Chapter 20 #2
Dominic looked through the partially glazed panel of the nearest room. The heavy desk and the dull gleam of weighing scales confirmed it was the counting house. Letters filled the pigeonholes. Books and files littered the table.
He was about to move on when he caught a faint shift in the corner—a bundle stirring. Not a bundle. Daphne, bound and gagged on the boards.
He turned to Stanton and Montfort. “Stay on the landing. Close enough to hear.” His eyes moved to the door with light beneath it. “And watch that one.”
Dominic’s hand closed around the handle.
The door was locked.
Montfort tripped the mechanism without making a sound.
Dominic touched his arm, then eased the door open.
She was on the floor, wrists bound behind her, ankles tied, a strip of cloth pulled tight across her mouth. Her eyes found him and softened in an instant.
He knelt beside her, his fingers already at the gag. “I’m here. You’re safe. I’ll wring Irving’s neck when I see him.”
She swallowed hard and drew a breath. “Thank heavens. I feared you’d already checked the warehouses in your hunt for the clerk.”
“We planned to search them after dark.” He should have been working the knots in the rope, but he clasped her nape and kissed her like a man starved of air. “Tell me your aunt and Irving are here.”
She nodded. “Augusta put laudanum in my tea. I let her think it worked because we needed answers. Mr Irving has refused to pay her until I’m aboard the ship. She’s up here waiting.”
It took a second for the words to sink in. “You came here by choice? You could have been killed.”
“No. Mr Irving needs me in India,” she whispered, glancing at the door. “He has no plans to marry me himself. It’s all a charade. He told Aunt Augusta I’m a gift for some commissioner at the East India Company. Something to sweeten the deal abroad.”
A gift. He’d burn the East India Company to the ground before he allowed it.
“Irving won’t get far. We have the clerk.” He clasped her arm, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s likely Irving killed your father. He was the man who threw Harland into the Thames. The clerk had no choice but to assist him.”
He watched her, waiting for a small sign of grief.
Nothing.
“Dominic, I was able to prise information from my aunt.” She paused, her chin dipping slightly before she found his eyes. “The man who hurt your mother and fathered her child … I believe it was my uncle. I’m sorry. You’ll not have your vengeance, not in this life.”
His world went still.
Then the memories came like flashes of lightning: his mother’s silences, her watchfulness, the strain she had carried like penance. He prayed there was a place in hell where they tortured weak men.
“What about your mother?”
“I don’t believe she had an affair with my uncle, more an arrangement to clear my father’s debt. It explains why she hated them both. I only wish she’d confided in me.”
“She was protecting you.”
“But I failed her by not noticing.”
He cupped her face. “You didn’t fail her. Trust me.”
“I know, but the horrible thoughts won’t leave me.”
One rose inside him, one that had stalked him for years, ugly enough that he had never given it a voice. He asked anyway. “Might your mother have deliberately taken poison?”
She stared at him, the question hanging between them.
Stanton appeared in the doorway. “There’s movement next door. What do you want us to do?”
“It will be my aunt,” Daphne said. “Mr Irving told her to make me supper. Hide. All of you. But remain within earshot. I’ll not leave here without knowing the truth.”
“Daphne—”
“Replace the gag. Hurry. My aunt won’t hurt me. She needs me on that ship as much as Mr Irving does.” When he hesitated, she mouthed, “Have faith in me.”
He kissed her once before raising the gag, then ushered his friends onto the landing. “I’ll take the corner by the tall cabinet. The room’s dark enough.”
Stanton nodded and closed the door behind him. Dominic moved without a sound and folded himself into the shadows, back to the wall.
The clatter of a tea tray signalled the arrival of Aunt Augusta. He could see her silhouette through the glass pane, the high collars of her mourning dress shielding her throat where his hands should be.
She put the tray on the floor and turned the key in the lock, not realising it was already open. She tried it again, muttered something under her breath, then took up the tray and entered, setting it on the table by the door.
“Good. You’re awake.” Augusta moved closer, bracing her hands on her hips as she studied her prisoner. “Mr Irving insists you eat. The journey will be taxing. He needs you alive when he reaches port.”
Daphne made a muffled sound in response.
Dominic gritted his teeth.
If Augusta were a man, he’d wring her scrawny neck.
The woman knelt and tugged the gag free. “It’s for the best. We can’t have you gallivanting about London, ruining the family name.”
Daphne laughed. “Between Father and Uncle Samuel, they did a fine job of that. Wickedness is a trait they shared.”
“You mean weakness,” Augusta said, standing.
“No. Weak is a term I’d use for you, Aunt.”
