Chapter 20 #2
But her maid shook her head tightly. “We’ve discussed it and agree. We’d like to stay on with you, Your Grace, if you and the viscount will allow it.”
Audrey stood. “I couldn’t imagine my life without you, Greer. Or without Carrigan. I know the viscount will feel the same. Of course, you will stay with me. You both will.”
Knowing her maid would only stiffen at an embrace, Audrey merely took her hands in hers and squeezed. Greer’s eyes filled, but she sniffed and straightened.
“I’ll fetch you a gown,” she said, back to her usual no nonsense self. “The viscount is waiting for you downstairs.”
Audrey brightened, eager to see Hugh and learn what had happened at Burdick Close after she’d left.
And perhaps even discuss what would happen now.
Her stomach flipped as Greer went to the wardrobe to select a gown, and Audrey sat again, reaching for her hairbrush.
But seeing the letter Greer had brought in, she picked that up instead.
The seal was unfamiliar. A dark burgundy pressed with an olive branch.
She released the wax wafer with her nail and unfolded the letter.
But as soon as she began to read, she knew what the letter was.
With every word, every sentence, a chiming in her ears grew louder.
Audrey couldn’t breathe. She tried to stand, but her knees went soft, and she came down again, into the chair.
Her elbow knocked something aside with a clatter.
“Your Grace?”
Audrey turned to her maid. “Bring Lord Neatham at once.”
Hugh paced the drawing room, oddly nervous. The day had been no better than one belched up from hell, and yet he wasn’t tired in the least.
After leaving Bow Street, he’d stopped briefly at his home to change before setting out for Violet House.
He had needed to see Audrey. Needed to be certain she was well.
Everything had unraveled so quickly after Abbey had been taken into custody, his injuries severe from the bullet in his side.
He was alive, for now. If the bullet wound didn’t kill him, once convicted of the murders, he would surely swing. Rightfully so.
With Abbey and his henchmen in custody, the Sanctuary was shuttered.
But what of its members? In their search of Abbey’s belongings, Bow Street might find a list of names.
They would be questioned, of course, but belonging to a club wasn’t a crime in and of itself.
And what was to stop someone from forming another society like the Sanctuary?
“Where there is one, there is bound to be another,” Sir Gabriel had said when Hugh posed the same question to the magistrate. “We won’t be able to dismantle them all.”
Hugh could only hope that the names of its members might find their way into a newspaper article, bringing them exposure and shame. But that wasn’t for him to decide.
Neither was Stevens’s fate.
While the officer had claimed to have never taken part in any of the rituals, he’d admitted that protecting the Sanctuary had been lucrative.
When Lord Stromburg and Madame Lee had come to Bow Street, it had been pure luck that Stevens was on duty and able to take the complaint about Opal.
He’d never filed it, but instead, went to Abbey, who in turn had silenced the pair of them.
And when Harlan Givens came to Bow Street claiming to know something more about the bodies found at Vauxhall, Officer Tyne had brought him on as an informant.
Givens was to learn as much as he could about this Sanctuary that he’d heard of through the Red Lotus.
Stevens had, of course, tipped Abbey off to that as well.
As for Comstock, the constables that Miss Lavinia Clark mentioned had indeed filed the report of his death; Stevens, however, pulled the record and misfiled it to keep the news from ever reaching Tyne or Sir Gabriel.
The Bow Street officer would lose his post, but since he hadn’t done the murders, he would likely only spend a little time behind bars. Of course, Newgate wouldn’t be friendly to a former officer of the law.
“Let it be a lesson to any officer thinking of doing the same,” Sir Gabriel had said, feeling no pity for the man.
Hugh crossed the drawing room at Violet House for what might have been the fiftieth time. He’d already proposed to Audrey, and she’d already accepted, but now… Now it was time to make arrangements. His hands began to sweat. It was absurd. It was a wedding. Not a march to the gallows.
The door to the drawing room opened, and Greer appeared, her eyes slightly wild.
“Her Grace needs you, my lord,” she said, breathless.
She started away immediately, and Hugh followed.
“What is it?” he asked, taking the stairs after Greer, his pulse beginning to pound. “Is she hurt?”
“No, my lord,” she replied, rushing through the hall upstairs. “Hurry.”
His mind reeled as Greer led him into a bedchamber, where he saw Audrey in her banyan robe, pacing the carpet.
Her hair was loose and damp; she looked to have come straight from a bath.
Clenched in her hand was a sheet of paper.
She turned to Hugh, and he saw that her cheeks were wet, her eyes glistening.
“Audrey? Christ, what has happened?”
