Page 50 of The Devil in Her Bed
Gasping in some strength with a breath, she pushed him away and wriggled a bit to be free of him. “Declan. I—It’s been so long. I have to—”
“I know.” He panted, pulling away. Running a hand through his hair and rolling his fingers into a fist to tug at his nape. “Forgive me, I just… I forgot myself.” He reached out to help her into a sitting position before he left the bed and staggered a few paces away. “Francesca, I want you to know I’ve spent my entire life trying to find proof of who was responsible for the Mont Claire Massacre.”
The news cheered her a little. “As have I, in fact—”
“It was the fucking Hargraves. They’re the reason we lost everything.”
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
Francesca couldn’t have been more shocked or cold if a bucket of ice water had doused her.
“C-come again?”
“Charles and Hattie, of whom you are so fond. Well, Charles, at least, though he rarely did anything without his wife’s permission.Theydrew the ire of deadly men.” He turned around with disgust etched upon his features. “Of the council in particular, and because of their stupidity—”
“H-how do you know this?” she asked in a voice so small, it might have been that of a child.
His features darkened, the shadows pulling around him as if his anger could chase away the glow of the lamplight. This man,thisDeclan, was not recognizable. He was furious. Malevolent.
Violent even.
“There was a man that day of the massacre, anAmerican. Alfred ‘Alfie’ Tuttle. I found him. I interrogated him, and I made sure his blood spilled when his information didn’t.” A slight bit of his composure returned. “He confessed, eventually. And then he hanged.”
“Good,” she replied before she could hold it back. Alfred Tuttle had killed Francesca and Pippa’s own mother. They’d been avenged, at least.
“What did he say against them? The Hargraves?” She did her utmost to ask this as though she wasn’t one of them.
“He said Charles and Hattie wrote a missive to the authorities and signed it with the Cavendish seal, though it’s unclear if they were ignorant of the fact that the Crimson Council has its fingers everywhere, in every civil and private sector, including Scotland Yard.”
“Including the Secret Services?”
He crossed his arms and gave her a mulish look, but eventually had to concede. “If the Crimson Council infiltrated the office of the Lord Chancellor, it would be remiss of me to think we were immune. We’re not even technically a branch of government yet.”
“So you’re angry with the Hargraves for going to the authorities?” she reasoned. “Even though you are one? Do you know why they went?”
“Anger is a wasted emotion,” he said. “But did you not hear me, Francesca, the Hargraves took the Cavendish family seal—yourfamily seal—and wrote a fraudulent missive that got everyone killed.”
“Have you seen the missive?” Her own arms crossed over her chest, as she was suddenly cold from the inside out.
“I’ve requested the paperwork through the proper channels. It was taking longer than expected, so I went to the records office at New Scotland Yard and they’d told me the case was misfiled at a storage facility in town, and there’s no way to find it without looking through every single paper.”
“Then let’s do it.” Francesca stood. “Where is the storage facility?” She had to know if what he was saying about her parents was the truth. She remembered them so fondly, but through the eyes of a girl still aged in the single digits. She’d not been old enough to uncover their sins. Surely, they had no idea what their actions might have wrought, and if they were fraudulent, they must have had a good reason.
Unless… they didn’t.
Unless they weren’t good people.
“Who is to say that the bastard Tuttle was telling the truth?” she said desperately. “Perhaps he sent you on a fool’s errand, or he protected the council even under threat of death. You don’t know if they had something on his family or—”
“Francesca.” Though his voice was gentle, there was a thread of steel in the way he said her name.
She bit her lip.
“Paperwork regarding the death of an earl and his family wouldn’t be sent to a dusty storage facility; it’d be sent to an official office—hell, the bloody palace—to be kept in books for British aristocratic progeny. They’d have released it to you, even, before they dared to lose it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She did. But she didn’t want to.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “The verification of the truth is in the fact that it’s being covered up. Surely you can see that.”
