CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
She gasped, but he went on.
“You were not demanding of me. At first. You are handsome to look upon, and you like it when I bed you. It took little time to dig into your grandfather’s accounts. All those boys gone for soldiers. Your parents are dead. You are the investment.”
Jack leaned toward her. “The Frosts. You must stop him, Leona.” The train whistle blew, calling him away. He looked over his shoulder but turned back to her with a heartbreakingly earnest look on his face.
“I found out about the laudanum. About your dead husband. Your screams in the night sent me out of the house at first.”
“Who killed the Frosts, Leona?” Jack asked.
“What’s he mean by you’re the investment?” Luke asked, sounding genuinely puzzled, so like his old self tears stung her eyes. The memories of her heart were crystal clear.
“There’s a missing piece,” Leona whispered. Something Henry couldn’t have known or predicted.
“Why did Millie really run?” Jack asked. “And has he caught her yet?”
“He’ll just keep killing, he’ll never stop,” Luke said. “Move to another city and start all over. Stop him, Leo!”
She looked directly at Jack, whose brief smile put wings on her soul. Clouds of smoke billowed behind his blue eyes. The train whistle blew, and from far away, the conductor shouted for all to come aboard.
“Running out of time,” Jack said with sadness. “Have hope, my love. They’re coming.”
“What are you staring at?” Lawrence put down his fork. “Leona, I swear you really are as mad as a hatter.”
The truth crept up on her like an inflamed and infected wound. “It’s you who murdered the Frosts.”
“How can you say so?” he asked with a doting expression. “My darling, you’ve made such terrible accusations.” He’d altered his voice, so he sounded like the man she’d thought she’d married. “You’ve been so very distressed lately.”
He stood and left the room. When he returned, he held a small, ink-spotted package wrapped with twine. He laid it before her and returned to his seat across the table.
She picked up the package. Dried blood on the outside, not ink.
Inside the package was her reticule, the one she’d left at the Frost’s the day before their murders.
The rancid package brought bile to her throat, but she swallowed it back down.
She removed the lilac silk scarf she’d given to Millie.
Wrapped inside lay the pair of pearl earrings Leona expected she’d have pawned by now.
“You killed Jesper and Iris. And Millie now, too.” She shoved the blood-dried mess away.
He must have handled the purse with his fouled and gory hands when he came across it at the spiritualists’ house.
She’d led him to them with her confession about her investigations, and he lied about going to the police.
He shrugged. “They were ruining my plans for you. I had to stop them before your nosiness put you out of my control.”
When she first told him about the Frosts, before Christmas, he’d been afraid—no, terrified she’d end up in jail.
He lifted his glass, admiring the color, then drank. “And Millie, according to you, saw and heard everything.”
“To protect your investment,” she managed to say. The wine and bile burned in her throat. She leaned to the side where Luke had stood a few moments ago to vomit on the rug. She wiped her mouth, but could not bring herself to look at him, the monster at the center of the labyrinth.
“When you left the house that morning, I followed you. You’d been acting strangely.
Wild and frantic.” Lawrence spoke in his gentle, concerned-husband voice.
“I thought you only wanted my attention and feared to what extremes you might drive yourself. I also feared you’d take your own life.
You were visiting the house of the spiritualists, and you came under their spell.
Perhaps they promised to reunite you with Jack Davenport or Daphne or your long-dead parents?
When you realized the Frosts were frauds, you went into a homicidal frenzy and killed them. ”
She stared at him, frozen.
“I thought that story would shut you up,” he said with satisfaction, leaning back in his chair with a smile.
She opened her mouth twice to speak, but nothing came out. The third time, she somehow found her voice amidst her outrage. “Lawrence, no one will believe you. Not once they realize who you are. Even if you kill me right here and now, you will eventually fail in escaping the hangman.”
“I always escape the hangman,” he said.
A motion at the window made her think her ghosts had returned. But when she glanced out, only the cold darkness stared back. Lawrence plucked a spoon from his plate and flung it toward her. It hit the wall by her shoulder with a hard whack.
“Pay attention! I dropped the charges against Mr. Varney. He is at this moment alone on the streets of King’s County where my crew is looking for him. He’s the last loose thread.”
