Chapter 3 #2
She exhaled and turned to face the room she’d just broken into.
It was only slightly brighter in here with moonlight coming through a trio of windows along one wall.
She reached into her cloak’s pocket for the stub of a candle and a palm-sized tinderbox.
Her chambermaid, Mary, kept the tinderbox at the hearth.
Anticipating the need to light a candle, Audrey had taken a wax candle and the small steel box of flint, steel, and char cloth.
The paltry moonlight guided her hand as she struck the chip of steel against the flint, which was settled within the packed bit of jute. The jute caught aflame, and she touched the candle’s wick to it. The glow cut through the gloom.
The room was modest, with few furnishings and decoration, though what was there—the plush chairs placed before the fire, the woodwork on the mantle clock, the numerous candlesticks, a table lamp—was of quality.
None of these items were familiar, though they were all distinctly masculine.
And completely out of place. The kinds of people who lived at Jewell House and the surrounding buildings would not live half so fine.
With sinking spirits, Audrey moved deeper into the room.
The wax candle’s light didn’t reach far, so she was standing almost within arm’s reach of a tester bed by the time it materialized out of the darkness.
The bed’s frame was all that was left, the mattress having been removed.
A strange black spatter painted the wall behind it.
Her stomach turned, and with a jolt, she skittered backward. This was where the woman had been killed. Mr. Marsden had said she’d been found in a precarious position, and Audrey realized now that he’d meant upon the bed. The black spatters. They were her blood.
The heel of Audrey’s boot came down onto something, and whatever it was ground into the floor. It felt like a small rock, but when she lifted her foot, saw it was a drop pearl and black crystal earbob, strung on wire with a slim hook. Audrey crouched. It belonged, she presumed, to the opera singer.
Gathering a breath, she picked up the piece of jewelry, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger.
With barely a nudge from her mind, the earbob’s energy leaped into view.
A chaotic blur of the room spun around her.
Pale white arms flailed before Audrey’s eyes…
a woman’s arms. Her fingernails clawed into the floor as someone dragged her.
Her eardrums vibrated with gargled screams and panicked breaths.
Horrified, she dropped the earbob. It fell to the floor, and the memory vanished.
The candle’s flame warmed her cheek as she stayed there, crouched next to the piece of jewelry.
Belladora Lovejoy. The name of the opera singer.
The woman whose arms Audrey had just seen thrashing.
She’d been knocked to the floor. Attacked.
How many more moments had passed before she’d been murdered?
The earbob had more to show her, and Audrey had no choice but to watch if she wanted to prove her husband innocent.
Perhaps the true murderer would be revealed in the bundle of retained energy clinging to the piece of jewelry.
It would be nothing she could show Mr. Marsden or the magistrate, or even Mr. Potridge or Michael.
Philip, of course, would believe her, but that was only because he knew what she could do.
He had been well aware of it before he’d proposed marriage, and he’d promised to keep her secret so long as she, in turn, kept his.
At Bow Street, she had not been able to explain that if Philip had chosen to stray, he would have done so with another man.
However, Philip had promised Audrey that he would never take a lover without first telling her of his intentions.
She had agreed to do the same, though that had not yet come to pass, and she couldn’t imagine it would.
Theirs was a marriage of friendship and respect, and she trusted Philip.
Whatever had happened to Miss Lovejoy in this cursed room the evening before, it was not at all what Mr. Marsden believed it to be.
She had to find out how her husband had become involved in this madness.
Audrey prepared herself for another plunge into the last memories the earbob offered and picked it up again.
She opened her mind to the shaky, fragmented vision of being rolled over.
Miss Lovejoy’s battering arms again came up into view, beating back some dark outline.
Audrey made out the profile of an ear, the side of a closely shorn head, dark hair the color of ink—
“What are you doing in here?”
Not a voice from the vision.
Audrey shot up from her crouch. She spun around, lashing out with the candle into the space directly behind her. A firm hand caught her forearm. In the second before hot wax lurched onto the burning wick and doused the small flame, Audrey saw the shadowy face of the man who’d sneaked up behind her.
She cursed under her breath. “You.”