Page 18 of Murder at the Seven Dials
“This is disastrous!” Millie shot up off the sofa and toward the hearth. “He is utterly ruined. How could he have allowed himself to be caught in such a compromising situation?”
Audrey frowned. “What have you heard, exactly?”
Millie briefly met her eyes, but she looked overwhelmed and embarrassed. “Nothing a lady should have heard.”
Audrey suppressed a sigh. Her sister had always been a bit of a prude. Not to mention self-centered. She wanted to scream at her for thinking first of Philip’s reputation, and nothing of his innocence.
“You heard she was an opera singer,” Audrey guessed.
Millie made a hissing sound and stalked back toward the sofa. “Actresses…they’re all immoral light skirts.”
The pain on Mr. Bernadetto’s expression, and the fury on Porter’s the night before came at Audrey. “She’s dead, Millie. Loose morals or no, she was murdered.”
Millie pressed her lips thin, looking so much like their mother, Audrey shivered. “And your dear duke stands accused.”
Millie had never cared for Philip, though Audrey suspected it wasn’t anything to do with him personally so much as it was the fact that he was a duke, and that he’d asked for Audrey’s hand instead of Millie’s.
A dozen years after seventeen-year-old Millie exchanged vows with Viscount Barrington, a doughy-chinned middle-aged man, her sister had become a widow, left with four children and a substantial fortune. By then, Philip, the new Duke of Fournier, had been on the market, and Millie had wanted him, four-year age gap be damned.
Audrey clasped her hands in her lap. “You know him. Youknowhe would never do such a thing.”
Millie shrugged and sat again on the slipper chair. “What do we really know of our husbands? Don’t be naïve, darling. They lead secret lives, and we must pretend we’re ignorant of them.”
“Perhaps that’s how it was with Lord Barrington, but things are different between me and Philip.”
Millie shook her head and laughed. “Dear Audrey, I forget how newly wed you are. But come, we must prepare for what happens next.” She sat taller, her figure, made full and voluptuous from children, appeared too constricted within the confines of her day dress and spencer. “Decamping to Fournier Downs is the only option for you while the courts sort everything out. Now I know mother will be mortified, but I do believe, with time, she will come from Haverfield to call on you—”
“Fournier Downs? Millie, I’m not decamping to Hertfordshire.”
Her sister gaped. “You cannot possibly think to stay in London.”
“Of course, I’m staying.” She bit her tongue before she could say anything more. Telling Millie that she’d decided to launch her own investigation, counter to Bow Street’s, would result in one of her sister’s histrionic fits. She’d never be rid of her then.
“Absurd! Staying on in London while your husband stands trial for the murder of his mistress—”
“He did not murder anyone!”
“—is scandalous. Withdraw to the country. Preserve your dignity while you still maintain a shred of it.”
Audrey knew then that it didn’t matter to Millie whether Philip did or did not kill his mistress, just like it wouldn’t matter to anyone else in the ton. The arrest alone was scandal enough to ruin him forever, and her by proxy. It turned her stomach into knots, and a cold sweat crackled over her chest. How had things gone so very wrong so quickly?
“Running away will only make me look ashamed of Philip, and I’m not. So no, I will not go to Fournier Downs.”
Audrey stood, the muscles in her legs sore from how tensely she’d been sitting since Millie arrived. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have some business to attend to.”
Her sister’s mouth dropped open. “Business? Ladies do not attend tobusiness.”
Always so proper, Audrey thought as she moved toward the sitting room door.And as shallow as a rain puddle.
“As the head of this household for the time being, I’m afraid I must.”
“Surely, Lord Harrick could help you in those matters,” Millie said, slowly rising and following her sister to the door.
Surely, Michael would, though honestly, the only business Audrey needed to attend to right then was seeing her older sister out of her sitting room before she screeched loud enough for all of Curzon Street to hear.
“Thank you for your advice,” Audrey said, as sweetly as was manageable. “I’ll take it into consideration.”
Millie pressed her lips thinly; it was their mother’s favored expression and it settled into the grooves of Millie’s face with startling ease. Audrey glanced away, not wanting to see their mother if she didn’t have to.
