Chapter 11 #2
“Do you have the charred paper the maid found in Miss Bellingham’s fireplace?” The timing seemed too convenient. Someone had plucked it from the grate before the flames could finish the job.
“Here.” She set Howden’s letter aside, drew the delicate scrap from inside her glove, and opened it with care.
His gaze shifted to the letter addressed to her. Howden wrote with a woman’s flourish and must have dug deep to find an ounce of sentiment.
“Is any of it legible?” he asked when she turned the charred piece over in her hand. “Is there a clue as to why Miss Bellingham burned it in the grate?”
She worried her lip. “I don’t think she wrote this. I think Parker wanted to make us think she did so we would follow the lead.”
He reached across and took the paper. There was nothing on it but the name and address of a second-hand bookshop in Paternoster Row.
Bloody hell.
Fate had handed Saint-Clair a boon.
Miss Vane leaned closer to look at the note in his hand, her shoulder almost touching his. “There’s no message. I’ll wager Parker burnt it and knows more than he’s willing to claim.”
Hugh stared at the address. He’d visited the premises before, hunting a different woman who’d vanished after entering the bookshop.
“I know the proprietor, Mrs Fenwick.”
He’d questioned her at length, though she had remained tight-lipped. Saint-Clair had joked about strapping her to the rack. His friend would be pleased with this development.
“And? I sense some hesitation.”
“Based on what I know, Miss Bellingham didn’t take the stage to Taunton. Nor has she been kidnapped and held for ransom.”
“Then where is she?”
“Mrs Fenwick sells new identities. If Miss Bellingham bought one, finding her will be near impossible.”
Hugh leaned back in the carriage, staring at the roof. Not since Saint-Clair’s duel had a story confounded him like this one.
Bellingham was dead. His sister had vanished. The former Lord Howden was either buried in a mausoleum or hiding under an assumed name in Italy. Every person who knew the truth about Hartham Colliery was either silenced or gone. Someone was cleaning house, and they were running out of witnesses.
He looked at Miss Vane.
He’d need to get used to having a fake wife.
Wife. That word carried dangerous implications in an apartment with a single bedchamber. One night had tested every limit he possessed. The thought of her in his bed, her hair loose, her mouth warm from his kiss—he wasn’t sure he had enough left to survive another.
By the time they arrived in Fleet Street, he had more pressing worries. Half his men were scrambling to clean up the spillage from a damaged barrel. Pullman barked orders. Davies draped a waxed tarpaulin over the split stave.
He was out of the carriage as it slowed to a stop. Staff from The Herald stood in the street, pointing and laughing at Davies’ stained fingers.
“What the hell happened here?” He was careful not to step in the spreading pool of ink as more men appeared with rags and soap and buckets.
“Faulty barrel,” Pullman said. “The lads swear the staves and hoops were intact when they unloaded.”
It didn’t take a genius to notice the scores in the wood. “Someone prised one loose. Where are the delivery men now?”
“They helped fill buckets and plug the gap while we found the tarpaulin. I sent them to collect the replacement barrel.” Pullman wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I told them we’re shifting our business to Cambers.”
Hugh felt the familiar bite of guilt. He should have been here.
The paper didn’t run itself. “I trust everything else is in order? Has Perkins finished the Old Bailey trial article?” Let The Herald cover the Tussaud wax exhibition.
They were better suited to dummies. The verdict at the Bailey deserved his scrutiny.
“Aye. I put it in your tray this morning.”
Miss Vane joined him on the pavement, lifting her skirts to avoid the mess. Her perfume reached him through the stink of ink and wet cobbles, and for a few seconds, he forgot to be annoyed.
Her fingers closed around his arm, anchoring him. She held on a heartbeat too long. “Is this where you remind me that these accidents never happened before we met?”
He should. He ran his life with military precision. Nothing surprised him. Yet with her, he was a green boy who didn’t know his arse from his elbow.
He placed his hand at her back. “This isn’t your fault.”
“You’re being punished all the same.”
“Punished for writing the story. Not punished for meeting you.”
Her teasing softened into something that looked dangerously like tenderness. “Whoever named you a devil didn’t do his research.”
“Perhaps you see a side of me others don’t.”
“Or you’ve never had to play the knight errant before.”
“You don’t need a knight. You need a friend who believes in you, in your ability to succeed no matter the obstacle.”
“Are we friends?”
The word landed awkwardly between them. Too small for what he wanted. Too safe for what he feared. “Only you can answer that. Do you trust me?”
“More than I’ve ever trusted anyone.”
He should warn her to guard her heart. Not to place her faith in people so easily. “Then I’m the closest friend you have.”
“The only friend.”
The weight of her trust hit him square in the chest, along with the primitive need to protect her. Saint-Clair would say he was out of his depth. And maybe he was, though now wasn’t the time to contemplate how deep.
The ink spillage was no accident. It was a veiled threat to stop him from meddling in other people’s affairs.
“Wait with Rowton.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“To search the premises.”
She gripped his arm. “I’m coming with you. We should bring Rowton with us. I used the ink delivery to sneak inside. Someone may have had a similar idea.”
Images flashed through his mind: broken presses, whale oil flooding the paper store, a struck lucifer tossed onto the pile. Everything he’d built from nothing, everything he’d bled for, gone.
“Pullman, leave the ink. Take Rowton and search every room from the basement up. I’ll take the third floor.” When Pullman frowned, he said, “Stay alert. There may be more than one intruder.”
He took Miss Vane’s hand and mounted the stairs.
The door to his private office was ajar. He cursed as he guided a breathless Miss Vane behind him, then reached for the blade in his boot.
He crept towards the door, listening for footsteps, voices, the rustle of paper. Nothing. The door yielded slowly beneath his hand, the faint creak filling the silence.
His desk was as he’d left it. The news articles in the tray. The ink pots aligned. The leather chair untouched.
He stepped into the room, Miss Vane at his shoulder.
“The cabinet drawers are open,” she said, moving towards them. “Everything else seems in place.”