Chapter 20 #2
“But you did give him orders to turn over the wrong solicitor’s offices, and then, when you realized your mistake, homed in on Potridge’s offices.
But the duchess got there first, so your man attacked her and took the documents regarding April Barlow.
” The duchess. Hugh’s focus diverted. “Where is she? The Duchess of Fournier was to call on you.”
Lady Neatham scowled. “I have not seen her.”
“Enough about the duchess. Tell me who this April Barlow chit is and what documents you refer to,” Barty commanded.
Time was running thin. Kensington Square wasn’t far from Hyde Park, and there would be a number of foot patrolmen covering the area. It wouldn’t take long for the dispatched footman to find one and bring him back. Hugh didn’t have long. He needed to be blunt.
“April Barlow is our father’s first wife,” Hugh said, expelling the truth like gaseous air that had been trapped in his lungs. “She is my mother.”
Disbelief surged across the viscount’s face, quickly followed by understanding. Barty was a lot of things, but never a simpleton. He could calculate and connive with the best of them. Though, perhaps not so thoroughly as his wife.
“Impossible,” he breathed. “You’re a bastard. Nanny Catherine was your mother.”
Hugh could sympathize with the denial. He had felt an abundance of it himself.
“Nanny Catherine was hired to be my mother. I was given to her when I was six months of age, when Miss Barlow gave me up. She left me, the same way she left our father. They had eloped—”
“Leave,” the viscountess said, though she wasn’t speaking to Hugh. She looked past him, to the servants crowding the top of the stairs and the landing behind him. “All of you, go! Leave us.”
The footmen and maids did as they were bid when the viscount did not refute his wife’s command, though surely the butler would stand his post at the bottom of the stairs, awaiting the arrival of the police.
“Shoot him, Bartholomew,” the viscountess said once they were alone, her voice shaking. “He’s lying. He’s dangerous!”
“In many ways, I am. I could take everything from you,” Hugh said. “But I’m not lying. And I’m not a killer. Barty, call off the police. I didn’t kill Eloisa. Let’s talk this through.”
“There is nothing to talk through!” Lady Neatham’s eyes gleamed with frustrated tears “Do you know what this means, Bartholomew? You are illegitimate. You, Eloisa, Thomas, all of you!”
“Lila.” Barty sounded peculiarly calm, and his grip on the pistol was firm again. He stared balefully at Hugh. “Was there an annulment?”
With a shake of his head, Barty’s eyes dulled another degree.
Lady Neatham rushed to her husband’s side, suddenly pleading with him.
“Aunt Mary told me there was no proof, that your mother could never find it, but then the documents Mr. Felix brought me, they stated this horrible man’s birth date,” she said, gesticulating toward Hugh, “and the agreements between your father and Miss Barlow and Catherine Marsden. But I’ve burned them.
” She clutched at his useless arm, tucked in the sling.
“No one ever need know. Think of our children. Think of their futures! Shoot him!”
Barty’s face, his body, had become a block of wood.
“Lady Neatham, you are backed into a corner,” Hugh said. “Bow Street’s chief magistrate already knows everything. He is fetching the certificate of marriage as we speak. Proof of the late viscount’s first marriage will soon be in hand, if it is not already.”
“So you can take my title,” Barty said softly.
“To hell with your title!” Hugh rasped. “This is about Eloisa. She wanted April Barlow found, she wanted the truth exposed so you would be ruined. The truth is motive for someone who would benefit from silencing her.”
He held the viscountess’s glare. Panic and fear had narrowed her pupils to pinpricks. She gaped as his implication settled.
“I didn’t kill her! I’ve already told you.
I had no idea she was even in London until you stormed in here, shouting to Bartholomew about it.
” She looked between Hugh and Barty, seeking their belief.
“It is true! When you mentioned April Barlow, I knew my aunt’s warning had merit.
I had to find and destroy any evidence there might be, but I would never have harmed Eloisa.
I didn’t even hire Mr. Felix until the following day! ”
She wasn’t lying. The beseeching expression, the rattled pleading…Hugh had born witness to many pleas like it before. The guilty made excuses for their behavior. The innocent pleaded with those around them to believe them.
