Page 53 of Murder at the Seven Dials
ChapterFourteen
Porter’s boarding house was one of the more respectable looking buildings in Spitalfields. Hugh wasn’t unfamiliar with the East End—most of the riff raff he brought in to Bow Street dwelled in its narrow warrens and alleyways. This was the part of London that the ton chose to ignore. Hell, maybe he should have brought the duchess along with him after all. Letting her have a good look at the lower denizens might have broken her illusion of safety.
But as maddening as the lady was, Hugh couldn’t have subjected her to possible danger. Not after what she’d witnessed that morning. For the umpteenth time, he questioned his foolhardy leap from the open theatre office window. As he’d given chase down the alley, seeing nothing but a blur of a man turning the corner far ahead, the thought that there might have been more than one intruder slammed into him; that he might have just left the duchess alone and vulnerable. He barely remembered racing back inside the theatre, drawing breath even, but the sound of her sharp scream coming from within the office was still staggering. The relief at seeing her unharmed, if white-faced and shaking near Bernadetto’s body, had almost made him lightheaded.
Just as quickly, however, his blood boiled again.
There was more—far more—to Belladora Lovejoy’s murder than what had initially met the eye. If he were to be honest with himself, the duchess’s relentless pursuit for the real killer was both a knife in his pride and a challenge to correct a mistake. Now that the theatre manager had become a second victim, he was, unsurprisingly, in a foul mood.
He brought his fist down on the door to the room Sir had directed him to. After their unsettling encounter at the theatre, Hugh had paid the lad a few shillings to follow the actor named Porter and to report where the man kept rooms.
The door swung open. Porter stood alert. He filled the doorframe, his menacing glower just as Hugh remembered it.
“What’re you doing here, Runner?”
“I’ve just come from a visit with Bernadetto.” He purposefully neglected to mention that the manager was now on his way to the bone house.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
He didn’t show a flicker of surprise or doubt, which led him to believe that Porter didn’t know of his employer’s death just yet. He was inclined to believe this was not the man he’d seen whipping out of sight at the end of the alleyway next to the theatre. However, that didn’t mean he was ignorant to information that might prove useful.
“Your obsession with Miss Lovejoy was a topic of conversation,” Hugh lied.
He could tell which people to step lightly around, questioning them slowly and methodically. He could also tell which people that tactic would be lost on. Porter was one of the latter.
“My obsession?” he sneered. “We were friends. Nothing more.”
“Not for your lack of desire.”
Porter peered down his angular nose at Hugh. He used his height to its full effect, and then stepped aside, allowing Hugh to enter. He did so with caution, his hand prickling with the anticipated need to draw his flintlock pistol. The room was small and cold, with a single window and a coal stove, where a greasy pan sat with a few fish scales stuck to the bottom. The odor of last night’s dinner hung in the air.
Porter shut the door and went to a chair at a small table, where colorful fabric and beads were sprawled about.
“I cared for Belladora,” he said, picking up a cloud of lime green silk. A needle and thread hung from a line of stitched red beads. “And yes, I would have cared for her as more than a friend, if she’d have allowed it.”
“Why didn’t she?”
Porter snorted and continued stitching. A piece for the stage, Hugh presumed. “She had standards. Expensive ones, even though I told her she was being a fool.”
“You argued with her?” Hugh relaxed his hand, no longer expecting the stage actor to come at him. In fact, he appeared at ease as he worked on the costume piece.
“I didn’t shut my mouth and look the other way, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’re wise to the world in which you live, Porter—wasn’t her arrangement with Lord Wimbly commonplace? Why criticize her for bettering her situation?”
He glanced around him, taking in the shabby room. It reminded Hugh of the one he’d lived in after his mother’s death, when he’d taken his leave from Neatham’s household as a young man. The former viscount had offered Hugh funds so that he could live a gentleman’s life, but he’d refused it. Out of pride or resentment, he didn’t know, but he’d been angry and heartsick, and he’d wanted nothing more than to sever all ties from his father and the half-siblings that had always done well pretending Hugh was just a servant’s child. Bartholomew, Thomas, and Eloisa had all known the truth. The similar features the four of them all shared could leave little doubt.
It had been Eloisa who’d sought Hugh out some months after he’d left, and after their father had passed. She’d convinced him of her sisterly feelings. God, he’d been a fool. He’d known his place within the viscount’s household, but like Icarus flying too close to the sun, Hugh, blinded by what he assumed were familial ties, had tread over an invisible line.
“Bettering her situation would be one thing, but what Belladora was doing…” Porter shook his head, reclaiming Hugh’s attention. “It didn’t sit right. It was too incestuous if you ask me.”
He flinched. “Incestuous?”
That word. Hugh didn’t like how often his past had been nipping at his heels lately. Time and distance, and a hell of a lot of hard work, had finally separated his current life from his past one, so that they sat apart from each other, like oil on water.
“I told her she was playing with fire, stringing along both father and son the way she was,” Porter replied.
Hugh stepped closer to the table. “Do you refer to Lord Wimblyandhis heir?”
