Chapter Sixteen #3
Cautious of the primed weapon in his hand and the pistol at his back, Griffin was slower to leave the carriage. Sir Hadrien was already lifting the knocker when Griffin came abreast of him.
The housekeeper once again made noises about Mrs. Christie being gone from the residence.
Griffin and Sir Hadrien were still ignoring her protests as they mounted the stairs.
Once they reached the top, they followed the sound of another voice, this one issuing orders in tones both impatient and frustrated.
“You are leaving town again, Mrs. Christie?” asked Griffin. There were trunks and valises set out in the bedroom, and it was clear from the activity that they were being packed, not the opposite. “So soon? I was certain you’d only just arrived.”
Alys’s maid appeared from the dressing room with an armload of gowns and came to an abrupt halt when she saw the visitors. Alarmed, she looked to her mistress for direction.
Mrs. Christie snapped, “Those belong in the armoire, Linsley. They can be pressed later. Go! The dressing room.” Her head swung around in Griffin’s direction.
“You mistake the matter, Breckenridge, as you are prone to do. I am coming, not going.” Her gaze swiveled to Sir Hadrien, then back to Griffin.
“This is still my home, and you have no right to assume you are welcome, let alone bring guests.”
Griffin revealed the pistol that had been partially hidden against his thigh.
He held it up without menace, merely to show he had it.
“Have done, Alys. I see what is toward. Your pretense that it is otherwise is insulting. Send your maid out.” He nudged Sir Hadrien forward enough to conceal the pistol as Mrs. Christie called to Linsley and ordered her out of the dressing room and then out of the bedroom altogether.
He tapped the heel of his boot against the door and closed it behind her, then stepped away from Sir Hadrien so the pistol was clearly visible once more.
“Where is she?”
Alys Christie stepped behind one of the open trunks. Her hands played nervously against the lid. When she realized it, she forced herself to hold them still. She appealed to Sir Hadrien. “Do you mean to stand by and do nothing? It will not go well for you, you know.”
Sir Hadrien recalled Griffin’s clear directives and offered no reply.
“Where is she?” Griffin asked again. “Pray, do not dissemble. I promise I will not kill you, Mrs. Christie, but I will make you ugly. Give that a moment to settle in your mind before you answer.”
She stared at him, her features sagging and her complexion going to ash. “By God, but you would do it.”
“Most assuredly. Your answer.”
“Johnny Crocker has her, has both of them.” She pressed her hands together, imploring Griffin when she saw rage darken his eyes to black.
“I swear I didn’t know that he planned to abduct Olivia.
I had no part in it. I only found out an hour ago, by messenger, what he’d done.
It’s about you, Breckenridge. He wants to ruin you.
She is a means to that end, nothing else.
I knew you’d come as soon as you learned of it, knew what you’d think, what you’d do. Why do you suppose I was leaving?”
Griffin let her wind down, made certain she did not intend to say more, then coldly reminded her, “I found my wife. Do you think there is anywhere you could go that I wouldn’t find you?
” He watched her, saw that she knew better than to answer, and continued.
“And do not suppose for a moment that I believe you are blameless here. I know what Crocker is to you and you to him. The desire to ruin me did not necessarily begin with him. Now, does he have them at the hell?”
She nodded. “He wants the ring. Give him the ring, and he’ll release them.”
“I thought he wanted to ruin me.”
“Yes,” she said hastily. “He does. And wants the ring besides.”
Griffin merely cocked an eyebrow at her, then waved his pistol toward the door. “Come. There is room enough for you in Sir Hadrien’s comfortable carriage. By the time we reach Crocker’s hell, you should have the wrinkles in your story neatly pressed.”
Affronted, Mrs. Christie drew her shoulders back. “I’m not going with—”
“Very ugly,” Griffin said calmly. “Children will hide behind their mother’s skirts when they see you.”
“How often does someone come?” Olivia asked. A thin strip of light was visible around the door. She pressed her eye to it and tried to see activity on the other side. After a few minutes of varying her position, she gave up. She turned around and leaned back against the door. “Alastair?”
“Hmm?”
