Chapter 28
“Evelina, dear, please come home,” her aunt tried to coax her. “You know you will always have your home with us. We can begin the annulment process with this Duke of yours, and you will be free from his grasping clutches.”
Setting her cup down in Victoria’s tearoom, Ellie considered the best way to address her aunt. Somehow, her aunt had caught wind of her and Dorian’s rift a week ago and was now trying to persuade her back to her prison.
“Aunt Constance,” Ellie began. “I cannot do that. No, I will not do that, and I suspect you know why.”
Nervously, her aunt fixed her turban. “I—I am afraid I don’t.”
Not bothering to beat around the bush, she continued, “You and Uncle Patrick lied to me, kept me in willful ignorance about my father… to steal the inheritance he’d left behind for me. You made me believe he’d died a pauper and that I was indebted to you for the rest of my life.
“You made sure to train me in every discipline so I was prime attraction to wealthy suitors who would not mind co-conspiring in your plan and splitting it,” she said. “I know about how Papa and Grandpapa did not give you the money you wanted from them. You and Uncle will not get it from me either.”
Her aunt paled. “E-Ellie, you must understand, we did not do anything to hurt you, we only felt a good sum was owed to us be-because we raised you...”
“All of five hundred thousand?” Ellie asked flatly.
“No, Aunt. That is not owed to you. But I was not raised to be heartless either.” She slid a stack of notes to the Langford matriarch.
“That is five thousand pounds. It should be more than enough to placate you and have it be so I never have to see you .”
The unholy delight that lit up her aunt’s face told her Dorian was right about her relatives being fortune hunters. “I shall be staying at Victoria’s for a while, and Harriet will be with me as well. Victoria is going to use her social cache to introduce her to the ton, as you have long so hoped.”
“Evelina—”
“Please stop, Aunt,” she sighed heavily. “There will not be any annulment on my part. I am not separating from my husband either, as when I said my vows, I meant them.”
She held back the tremble in her words as she did not know if she believed that truth anymore. Still, she had to not crack under the pressure her aunt was putting on her.
“You may leave now,” Ellie finished coolly.
The wrinkles in her aunt's face deepened as her lips ticked down. “Evelina, please understand that I never meant to hurt you. I only wanted to prepare you for the world you would eventually enter.”
And bless yourself along the way.
“That may be so, Aunt Constance. But you went about it in the worst way.”
When her aunt finally took her leave, Ellie refilled her tea and waited until Victoria entered the room. Her friend took one look at her, pouted, and then made her cup to join Ellie.
“How bad did it go?”
“As bad as cutting off a gangrenous limb,” Ellie sighed. “It did not feel good to look into the eyes of a woman I trusted all my life, knowing that there was only ever to be a single outcome in our relationship.”
“I can only imagine,” Victoria commiserated. “Aside from your aunt, what are you planning to do about your husband?”
“My aunt was pushing me for an annulment,” she began, “but I am not sure if that is how I want it to go. I still love him… but the confusion and deceit, I—I feel it might be hard to trust him at all after this. The marriage was built on lies, how can it possibly recover from there?”
“Do you think he wants to let you go?” Victoria asked.
“I… I don’t know.” She reached for a sugar square and added it to her tea. “I feel like his silence means he does.”
“And if he sends you the papers?”
“I—” she swallowed, “I may just sign them.”
Huddled into a dark corner of White’s, Dorian traced his forefinger over the rim of his glass. He was not sure how long he had been in the club—or how many glasses of brandy he’d drunk—as all he could do was think back to the night at the teahouse.
Evelina’s pained face still stayed with him during his waking hours and haunted him in his dreams. He’d seen some pretty horrible things in the streets, death and pain and poverty, but the hurt she had felt that night scarred his heart.
“You’re here again,” Benedict’s sigh came as he joined Dorian in the corner. “How many have you had?”
Throwing back the rest of the drink, Dorian replied, “Hardly enough.”
“I can smell brandy on your breath from a mile away,” Benedict said. “If you dare walk out of here, I’ll be carrying you out in a wheelbarrow. Beaumont, you cannot keep doing this to yourself, you cannot keep wallowing in your grief and drinking it away.
