Chapter 6 #2
“A gaming hell in Temple. These lockets are given out as tokens.” Hugh flipped the locket, exposing a flat brass backing. He slid the backing aside on a miniscule hinge. “It’s for storing opium,” he explained.
“Opium,” she murmured, staring at the locket. Doubt swept over her expression before it hardened again. She took the locket back, and Hugh let it go. He had no need for it. “So, she was a member of this gaming hell.”
“Women cannot be members,” Hugh replied. “They can accompany members, however, and are permitted with these tokens. You’re aware of what a gaming hell is?”
Again, she slammed him with a look of derision. “I’m not a complete simpleton, Mr. Marsden. I am aware men have their clubs.”
“Gaming hells are not gentleman’s clubs,” he said.
She turned to show interest in a painting on the wall and slipped the locket inside her reticule. He rolled his eyes. Not as smoothly done as she believed.
“The demimonde is not allowed entry at White’s or Brooks’s, but they are at most pleasure dens,” he went on, making no indication that he’d seen her little sleight of hand. “I assume your husband has a membership to White’s?”
The gentleman’s club ranked as the best in London, reserved for only the most illustrious of ton. The Duke of Fournier had been among that ilk. Until two days ago. Now, Hugh wondered if the duke’s membership had been pulled.
“Yes, but he prefers Brooks’s,” the duchess said.
“I can’t imagine he’d have shared with you whether he belonged to any hells like the Seven Sins.”
“My husband is not the gambling sort.”
Just as he was not the philandering sort, as she so staunchly believed. The woman was either ignorant to a fault or playacting as astutely as the actresses at the Theatre Royal.
“As you say.” He felt the bedroom grow smaller as the duchess strolled toward the front windows overlooking Yarrow Street.
The fact that he was alone in a bedroom with a duchess was not lost on him.
The scandal, should anyone stumble across them in this moment, would damage her reputation, and likely earn him an ear blistering from the magistrate.
Perhaps a suspension. Then again, the house was closed up, the previous resident deceased.
No one would find the pair of them here.
Unless someone spotted the lady’s rather recognizable brougham parked out front.
“You haven’t yet answered my other question, Your Grace.”
She peered at him, the derision not yet fully gone from her eyes. “What question is that?”
“Your lock picking prowess,” he replied. “You don’t strike me as a typical cracksman.”
She’d worked smoothly and quickly; she’d done this before.
“Ladies must be accomplished in all manner of subjects, Mr. Marsden,” she replied lightly.
The huff of laughter was out of him before he could stifle it. Her sheer gall kept knocking his feet out from under him. “Forgive me, I thought that meant excelling at languages and painting landscapes.”
“I’ve never been very adept with landscapes.” She moved around the end of the four-poster and toward the door. “I’ll bid you good day.”
Hugh reached the door before she could and held the edge, blocking the corridor. “How did you learn Miss Lovejoy lived here? Don’t lie to me. After last night, Bernadetto would have nothing to do with you. Did your husband give you the address?”
The duchess pulled up short. A muscle in her jaw tensed. Her fair complexion revealed every emotion rippling just under the surface. Right now, it was a curious combination of impatience and panic.
“Do you plan to share every detail of your investigation with me?” she asked.
What investigation? he wanted to reply but thought better of it. She was already so easy to provoke, and she was right about needing to leave the premises.
“Of course not.”
“Then you cannot fault me for keeping certain details of my own investigation private,” she said. “Now, please step aside, sir.”
He stalled a moment longer. She stood close enough for her rosewater scent to push up into his senses.
The duchess might have been small in stature, coming barely to Hugh’s chin, but she was no waif.
The cloak she wore obscured womanly curves, and for a weak moment, he wondered what kind of fool the duke was to keep a mistress when he was so newly wed to this woman.
Then again, he knew firsthand how much of a virago she was.
“Duchesses of the realm do not conduct criminal investigations,” Hugh said.
They sip tea, discuss fashion, gossip about their friends, and willingly forget the other ninety percent of poor, working-class men and women in London.
Granted, it had been several years since Hugh had lived within the Viscount Neatham’s household, but he highly doubted it was enough time for the women and men of the ton to develop moral consciences that extended beyond their own set.