Augusta recoiled, the movement sharp in the gloom. “Insolent mare. I only wish I were going to Bengal with you, to see that smirk wiped off your face.”
“I only wish I were staying here to watch the ton tear you apart when they discover Uncle Samuel used money to buy favours.”
“They won’t. I’ve spent my life hiding Samuel’s indiscretions. Besides, half the ton are addicted to dipping the wick.” Augusta’s cackle vibrated with triumph. “You’ll be abroad. I’ll keep the house in Mayfair. And everyone will presume the missing clerk killed your father.”
Daphne said nothing.
Her aunt took that as a sign she’d won and went to pour the tea and lay sliced ham and cheese on a plate.
“Mr Hawke knows Uncle Samuel fathered his—”
“Be quiet!” Augusta spun, her gaze snapping like a whip. “He loaned money to a woman down on her luck. There’s no trace of it. No proof he did anything but act as mediator.”
Dominic had combed the city and come up empty. Evidence remained as elusive as the villain himself. Now he had a name.
Daphne’s sigh was more a weary rasp. “Mother warned me to trust a man’s actions, not his words. The secret family in Norfolk who inherited Uncle Samuel’s estate tells you everything about his intentions.”
Augusta stood, statue still.
“Mother said you wanted children.” Daphne spoke calmly. “It must have hurt deeply to learn he’d fathered them everywhere.”
Augusta’s snort dripped with bitterness. “Yes, like a knife to the gut, twisting when you thought the wound had healed.”
“After all these years, it still pains you.”
“It won’t when you’re gone.”
“Because you mean to punish me for the terrible way he treated my mother? A woman so desperate to free herself she turned to Mr Moseley.”
“Your mother knew what she was doing. They all did. A weak man doesn’t take much tempting. Unless it’s to bed his own wife.”
It took all his strength not to lunge at the woman. He’d dare her to stand at his mother’s grave and call her the perpetrator.
“You blamed them for—” The words died in Daphne’s throat. “Good Lord. My mother didn’t die of dysentery. You poisoned her.” Her shallow gasp cut through him. “You killed her because you couldn’t stand to see—”
“What did you expect me to do? Eat supper with a woman who bore my husband’s child?”
Daphne’s breath stuttered, but she pressed on. “And Mrs Hawke? You poisoned her too.”
The thud of a door below snapped Augusta’s attention to the landing. “Mr Irving has returned. He’ll be cross if you’ve not eaten. You’ve a long voyage ahead.”
Daphne shifted her legs, fighting against her bindings. “We won’t see each other again after tonight. You may as well admit to killing her. Though now I think on it, perhaps you didn’t. How would you have entered Shadowmere?”
The stairs groaned under a heavy tread, accompanied by humming so tuneless it set Dominic’s teeth on edge.
Augusta crowed with delight at Irving’s arrival. “You’re right. I didn’t kill Mrs Hawke. Your uncle did. He just didn’t know I’d poisoned the sleeping draught he gave her.”
Behind the cabinet, his hands balled into fists. For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to want a woman dead.
“It may have served you better to kill Uncle Samuel.”
Augusta tutted. “One always hopes they’ll change.”
Irving appeared in the doorway. He removed his hat and brushed wisps of hair across his pate. “Good. Good. You’ve brought supper. I don’t suppose there’s any spare?”
Dominic heard the faint cluck of Augusta’s tongue.
“I’ve bread and cheese in the manager’s office, but where’s the clerk? You said you’d return with her. You said I’d be paid once they were safely aboard.”
“I sent my man to collect her from the Waterman’s Arms. He should be here within the hour.”
Dominic smiled to himself. Saint-Clair would welcome the chance to bloody someone.
“The clerk is a woman?” Daphne said.
“One attempting to make her way in a man’s world.” Irving put his hat on the table and stole a slice of ham from the plate. “Life won’t be so … complicated for her in India.”
Daphne gave a light chuckle. “Don’t you just hate it when a plan goes awry?”
“Pay her no mind,” Augusta said. “She’s a little cuckoo from the laudanum.”
Daphne scoffed. “Fine, but expect to leave without her.”
Irving stepped closer, bringing the smell of stewed vegetables with him. “If this is a ploy to delay our departure, it won’t work. We sail with the tide, regardless.”
“Not if Mr Hawke has taken the clerk to Bow Street. He gathered men and visited the tavern late this afternoon. I can almost hear the clack of the watchmen’s rattles closing in.”
Dominic couldn’t see Irving’s face from behind the cabinet. He could only hear the hitch in his breath as he whirled to face Augusta.
“You! You and your damned meddling. If you’d left matters alone, I’d be rounding the coast of Spain by now.”