Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Audrey burst through the front door to Violet House.
She needed to speak to someone she could trust, and of course, Philip came first to mind.
He not only knew about Hugh and trusted that he wasn’t a killer, he also would not have Audrey arrested for stealing files from Mr. Potridge’s office—though, he would be terribly cross with her for it.
She would gamely endure his reproach, however, if he could just help her make sense of the files that she’d pored through on the carriage ride back to Curzon Street.
“Is all well, Your Grace?” Greer had inquired as soon as Audrey had climbed into the carriage. She’d been breathing rapidly, having just practically run from the offices.
“Of course,” she’d answered, ripping the folio labeled with Miss Barlow’s name from her reticule. “I am just eager to leave Pimlico.”
She’d unwound the toggle and string and started shuffling through the papers, holding them to the window for better light.
Some of the scrawled penmanship had faded or smudged.
Dates from nearly thirty years ago had been inked onto lines next to signatures from Lord Neatham and Miss Barlow and on one, Miss Catherine Marsden.
Audrey read through the files several times on the ride.
A contract for the viscount to pay an annual sum of two hundred pounds to Miss April Barlow was dated May of 1793.
Another agreement for his estate to pay Catherine Marsden a sum of one hundred pounds per annum for the “care and keeping of male child aged 6 months until said child reaches seventeen years” was dated the same month and year.
A letter from Miss Barlow, dated November 1812, was a request that the Neatham estate cease payments to her as she was aware the viscount had recently died.
Her wish, she wrote, was that the annuity instead be directed to the viscount’s ward, Hugh Fitzgerald Marsden.
Fitzgerald. Audrey felt a twinge of intimacy at learning his middle name.
But it was the fact that Fitzgerald was the late viscount’s given name that got her ears chiming as Carrigan closed in on Curzon Street.
And that Hugh had been six months old at the time Catherine Marsden took him on as her own child.
It was more than apparent now, from these files, that April Barlow was Hugh’s birth mother, and that Catherine Marsden was given the child to raise. The viscount financially supported both women, and generously. But…why had it taken six months for Miss Barlow to bring baby Hugh to Neatham House?
“Barton,” she said to her butler as he approached in the foyer. A footman was relieving her of her cloak, the badly creased folio returned to her reticule, still clutched in her hand. “Is the duke at home?”
Barton bowed. “Yes, Your Grace. He and a guest are in the study.”
A guest? Audrey tempered her disappointment as she climbed the stairs.
Hopefully the guest, whoever it was, would not stay much longer.
Possible ideas and explanations for the folio’s papers were swirling around in her brain, and she wanted to dispel and rationalize them.
Philip would be perfect for such a task.
He would, of course, demand to know how she’d learned about April Barlow, and when he heard about Hugh’s late-night visit, he would certainly be peeved. But she despised keeping secrets from Philip and wanted to be as honest with him as she could be.
She entered the study, its doors slightly ajar.
Male voices came from within, reaching her ears before she could see into the room.
Audrey drew to a stop as soon as her eyes settled upon the duke and his guest. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a painting, a Titian that had been in the Fournier family for well over a century.
At first, they did not see Audrey entering the study and continued to gaze up at the Titian.
When Philip turned his head to look at the other man—an inch shorter, trim, with dark blonde hair—in the mere seconds before he spied Audrey from the corner of his vision, she recognized something upon his expression. Admiration. Interest. Attraction.
Both men turned, now aware of her presence, and she pushed a smile onto her face.
“Audrey, darling.” Philip set his drink on a table as he came to greet her. He took hold of her arms and shuffled her forward with awkward gusto. “I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to introduce you to someone. An old friend from my Cambridge days.”
The man came forward for his introduction and her stomach dipped—if he was a Cambridge friend, he might occupy Philip’s afternoon for longer than Audrey hoped.
Philip tended to luxuriate in long conversation with old peers from university, especially when it came to gloriously dull topics like linguistic anthropology and Greek literature, and one that gave her shivers—entomology.
“May I present my wife, Audrey,” he said to his friend. “Audrey, may I introduce you to Mr. Frederick Walker.”