“You’ll kill yourself doing it, and I cannot in good conscience stand by and watch it all happen.”
“There is no alternative,” Dorian muttered. “I lost her.”
“And now you’re losing yourself,” Benedict pressed. “You need to regain both.”
“How?” Dorian roared, then lowered his voice.
He burned to tell her everything. To unburden himself of the deception, to beg her forgiveness, and start afresh, with no lies between them.
But he feared she would not understand. “How in god’s name am I going to do that when I have given her every reason to never trust me again?
“Start with this,” Benedict put in, sliding a paper across the table to Dorian. “You jumped into the battle to save me and Harriet, so I jumped into the battle to save you too.”
Squinting at the paper, Dorian asked, “What is this?”
“On a hunch, I went to your man-of-business and frankly lied about you asking me to be your proxy. I told him we needed an audit of all your holdings and expenses. Then I cross-referenced the unknown accounts with my father’s from fifteen years ago.
“As expected, your uncle had hidden his trail fairly well. However, my father did not. That is how a friend of mine at the bank was able to dig into your uncle’s finances through the estate’s accounts,” his old friend put in. “And the money he funnels to Sterling and vice versa.”
“You did what?” Dorian blinked. “Is that not illegal?”
“Highly,” Benedict shrugged. “But only you and I know that. You can take that to the authorities and get cause to search his home and business. I am sure you can find a lead there.”
“I already have one,” Dorian said. “I just didn’t know how to utilize it.”
“We can go this evening if you want,” Benedict offered. “But you need to sober up first, old boy.”
Dropping the paper, Dorian called for some water and coffee, and a faint imagination of how he could possibly win Evelina back to him began to slither through his mind. But first things first—he needed to clean up the last few smears in his life.
“Have… have you seen Evelina lately?” he hesitantly asked then.
“I have,” Benedict nodded. “And she looks no better than you do, old pal. I’d advise you to grovel and beg for her forgiveness when you do go to her.”
“No,” Dorian said. “This time, I’ll need her to come to me.”
Frowning, Benedict asked, “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” Dorian said as the coffee was delivered. “I hope to God it works, though.”
Three hours later, Dorian, with too much perverse delight, ran the tip of a knife down the middle of the painting in Sterling’s study. It felt even better as Sterling was behind him, unable to do a thing.
He felt the man’s scalding eyes on the back of his neck as he peeled the canvas down. True to Ellie’s word, a safe was embedded in the wall behind.
“That was not necessary,” Sterling growled.
He came forward and, reaching behind the painting, clicked some hidden mechanism behind the frame. The safe swung open, giving clear access to the iron box concealed in the wall.
“The key, your lordship?” One of the constables asked.
Plucking a key from a drawer, Sterling bitterly handed it over, and Dorian opened the iron box.
He pulled out papers from the bottom and rifled through them, finding a set of letters, all of them with his uncle’s spidery handwriting.
One in particular was the order of the attack upon Benedict and Harriet at Vauxhall.
“Spitalfields,” Dorian said emptily. “All this time, he was hiding in plain sight?”
“Shall we arrest this one, Your Grace?” the constable asked.
“Yes,” Dorian said, fixing his attention back on Sterling. “Charge him with collusion for murder.”
At his order, the constables flanked a wide-eyed Sterling, as he raised his hands and bellowed, “Beaumont! Even after all I’ve done for you!?”
Dorian turned away from his old mentor as the men fixed irons on him. “Now, to find my uncle.”
Dorian lingered at Carrington’s study a little longer after the constables had left, the broken frame of the painting hanging like a shroud on the wall. The safe still gaped open behind it, empty now, as if exorcised of its secrets.
The letter crumpled slightly in his fist, the ink of his uncle’s looping scrawl catching the lamplight.
Spitalfields. It would be easy to go. Easier still to take one of the knives laid neatly in the drawer, hunt Edgar Beaumont down in the shadows, and do what justice had failed to do nearly fifteen years ago.
His blood, once hot with the thrill of vengeance, now simmered low and tired.
This chase had stolen too much from him.
It had poisoned his nights, soured his friendships, and turned him cold when he should have been kind.
He had nearly destroyed his marriage before it had begun, all because he couldn't let go of the past.
