Page 22 of Murder at the Seven Dials
A gasp sounded from the room ahead. He’d given himself away. No use skulking about now. Hugh let his muscles loosen and walked with ease to the open door, pushing it all the way aside.
“I know you are here, Your Gr—”
His side vision caught something coming at his head, and Hugh ducked, raising his arms to fend off the blow. He felt the stinging impact of a weapon and grasped it—something long and metal—and he yanked it forward, out of his assailant’s grasp.
“Oh! Mr. Marsden!”
The Duchess of Fournier stood behind the door, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes sparkling with astonishment. He peered at the brass bed-warming pan he held and then, with more patience than he knew he possessed, set it down atop the draped four poster bed.
“You…you’re following me again!” A blush swept into her cheeks, flooding them pink like spring roses.
“I could arrest you right now for breaking into this home.”
She was clever enough not to try to deny it. She dropped her hands and clasped them behind her back.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. And I will,” he replied, entering the spacious room, the furnishings within also draped. “Unless you explain to me why you are here, whose home this is, and how the devil you picked that lock.”
Again, she didn’t waste effort attempting to deny the accusation. So, it would appear she was capable of thinking before she spoke, after all.
“It shouldn’t surprise me that you haven’t yet been here,” she said, smoothing the short lace veil that hung from her hat’s brim. Her voice had gone from breathy with alarm to brittle with dislike. “You don’t even know who lived here.”
Hugh hadn’t, but he certainly had a good idea now.
“Miss Belladora Lovejoy.”
The duchess brushed off his answer with a roll of one shoulder. “I practically spoon-fed you the answer.”
He sighed, long and hard. She had just come from a visit with her husband; he likely told her about the residence.
“Did you expect to find something among her possessions that will exonerate the duke?”
She looked sideways at him. “It occurred to me that there might be something here that would tell me who her benefactor was.”
Hugh crossed the room to the windows overlooking Yarrow Street. “You needn’t have picked a lock to find that out, Your Grace. If this property is owned by her benefactor, then the estate papers will show as much.”
It was odd, however. Hugh had suspected Miss Lovejoy wasn’t living in the rooms at Jewell House, but why would the duke have kept rooms there on top of this town home for her? There would be no need to meet his mistress anywhere but here, a safe distance from the Curzon Street residence where he lived with his wife.
Hugh had followed the duchess to the manse the night before, trying to keep his eyes off the sheer magnitude of the home, and instead focusing on her hired hackney. He didn’t salivate over grand homes. He’d grown up at Neatham House on Kensington Square, one of London’s finest addresses. He’d known luxury firsthand.
“Yes, well…if you don’t look into those estate papers, I will,” she replied as she removed her kid gloves. Hugh watched her amble across the room, toward a vanity and chair.
“How can you be sure this was her home?” he asked as the duchess touched the carved lip of the chair. She paused, staring ahead at the draped mirror. A few seconds passed. Just as Hugh wondered if she was going to answer or not, she released the chair.
“I went to the theatre again,” she replied. “And I asked Mr. Bernadetto.”
She wouldn’t look directly at him, and Hugh knew she was lying. He couldn’t believe she would be so obtuse as to return to the theatre, and he also knew the manager wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help the duchess in her quest to free Belladora’s suspected killer. Still, he suspected itwasthe singer’s home, as a second look at the walls showed several framed playbills from the theatre.
“What are you doing?” he asked as her fingers tugged on one of the vanity drawer’s handles.
“Searching, as I’ve already told you.”
“What can you hope to find? The place is shut up,” he said as her hand rummaged around inside.
“Some of her things are still here,” she replied, attention riveted to the drawer. “The staff must have been in a hurry to quit the residence.”
Hugh harrumphed, but then opened a door to a heavy mahogany wardrobe and saw a number of gowns and pelisses. Slippers were lined up along the bottom. He opened a few of the wardrobe’s inner drawers and found silk stockings and linen chemises, garters and gloves and ribbons. Nothing had been packed away, or taken by the maids, as was common when their mistresses no longer had need of their things.