Her heart rhythm slowed as the man bowed, his hands clasped behind his back.
The name chimed through her ears, muffling all sound in the room.
Frederick Walker. Freddie. She had heard his name before.
It was one she’d committed to memory because of its importance.
Because of his importance. Freddie Walker had been Philip’s first love, and his first lover.
But then, Freddie had been caught in an act of sodomy with another man and arrested.
The sentence for such a crime could be as dire as death by hanging, though with Freddie’s elevated connections, his sentence had been reduced.
Instead, he’d been sent away to an institution rather than a prison.
An institution much like Shadewell, where anything deemed unnatural about a person was roundly and categorically stamped out.
And yet, here he was. Standing in Philip’s study, no less.
“Mr. Walker, hello. It’s a pleasure,” she said, finding her voice after some protracted moments. Her delay and the stilted greeting weren’t overlooked.
“Your Grace,” Mr. Walker replied with a bashful grin. He cast a glance toward Philip, then at Audrey again. “I have been looking forward to meeting you.”
“You have?” Her bald surprise caused smothered amusement between the two men. But his comment made it sound as though he and Philip had been in contact. Had they? Audrey suddenly felt overly warm.
“Yes, almost as soon as I returned to London, I heard Philip had married. I wished to meet the lucky lady.”
“Unfortunate might be a better word,” Philip joked.
Oh. Perhaps they had not been in contact then.
Still, she was suspicious. Philip had gone behind her back before when there had been no need for him to do so.
Last year, if he’d simply come forward and told her that he was seeing St. John, she wouldn’t have forbidden him.
It was the deception and sneaking about that hurt her feelings and damaged the trust between them.
“And how long have you been in London?” she asked. Her tone was too sharp, revealing her misgivings. Mr. Walker smoothed his cravat and rocked back onto his heels, as if absorbing the punch of her question.
“Perhaps we should sit,” Philip said, motioning toward the sofa and chairs.
He met Audrey’s eyes with a silent plea to assent. She lowered herself to a sofa cushion, while Philip dutifully took the space beside her. Mr. Walker sat across from them.
“I think we can be frank, Your Grace,” Mr. Walker began. “I am aware that you know who I am and where I have been. I want to assure you that I haven’t come here to stir any unrest.”
“Then why have you come?” She’d softened her voice at least a little. But for this man to be here, with the history and scandal that surely was still attached to him, was a risk. Oddly, Philip, so averse to any risk, any scandal, looked entirely too unperturbed.
“Mr. Walker’s circumstances have recently changed,” Philip said, but she could sense his hesitancy. He looked to his guest with a clear hope that he would elaborate and save him. Mr. Walker acquiesced.
“These last many years, I’ve been at Holliston House, an institution in Wales.
No better than a prison, but I suppose eight years hard labor transmuted to eight years at a mental institution had a few advantages.
Very few, but that is neither here nor there.
I won’t disturb you with any details of such unsavory places. ”
She had not heard of Holliston House before, but those sorts of places, much like Shadewell, were little discussed.
Even Bethlem Hospital, so close to London proper, just across the river, was not a topic of conversation in polite society.
And as Mr. Walker wished to shield her from the realities of the institution, it appeared that Philip had not told him anything about her time at Shadewell. He’d kept his vow to her.
“Eight years?” she said. The numbers didn’t make sense. Philip had been at Cambridge a decade ago. Mr. Walker should have been released before now.
“Yes, well, my father decided against my return.”
Her stomach cinched. “I see.” It wasn’t unlike the power her mother and uncle had held over her. They had paid Shadewell to keep her for two years, and Mr. Walker was correct—it wasn’t unlike a prison.
“Fortunately, the bastard is now dead,” Philip said as he glowered into his drink. Audrey stared at him, agape.
“Philip!”
“I won’t apologize.”
“And you shouldn’t,” Mr. Walker agreed. He wore a resigned grimace.
“My father was not a kind man. He wasn’t a good man.
I’m not sorry he’s gone. Neither is my brother, who, thankfully, is in possession of a heart.
He inherited everything, and that included command over my placement at Holliston House. He brought me home.”