you to arrest him,” Michael said.
It took the officer another few seconds to release Audrey from his intent glare. When he finally did, she drew in a silent gulp of air. Who the devil was this man?
“He was found in rooms leased under a fictitious name, with Miss Lovejoy’s mutilated body in close proximity. He was the only one present at the time of discovery, drenched, as I stated, in blood. The apparent murder weapon, a boning knife, was at his side.”
The words were nonsensical. Audrey could not comprehend any of it. Her instinct to shout No! to everything the man said reared its head, but she kept it in check. She would not make a scene and be ordered out of this cellar.
“My husband does not keep rooms in the Dials,” she stated levelly. “Have you searched for the man whose name is attached to the lease?”
“He doesn’t exist. As I told you, it is a fictitious name,” the officer replied.
“How can you be so sure?” she pressed.
He paced the width of the cellar taking short, agitated strides.
“The landlord confirmed His Grace as the tenant. He knew him by the name supplied on the lease, a Mr. Maxwell Penny. He has been leasing these rooms for months. Your Grace—” he stopped and clenched his hands into fists.
“I understand this is no way for a wife to learn of her husband’s liaisons—”
“Stop.” Audrey’s voice cracked off the walls. The man did as she commanded and stared at her once again. “You are wrong, officer—what is your name, sir?”
By his pressed-thin lips, he appeared to be fighting the urge to groan. “Principal Officer Hugh Marsden. And my apologies, but it is quite certain. Due to Miss Lovejoy’s…appearance when she was discovered, it’s clear that she was in the duke’s rooms as his mistress.”
“Enough,” Michael barked before Audrey could argue once again. “There is no need to be vulgar.”
“On the contrary, Lord Herrick. Considering where we are all standing, there is no escaping it,” Mr. Marsden replied, his dark eyes still centered on Audrey. Almost as if he suspected her of some crime as well.
She kept her mouth shut as Michael went to Philip’s side.
“Say something, brother.” He leaned over to peer into Philip’s face, which was aimed at the dirty floor. “My God, you must speak for yourself. Explain what has happened.”
“He won’t,” Mr. Marsden put in. “I suspect he is in a fair amount of stupor.”
Michael straightened his back and turned to glare at Mr. Marsden. Audrey kept her eyes upon her husband. He wouldn’t stop kneading the tops of his thighs with his fingers. They were unclean, with dirt around the nails. Or perhaps, she thought with a shock of horror, it was not dirt at all.
“And why wouldn’t he be? Thrown into a hole such as this,” Michael said, still sneering.
Mr. Marsden ignored the comment. “I’m bringing him before the magistrate in a few hours—”
“Not before Potridge arrives,” Michael cut in.
“Then you best hope he arrives soon.” The officer reached for a coat upon a stool and tugged it on.
Audrey went to Philip’s side, her skirts brushing against the dirty cellar floor.
She didn’t care about the filth. She crouched before him, taking his stained fingers into her hands.
Had she removed her gloves, the touch might have shown her something.
Nothing definite, though. Objects were easiest to read, while skin-to-skin contact was more fickle.
“Philip,” she implored softly. “Look at me.”
His eyes darted back and forth, as if watching some frantic action playing out on the cellar’s packed-dirt floor.
“I don’t know what has happened, but whatever you say, I will believe it.” She needed him to look at her. Needed those eyes to latch onto hers. Until then, he would be lost, a prisoner to whatever hell he was currently trapped in. “Darling, it is I, Audrey. Please, Philip—”
“You are wasting your breath, Your Grace.”
Audrey shot to her feet and swiveled to glare at him. “And you are an interminable brute, Mr. Marsden.”
He smirked. “Nothing like what you’re used to in Mayfair, is it?”
“And you would know, wouldn’t you?” Michael murmured. Audrey looked at her brother-in-law, but he had his scathing glare hinged on the Bow Street officer. Mr. Marsden flicked him an apathetic glance. “That’s right, Marsden. I know who you are.”
Audrey frowned. How did Michael know this man?
“Call me a brute or anything else you please,” Mr. Marsden continued, unmoved by Michael’s comment. “I’m merely doing my job.”
“My husband is not a murderer. I don’t know what you’ve done to him in here—”
Mr. Marsden cocked his head and took an angry step toward her. “Do you imply that I’ve attempted to beat a confession out of him?”
“I said nothing of the sort!” Her nerves flared to life as a measure of control slipped. Never had she been made to deal with a man as crude and raffish as this.
A spark of smugness lit his eyes. He’d affected her, and he appeared pleased with himself for it.
Michael slid in between them, his broad shoulders obscuring the officer’s figure. Almost immediately, Audrey’s boiling blood dropped to a simmer.
“Have Carrigan take you home,” he said to her.
She shook her head. “Philip should not be alone.”
“He won’t be.” Michael took her shoulders in his hands; hands that boxed at the Sturgis Club every Thursday evening.
Philip had confided Michael’s penchant once, along with Michael’s concern that his brother should box as well.
As a way to improve my health, Philip had muttered with a vault of one fair brow.
Seems to believe it will improve my virility.
The memory of her husband’s wry grin hit her hard.
“I will remain here and make sure Potridge arrives,” Michael added.
The truth shed over her then: Within a few hours, her husband would be standing before the magistrate on charges of murder.
An opera singer of questionable reputation had been slain in his leased rooms. Rooms Audrey had not known about.