The thought of Ellie—her steady eyes, her fierce loyalty, her raw pain—clenched tighter around his chest than any fury ever had.
“Is that him?” Benedict’s voice cut through the silence, quiet but steady.
Dorian glanced over his shoulder. Benedict stood in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes dark with a calm patience that had once been Dorian’s compass. He had lost what could have been a beautiful friendship in his pursuit of vengeance. And for what?
“Yes,” Dorian said simply. “He’s been under my nose the entire time.”
Benedict approached slowly, gaze passing over the gutted room, the constables milling in the hall, and finally the letter in Dorian’s hand. “So what now?” he asked.
Dorian exhaled slowly, then took the letter, walked past Benedict, and handed it to the last constable lingering at the corridor outside Sterling’s study.
“You’ll find him in Spitalfields,” Dorian said, voice even. “Address is there. Name is Edgar Beaumont. This letter details his involvement in the Vauxhall attack and a list of his other crimes. I want him arrested. But I won’t be the one to see it through.”
The constable blinked. “Your Grace, are you certain?”
Dorian nodded once. “If the law is worth anything at all, let it prove itself now.”
And just like that, it was over.
He walked out of Sterling’s study without another glance, the heavy door clicking shut behind him.
The storm he’d carried inside him alone for years had quieted.
For the first time in a long while, the path ahead didn’t smell of blood or smoke.
And this time, he had a good friend standing beside him through it all.
Let the law have the last word. He was done chasing ghosts.
Now, it was time to close the final chapter of his old life.
Two days later, Ellie was having lunch with Harriet at the Eastbrook Manor drawing room when a footman entered with a sealed folio. “Your Grace, this was sent from Duke Wolfthorne’s estate.”
“Dorian?” she questioned while taking the folio.
Moving the plates away, she opened the folio to see two sets of papers. The one to the left was a deed to a horse breeding service. “What in heaven's is this?”
Taking the deed, she looked over and found a long trail of owners. “Stablewood Acres…”
Why did that name sound so familiar?
“Stablewood Acres…. Stablewood Acres…” Ellie mulled over it, trying to chase the elusive memory constantly flitting out of reach.
Then, like a match in a dark house, it sprang to the forefront.
“The Stablewood Frampton Acres. Named after Grandpapa’s house in the highlands. It… it belonged to my father…”
Harriet read aloud the lines on the footer, “Owned by Peregrine Frampton, transferred to Adam Lakewood, Knight Harcourt, purchased by Dorian Beaumont, Duke of Wolfthorne, for current owner, Evelina Beaumont, neé Frampton.”
Ellie fell stunned, “He… He bought my father’s old business for me?”
“Egad,” Harriet gasped. “What is the other paper?”
Pulling that one out quickly, Ellie saw that it was an order for marriage annulment, and at the bottom, it was signed already—and her heart sank. Was he so ready to give up on this marriage?
Another paper was tucked to the side of it, and she read, “Dear Evelina, I have considered our options, and I want to present you with all of them.
I have finally fulfilled my last duty to you and the true reason behind our hasty marriage.
If you wish to dissolve our marriage, you simply need sign the order and hand it to the archbishop.
If you do not, and if there is any love left for me in your heart... then please read on.
My heart is as broken in two, Evelina, and I cannot blame anyone but myself. In my attempts to shield you from the true horrors of your world, I forgot to show you the delights it could hold as well.
If you do decide to forgive me, I will be on The Magdalene tomorrow evening to set sail for Europe with the tickets Wellington gave us for our honeymoon. If you do not join me, I will go alone and accept that our marriage is done. Yours in hope, Dorian.”
Harriet blinked. “What do you plan on doing?”
Dropping the letter, Ellie shook her head, “I do not know yet.”
“Ellie, I think you should see what he has to say,” Harriet said. “You are suffering, and Victoria and I see it as clear as day. I suspect you know it too. I know you love him, maybe you can give him a second chance, or at the very least seek closure?”
Staring at the folio, and the deed, a piece of paper that effectively made her one of the richest women in London, she felt her heart burn with hurt. “I—I… don’t know. Do I want to risk my heart again or let him go?”