She hid her eyes with her left hand as anguish seized her, shook her, nearly sent her to her knees. Only by touching the derringer beneath her skirts could she maintain her resolve. She pulled the hem of her dress up over her knee and rested her hand on the warm metal and wood of the gun.
“Oh, that’s better,” Lawrence said. “When you stop fighting me and listen, you might survive.”
The fiend stood and splashed more wine into the glasses, a wedding gift from a Boston auntie. Etched glass cherubs with garlands danced around the circumference. His hand shook as he poured, and it made her glad to see it.
Why were men’s voices considered more truthful than women?
Even without Lawrence’s evil plans, the Law would always keep her and all women at the mercy of their husbands.
How in the world could she prove who he really was without Dr. Farouche committing her to an asylum for the insane first?
At the mercy of Lawrence’s machinations, she had to listen.
“You’ve interfered with my plans at every turn, as if you knew what I was about.” The color rose in his cheeks. “You are unpredictable and willful. Even when I tried to curb you, you would not obey.”
“I only promised to obey my lawful husband,” she reminded him.
He laughed. “You’re not upset about rutting with me without the benefit of marriage?”
His leer filled her with disgust. The crude words were meant to hurt her, and they did. She forced a laugh, her hand on the gun. “Is that what you expect of me?”
“Perhaps you are not the good and moral woman I thought you were?”
“Now you are just being tedious,” she said.
He nodded. “Let’s get down to the meat of it. I am never a man without a plan, and I’m in a hurry.”
“Before Darius Varney’s story comes out in the papers?”
“Not in time to save you, Leona.”
She gripped her glass and drank deeply.
“You will first write a letter confessing to the murder of the Frosts in just the scenario I described. I will take it for safekeeping.”
“And if I don’t?” She snarled out the words, torn between acting and listening.
“You stole Daphne’s jewelry from the people who killed her for it.
Don’t you have enough yet? Lawrence, the bodies are piling up, and people will know about you.
Darius has told his story to the papers by now.
Even if they don’t know for sure if it’s true, they’ll soon suspect. ”
“Yes.” He smiled. “As you say.”
“I’m not afraid to die. You’ve lost.”
He poured more wine into his glass “I wonder which is worse, to suffer yourself or to watch a loved one suffer? Your grandfather is an old man, lived a full life, and I still need him. But what about a young woman in the very prime of her life? Your Negress friend Ruth, now, that would be a shame. To be taken from her home and given to one of the most notorious gangs in King’s County as a plaything? And when they tire of her?”
Icy fear ran through her veins and pooled in her stomach. “Get me the paper and ink, Lawrence. I will do as you say.”
He drank and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“You will also write a note to your grandfather. A ransom note. He will tell no one he has received it or Ruth will die. He will pay, or Ruth will die. You will not come after me, not send the police after me, never speak of this again. If you do, I will send my crew to take care of all three of you.”
He stood and left the room, returning with a sheaf of paper and her ink pot.
Leona felt herself drowning in the Wilderness creek, face down in the water, inhaling mud and worse.
A tremendous weight sat on her back, a knee to her spine.
She held her breath and bent her head to the paper and ink before her, barely able to form the words.
His relief radiated from him in waves, and he’d relaxed, thinking he’d won.
She didn’t doubt the crew he spoke of would come for them after he left town, but at least they were forewarned.
“Grandfather will have to go to the bank in Manhattan City. It will take time.”
“He will not fail. He will beg, borrow, or steal for his beloved granddaughter, but I will have that money. It’s far less than I expected, but you’ve given me no choice.
At every turn, you disobeyed me.” Lawrence surged to his feet, knocking over the wineglass.
He reached for her, violence in his eyes. “Now, where is Henry’s letter?”
He slapped her, and behind it was all the times he’d held back.
Terror filled her—he wouldn’t stop there.
His hands went around her neck. He would torture her like he did Iris, until she told him where Henry’s letter was in exchange for a last sip of air.
She tasted blood as she gripped the derringer.
She pulled at the strings, brought it up, and pointed the barrel at his heart.
He backed away, stumbling over his own feet. “Le—”
She squeezed the trigger.