She realized he’d nodded off. “How can you sleep?”
“Always sleep when I’m in my cups. Have to.”
“Not this time. I need you awake.”
“Course you do. Sorry.”
Olivia repeated her question.
“Don’t know precisely,” Alastair said. “Two times a day, perhaps. Can’t tell by what they feed me. Soup mostly. Bread and broth. Drink helps. Fills the empty.”
She understood that well enough. “Do you ever hear anything? This place seems to be so quiet, as if no one is around.”
“Mostly like that, more or less. Voices come and go. No one ever answers me. Sometimes, though, the house fairly rumbles. That’s a bit unpleasant, I can tell you.”
“Rumbles?”
“Mmm. For hours. The bottles shudder, the door vibrates. I can feel it in my bones.”
That’s when Olivia knew. She was familiar with that sensation. “We’re not at Mrs. Christie’s at all, Alastair. We’re in a hell.”
“Too right, we are. In hell.”
Olivia didn’t correct him. At the moment she decided he had described their location better than she.
Mrs. Christie and Sir Hadrien shared the bench across from Griffin. He noticed they edged away from each other, taking up their respective corners as much as the space allowed once the carriage was underway.
Griffin held the pistol on his lap casually pointed toward the door. “How long have you and Crocker been partners?” Griffin asked, nudging Mrs. Christie’s kid slipper with the toe of his boot.
“Partners with Johnny Crocker? I never have.”
Griffin sighed. “I’d hoped you would not be tedious about it. Who is the gentleman villain?”
“Gentleman villain? I have no idea what you mean.”
“We call him the gentleman villain,” he explained, watching her closely.
“Olivia’s abductor. The same man who attacked her in my establishment not long after she arrived.
The same one who tried to enter again through a window and succeeded only in frightening a child.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. Slightly built, but athletic. By Olivia’s account, a natty dresser.”
“I suppose I might know half a dozen gentlemen who largely meet that description.”
“I need the name of only one. The right one, of course.”
Mrs. Christie shrugged her slender shoulders. “I don’t know that any one of them is responsible for the things you said. It would be wrong to give you even a single name.”
“I confess, Alys, that your stand surprises me. I had not thought you cared so much for principle and so little for your face.” Griffin simply lifted the pistol in a way that suggested he meant to backhand her with it.
He barely had any momentum built into the gesture when she threw up her own hands and blurted out a name.
“Burton. Neville Burton.”
Griffin’s attention swung to Sir Hadrien, but there was no recognition of the name in the man’s face that he could see. For himself, Griffin tried to recall if there had ever been an introduction to Burton. The name was wholly unfamiliar. “Tell me about him. Does he work for Crocker?”
“Not in the sense that he’s paid, I shouldn’t imagine.
I don’t know the particulars. I’m not his partner.
I suppose it’s an arrangement like you have with Fairley or Varah.
They step too deeply into debt, and you offer them an opportunity to clean the muck off their shoes in exchange for certain services. ”
Griffin lifted the hem of Mrs. Christie’s gown just enough to make a deliberately insulting examination of her slippers. “What of the muck on your own finely shod feet? How much do you owe Mr. Crocker?”
Mrs. Christie yanked on the folds of her gown and drew her feet back under the hem. She glared at Griffin. “I don’t owe him a farthing.”
“Were you already beholding to him when you came under my protection, or did the debt occur later? I think perhaps it was later, around the time you began to steal from me. I can’t fix the date in my mind without consulting my accounts, but it seems to me it was some four months in the past. Would that be about right? ”
Griffin watched the full line of Mrs. Christie’s mouth flatten.
Her refusal to reply did not bother him in the least. “You stole the ring from me, replaced it with Alastair’s marker, all of it done as if to help your young lover.
Then you set him up to lose it to Crocker.
I imagine Johnny was not entirely happy when you bested him by winning it back, or perhaps it was done of a purpose, and he meant that you should have it as a gift.
He would have believed it was not entirely out of his possession if it was in yours, but then Alastair confounded you both by returning it to me. Have I got it right, Alys?”
She pressed her lips together, offered nothing.