The duchess shrugged off any hesitation at being penned in by Hugh’s imposing figure blocking the door, and stepped forward to within a single hand span of his chest.
“I think you’ll learn that duchesses…” she said as she came even closer, a scant inch separating her body and his, “…can do whatever they please.”
With a clenched jaw, he stepped aside. Hugh watched the duchess as she strode toward the stairwell. He let out a breath as soon as she disappeared from view, and then started after her.
“You’ve succeeded in one thing, Your Grace.”
“What might that be?” Her voice drifted from below.
“You’ve drawn my attention away from your husband’s involvement in Miss Lovejoy’s murder.”
When Hugh turned down the next bend in the stairs, he saw the lady at the base, staring up at him. Hope glittered in her eyes, alongside caution.
“I found him with the murder weapon, near the body, covered in blood. He was unresponsive, calling out your name, might I add. Audrey,” he said, testing the name on his tongue.
It was impolite not using her title, though truly nothing about this situation could be deemed polite or proper.
She parted her lips but quickly sealed them again.
“Audrey, Audrey. Where were you that night?”
He reached the bottom step and they stood, crowded on the landing. The foyer was just below, the rest of the house quiet and sleeping, like a tightly wrapped chrysalis.
“At Violet House.” Her voice cracked with astonishment. She clearly hadn’t expected Hugh to question her.
“Who saw you there?”
“My maid. My butler. Everyone. Why are you asking me these questions?”
He wouldn’t relent. Hell, he should have called her bluff and stood his ground upstairs in the bedroom doorway. The moment her body touched his, she would have backed down. “A husband would want to protect his wife. Perhaps that is why he refuses to answer any of my questions.”
Stunned rage flooded her eyes and a second blush rose upon her cheeks. “You suggest that I had something to do with her murder?”
“Jealousy is a strong motive.”
He was the one bluffing now. The duchess would not have been able to stab the victim as many times, or as brutally, as the true murderer had. But if a little suspicion thrown her way were to put her off from her “investigation,” the cheap accusation would be worth it.
“You are despicable.” She shoved past him and took the rest of the steps at a near run.
Hugh followed. “Last year, one of my colleagues arrested a viscount for public indecency.”
The duchess threw him a glance over her shoulder. “What does Lord Umbridge’s arrest have to do with anything?”
It was no surprise she had heard of the drunken old man’s arrest. His trousers and smalls had still been around his ankles when he’d been clapped in irons by one of the horse patrolmen out on Picadilly Circus.
“By dawn the following day, a dozen lords were frothing at the bit for Umbridge to be released. The viscount, they claimed, should not be made to suffer the punishments of common men.”
The lady sighed. “Do get on with your point, Mr. Marsden. My driver is waiting.”
Her driver would wait all day if she bid him to. Such was the world she lived in. Everything right there at her fingertips.
“You should know that not one member of your set, beyond Lord Herrick, has come up in arms against our holding the duke,” Hugh said. “He is a leper among his peers, and when his trial is heard by the House of Lords, I would not count on much support from those you call friends.”
It was a cruel statement. Hugh saw the flash of injury it caused, and the touch of guilt in his gut doubled. But then she exhaled and reached for the front door handle.
“You’ve made up your mind about me and about Philip.
” A few warbling syllables were the only indication that she was affected at all.
That, and the fact that she’d addressed her husband familiarly, without his title.
“But the truth is you know nothing of my life, or what I am capable of. Not what my title is capable of, but me, Audrey Sinclair.” She turned the doorknob and the noise from Yarrow Street poured inside the muffled home.
“If you wish to prove your end of the investigation, Mr. Marsden, I suggest doing more than resting on your laurels. One can so easily become lazy and fat with success that they never see their opposition until it bests them.”
And with that, she stepped outside and slammed the door in Hugh’s face.
He waited, his ears ringing, until the sound of her carriage pulled away. The woman had the tongue of a viper, and Hugh despised the way it left him feeling turned around and dizzy. The very moment he’d felt he had the upper hand, she’d yanked it away from him again.
As he descended the steps to the pavements, leaving Miss Lovejoy’s mausoleum of a home, he realized the duchess hadn’t been bluffing.
She would keep up her investigation until she found what she was looking for, or until she pushed too far and got into trouble.
He was willing to bet the latter would come about first.