Chapter Three #3
She struggled for her fighting spirit. She had not given up and submitted to her husband when she found out what he was. She had not kept silent and let his crimes go on.
“Say what you like,” she challenged. “You have no proof of these claims. There is no evidence. I will call you a liar.”
“Madame la comtesse. You are the liar. And I will not be required to supply proof. All it will take is a word.” He leaned close and breathed it on her neck. “Murderer.”
The shiver shook her from head to toe, and she squeezed her eyes shut, holding her fan to her brow. With the greatest effort she held back a low cry. She felt as if he had stabbed her. How? How did this stranger know everything?
From somewhere she pulled at the last threads of her courage. She had lost everything but her life fifteen years ago. She could leave it all again if she must.
“I will go away,” she said in a low voice. “I will disappear.” She’d done it before. “You may say what you like about me. It won’t touch the Hospital. Or the Sisters.”
“You could leave.” He sounded thoughtful. “But your darling Hospital will disappear anyway. There is a developer who wants your land.”
“We have been approached before,” Louisa said instantly. “We have always declined.”
“My friend is willing to present you with a very reasonable proposal. He will not offer nearly so much if the Hospital is suddenly left headless. I doubt anyone else there knows its worth and can negotiate a fair price.”
“Blackmailing me to sell the Hospital hardly strikes me as fair,” Louisa snapped.
The thief chuckled. That strange thrill shot through her again, apprehension mixed with—she could not deny it—anticipation.
The fear made her feel alive. She had not felt such a bolt of energy since the last fight for her life, when she rode a horse through a starry night, away from the stinking smell of smoke, into the darkness of the absolute nothing that her future had suddenly become.
The breathlessness of not knowing her next step made her feel she were walking a tightrope and at any moment could fall into the abyss. Awake, aware, every nerve humming at full capacity, and a strange exhilaration that came only when she faced complete annihilation.
There was something wrong with her, of course. She had always known that. She had confirmed it to herself when she took a lantern and a fuse into a building she knew was not empty, meaning to purge its filth, burn down its secrets.
And burn him right along with them. She was a murderer in her soul, and such a person was not meant to preside over an institution made to nurture and shelter and save.
She would fight for it anyway.
“We cannot sell our land and our buildings,” she said. “We have nowhere else to go. You are no better than I am, playing with lives.”
Again that deep near-laugh, a sound between amusement and threat. “The kitten has grown claws. La chat rouge. You and I are more alike than you know. But the difference is, I would take the money he offers and ask my patronesses to break ground on a new home.”
“This is our home,” Louisa said fiercely. Hers and theirs.
“Do not be so unwise as to reject his offer, comtesse. Think what you will forfeit if you make this difficult.”
“We are besieged with offers for our land and buildings, at the rate Knightsbridge is growing,” Louisa said grudgingly. “How will I know which emissary is yours?”
“I will give you a way to identify him. He is—” He gave a muffled curse as Katherine, in her guise as St. Helena, swept toward them. “Do not wander far. I will find you again.”
“There you are!” Katherine held out her hands to Louisa. “Grandmama the Empress says you must stop lurking about in corners. She wants you to circulate. Air out her gown, she says. Meet some of the more dashing blades in the room.” She winked.
The Duchess wanted to arrange a meeting with her ally. It was too late. Louisa had already been found out, like a meek little mouse, and pounced on by a greedy cat. She felt the claws sink into her even now.
Refuse to sell, and risk exposure from this man who somehow knew her darkest secret?
Or sell, protect her name and the Hospital’s reputation, and uproot the hundred and more souls who depended on her for their survival?
There was no choice to be made here. If she left them without a protector, the Hospital would be preyed upon and devoured. If she were forced to sell, with her reputation intact, she could plead for funds to build somewhere new.
Either way, the people who depended on her would lose their home. And Louisa would never be safe.
She turned at once, but her tormenter had disappeared, and she would never know him in this crush.
Despair bit in as she circulated on Katherine’s arm, jostled by the crowds of people, overwhelmed by the scents and sounds of merriment on the verge of madness.
She must wait, like a martyr bound to the stake, for this stranger in the night to find her again and give her a name.
The name that would mean the end of everything she had spent the last fifteen years of her life fighting to protect.
The name that would bring her life down around her ears. Again.