She held up the paper, creased in the fashion of a letter folded for posting. He could see handwriting through the thin cotton. “It is him,” she whispered.
Hugh stared at the letter again as a strange weight settled over him. His pulse skipped, and it throbbed an echo in his ears. Philip. He’d told Audrey he would write to her one day. And it seemed he had. Dread poured through Hugh as he forced himself to move toward her, his legs heavy.
“What does it say?”
That he was coming back? That he’d changed his mind? Even as the instant fears fed into Hugh’s mind, he knew it couldn’t be so. Philip could not return. In his heart, Hugh knew that. But Audrey’s tear-dampened cheeks worried him.
Greer left the room, shutting the door behind her, and Audrey took a seat on the divan at the foot of her bed. Hugh lowered himself rigidly next to her.
“Will you read it to me?” he asked.
She nodded, the motion rough and shuddering. “Dearest Audrey,” she began, her voice constricted. She coughed and started again:
Dearest Audrey,
I have started this promised letter to you a dozen times, and a dozen times I’ve thrown it to the fire, questioning if it should be sent.
But when I realized it had been a year—a full year—I knew I must complete it.
By now, the person I suspected you loved, and who loved you, will have asked for your hand.
Knowing you, before accepting, you will have confessed to him everything.
While I cannot claim to know him well, I do believe he is a man of honor.
He will keep your confidence. So, I suppose this letter is to you both.
Let me start by saying I am sorry. For the burden I’ve placed upon you, for my selfishness, for the guilt you have undoubtedly shouldered this last year.
You’ve unwillingly given me the greatest gift I will ever receive: the chance to be who I want to be, and with whom I want to be with.
In return, I can only assuage my conscience by hoping that I have given you the same gift.
Do not be afraid to open it, my darling.
This will be the last you hear from me. When this letter reaches you, we will already be crossing the ocean for a distant corner of the globe.
There, we will become who we were always meant to be—for however long a time we have left together.
I still struggle with my malaise, and though the illness may be advancing, I plan to keep fighting.
You, too, have your own life to live and fight for, and my deepest hope is that it be full and happy and long.
Goodbye my dearest friend. I will forever carry you in my heart.
Audrey lowered the letter to her lap. Hugh’s throat cinched tight. His eyes burned. He’d never liked Philip Sinclair. He’d been arrogant and aloof, privileged and, at times, churlish. On more than one occasion, he had been tempted to drive his fist into the man’s chin.
And then, he’d left. He’d given up his life, faked his death, and as his letter had just acknowledged, left Audrey to pick up the pieces.
He’d expected her to uphold a lie that had caused grief for people she cared for, and that had caused her no shortage of guilt.
For that alone, Hugh had wanted to track him down on the Continent and put him in the ground, in truth.
And yet, had the duke not been a selfish prig and abandoned his life, Hugh would not be here, with the woman he loved. He would still be stuck loving a married woman with no hope of ever being able to declare himself. Philip’s decision had damned them as much as it had freed them.
“He’s gone,” Audrey whispered, her voice cracking. “This whole year, I tried so hard to convince myself he would never return, but I always feared maybe, one day… But I can feel it now, that certainty. He is gone.”
Hugh hooked her hip with his arm and brought her against his side.
He put his lips to the wet, fragrant crown of her head.
It had been his lasting worry too. But as he took the letter from her hand and read it again, the worry he’d lived with, that had become a part of him, dissipated. He felt lighter than he had in months.
“I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad or relieved,” Audrey said as she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He folded the letter and brought her closer.
“I think all three are warranted.”
She looked up, her eyes a blue so clear and vibrant, they pierced him. “I’m ready.”
“Ready?”
“To open my gift, like Philip said.”
Hugh kissed her brow. Then, he reached into his waistcoat pocket. “I’ve been carrying this around, intending to give it to you, but the timing was never quite right.”
Audrey sat up straight, her lips falling open before curving into a radiant smile.
Hugh slid from the divan, his knees hitting the carpet as he came to kneel before her. He held up the thin gold band, studded with a brilliant mine-cut sapphire.
“Marry me,” he whispered.
She laughed. “I’ve already said yes.”
“I want to hear you say it again. Every day for the rest of our lives would suffice.”
He took her hand, and the ring glided smoothly into place on her finger. When Hugh looked up, she wasn’t staring at the ring. She was watching him, her eyes brimming.
“Yes. Yes, to every day for the rest of our lives.”
When she leaned down to press her lips to his, Hugh did something he never imagined he would ever do: He thanked Philip Sinclair, the late Duke of Fournier.