That meant Mr. Felix couldn’t have been the man who had visited April Barlow at the Field Street finishing school, days before the murder.
He hadn’t been the one to threaten to send both “Susan Smith” and the headmistress to the bottom of the Thames.
That man had not so much as mentioned the secret marriage.
Because he had not known to. He’d been there to simply keep Eloisa and her child out of London. A child Barty knew had not died.
And if Barty knew, so did Thomas.
Hugh had thought Eloisa’s nervousness the day she’d visited his home on Bedford Street was due to Barty discovering she was in town. But what if it had not been her elder brother she was hiding from?
The crackling storm of disgust and hatred roiled in Hugh’s stomach anew as he met Barty’s level stare.
“Where is Thomas?” Hugh’s voice didn’t sound like his own, but like it had clawed its way up from under the heavy rubble of buried secrets. Gasping for air. For answers.
A pea whistle in the distance reached them on the landing, and the muzzle of the muff pistol drifted to the side as Barty’s expression softened. Then, it snapped back into alignment with Hugh’s chest. “I can’t let you.”
“You know it was him,” Hugh said as more whistles sounded. “You knew back then too. You knew what he’d done. And you turned it on me then, just as you’ve done now.”
Barty shook his head. “I have to protect my family.”
An amalgamation of pity and hatred nearly consumed Hugh as the full truth came clear.
“Bartholomew,” the viscountess said, clutching at him again. “Do it. You are within your rights. He broke in here, tried to attack us.”
He’d stood in Barty’s line of fire before, the last time he’d lied to cover up Thomas’s offenses. He would have gladly killed Hugh to conceal his brother’s warped conduct. Now, Hugh waited for the flash of gunpowder, the report of the pistol.
But the viscount lowered his arm, and Hugh understood.
He turned and ran from the landing. The servant’s stairwell wasn’t far, and he could take it to the side entrance to the house.
Behind him, the viscountess screamed. His hand was on the knob to the servant’s stairwell when a vase on a pedestal table just behind him exploded into shards.
He took the steps like a storm wind, sailing down without drawing breath, grateful the layout of the house was still engrained in his mind.
Only a few maids screeched and jumped aside as he ran to the servant’s entrance and burst outside, into the mews.
He ran toward the head of the mews. A clamor was building out front of Neatham House, and as he reached the side street that fed into square, Hugh paused.
There was nothing for it—he’d have to leave Fournier’s horse behind.
A curricle clattered past the head of the mews and Hugh pulled back, into the shadows. But not fast enough. The driver whistled to the horses and brought them to shuddering halt.
“Mister Hugh!” Sir’s rasping whisper came from the stopped curricle.
“Goddamn it, Marsden, get in the bloody rig!” Thornton.
Hugh scurried over and hauled himself up, Thornton slapping the reins and tossing him practically into Sir’s lap.
“What in Hades possessed you to go to Neatham House again, you idiot?” Thornton said as he made a tight turn to avoid the square.
Hugh grabbed Sir’s coat collar. “You said the duchess came here.”
“She did!” The boy peeled Hugh’s fingers from his collar. “Said she was having Carrigan bring her.”
“I think we were spotted.” Thornton twisted around to peer behind them. Sure enough, pea whistles chorused behind them in the vicinity of the square.
“Well then, drive faster,” Sir said.
“The park.” Hugh pointed toward the gate into Hyde Park. “We’ll lose them in there.”
It was dark now, and the moon not yet risen fully. Gas lamps lit some of the paths and lanes near the edges of the park, but nothing of the interior. One could get lost in there at night.
Hugh stilled, the clatter of Thornton’s rig dissolving behind a thought. Clear across the park, was Mayfair and the Curzon Gate. It was entirely likely Carrigan had come through the park, on his way to Kensington Square.
“Turn off the King’s Road at your first chance,” Hugh said.
“Yes, there are too many lamps,” Thornton agreed.
“That’s not the only reason,” Hugh said, intuition prickling his skin. “She is here, in the park. Something is wrong.”