Her throat cinched tight. He’d promised that he was finished with keeping secrets.
He’d promised things would go back to the way they used to be when he and Audrey had been able to confide in each other.
Confessions Audrey could have never shared with anyone else.
Philip accepted her, and she accepted him. Secrets and all.
Or at least, that was what Audrey had believed.
“Go back to Violet House.” Michael’s hands squeezed her shoulders. “Do not accept any callers today, Audrey.”
Did he take her for a fool? Of course, she would not accept any callers.
The whole of London society would wake up to the scandalbroth of her husband’s arrest. The most tenacious gossipmongers among them would descend upon Violet House under the pretense of support and solidarity, while all they would truly be after were details, of which they could flaunt at the next luncheon or tea or ball.
Audrey suspected Lady Dutton, a dowager viscountess, would be the first one to call, followed swiftly by her arch rival, Lady Shoreham, a young, widowed countess currently shocking the ton with a barely concealed affair with Lady Dutton’s son-in-law.
There were only three people Audrey trusted explicitly. Two of them were currently in the prison cell with her, and the third was Michael’s wife, Geneva.
Michael released Audrey’s shoulders. His promise to stay with Philip gave her a thread of relief.
He wouldn’t allow any brutish Bow Street officer to so much as touch him.
She took one last look in her husband’s direction.
He was still rubbing his fingers over his thighs, his eyes cast to the floor.
What was he seeing inside his mind? What wasn’t he sharing with them?
“I will show you out, Your Grace,” Mr. Marsden grumbled as he picked up a covered box, four hands long and equally deep.
“It is hardly a challenge to show myself out, thank you,” she replied, stepping past him, and starting up the stairs, into the empty tavern.
“All the same, I can’t have you wandering the Brown Bear unaccompanied,” he said, practically treading upon her heels as they left the cellar.
She bristled at that word: wandering. As if she were a heedless puppy or young child.
At the entrance, he reached past Audrey’s arm and opened the door before she could do so herself. He stood aside, balancing the box in his other hand, and with a mocking dip of his head, murmured, “Your Grace.”
His disdain for her—no, not for her personally, but for her station in society—was written all over his person, from his expression to his tone to the piercing bite of his glittering brown-eyed glare.
“You do realize, Mr. Marsden, how foolish you will look when my husband is proven to have nothing to do with this crime?”
However, a tremor of unease slipped up her spine at all the things the officer had said.
Philip’s secret rooms, the dead singer, the blood, and the weapon…
her husband’s clear shock and uncooperative manner…
none of it made him appear innocent. But he simply could not have killed the woman.
He simply could not have been having an affair with her.
Of this, more than anything else, Audrey was absolutely certain, because her husband and dearest friend, the Duke of Fournier, was not, and had never been, in the least bit attracted to women.
Mr. Marsden huffed a laugh as he crossed Bow Street and made his way toward the magistrate’s offices. “I am in little danger of looking the fool.”
“Prove it,” she said as a hasty idea formed in her mind.
He stopped in the middle of the street and peered at her. “Excuse me?”
“Prove what you know, sir. Show me the murder weapon.”
He had to have it somewhere. If Audrey could only touch it, even just for a few seconds, she would be able to glean images of knowledge.
The officer shuffled the box in his arms, his patience clearly beginning to wane. “The murder weapon has its place as evidence, but it will hardly prove everything I know.”
She eyed the box in his arms again and guessed at the contents.
“Yes, but I will know whether or not the knife belongs to my husband, you see.”
Her point was about as dull as a spoon and Mr. Marsden rolled his eyes before continuing toward the front steps. She followed, ignoring her driver, Carrigan, as he started to open the carriage door.
“I find that doubtful, Your Grace,” he said, entering the offices. “You didn’t even know he kept rooms.”
His rooms. Yes, of course!
Mr. Marsden had let the door shut behind him, but she pushed it open and followed. He kept his back to her, turning down a long corridor.
“I wish to speak to the establishment’s owner, if you would be so kind as to give me the address,” she said.
At this, Mr. Marsden flashed her a smile, followed by a burst of laughter. “Establishment is too kind a word for that scum hole.”
He scuffled with a small ring of keys taken from his pocket and unlocked a door.
It was a closet of some sort, its shelves cluttered with other boxes.
He slid his box into an empty spot and slammed the door, locking it again.
There was no chance she’d be able to get into that closet without being seen.
But maybe she could find something else to touch in Philip’s secret rooms.
“The address, sir,” she persisted.
A certain misgiving creeped into the crook of his smile. “I’ll give it to His Grace’s solicitor, once the fellow arrives.”
His impertinent, high-handed dismissal set her blood back to boiling.
“I am asking you for it now.”
“I would advise you not to travel to the Dials alone.” Not a shred of humor remained on his tone, and Audrey was happy to hear it. There was nothing amusing about this situation, and the man’s smile had unsettled her.
She remained quiet, simply waiting for him to speak. She would not leave until she had the address and well he knew it. Finally, he shifted his square jaw and relented.
“Mercer Street. A collection of rooms called Jewell House.”
Shock that he had granted her the address nearly tied her tongue. She’d expected more of an argument, in fact. A belated moment later, she was able to speak. “Goodbye, Mr. Marsden.”
With a tight nod, she turned and made her way from Bow Street headquarters.