Page 7 of Murder at the Seven Dials
His eyes darted back and forth, as if watching some frantic action playing out on the cellar’s packed-dirt floor.
“I don’t know what has happened, but whatever you say, I will believe it.” She needed him to look at her. Needed those eyes to latch onto hers. Until then, he would be lost, a prisoner to whatever hell he was currently trapped in. “Darling, it is I, Audrey. Please, Philip—”
“You are wasting your breath, Your Grace.”
Audrey shot to her feet and swiveled to glare at him. “And you are an interminable brute, Mr. Marsden.”
He smirked. “Nothing like what you’re used to in Mayfair, is it?”
“And you would know, wouldn’t you?” Michael murmured. Audrey looked at her brother-in-law, but he had his scathing glare hinged on the Bow Street officer. Mr. Marsden flicked him an apathetic glance. “That’s right, Marsden. I know who you are.”
Audrey frowned. How did Michael know this man?
“Call me a brute or anything else you please,” Mr. Marsden continued, unmoved by Michael’s comment. “I’m merely doing my job.”
“My husband is not a murderer. I don’t know what you’ve done to him in here—”
Mr. Marsden cocked his head and took an angry step toward her. “Do you imply that I’ve attempted to beat a confession out of him?”
“I said nothing of the sort!” Her nerves flared to life as a measure of control slipped. Never had she been made to deal with a man as crude and raffish as this.
A spark of smugness lit his eyes. He’d affected her, and he appeared pleased with himself for it.
Michael slid in between them, his broad shoulders obscuring the officer’s figure. Almost immediately, Audrey’s boiling blood dropped to a simmer.
“Have Carrigan take you home,” he said to her.
She shook her head. “Philip should not be alone.”
“He won’t be.” Michael took her shoulders in his hands; hands that boxed at the Sturgis Club every Thursday evening. Philip had confided Michael’s penchant once, along with Michael’s concern that his brother should box as well.As a way to improve my health,Philip had muttered with a vault of one fair brow.Seems to believe it will improve my virility.The memory of her husband’s wry grin hit her hard.
“I will remain here and make sure Potridge arrives,” Michael added.
The truth shed over her then: Within a few hours, her husband would be standing before the magistrate on charges of murder. An opera singer of questionable reputation had been slain in his leased rooms. Rooms Audrey had not known about. Her throat cinched tight. He’d promised that he was finished with keeping secrets. He’d promised things would go back to the way they used to be when he and Audrey had been able to confide in each other. Confessions Audrey could have never shared with anyone else. Philip accepted her, and she accepted him. Secrets and all.
Or at least, that was what Audrey had believed.
“Go back to Violet House.” Michael’s hands squeezed her shoulders. “Do not accept any callers today, Audrey.”
Did he take her for a fool? Of course, she would not accept any callers. The whole of London society would wake up to the scandalbroth of her husband’s arrest. The most tenacious gossipmongers among them would descend upon Violet House under the pretense of support and solidarity, while all they would truly be after were details, of which they could flaunt at the next luncheon or tea or ball. Audrey suspected Lady Dutton, a Dowager Viscountess, would be the first one to call, followed swiftly by her archrival, Lady Shoreham, a young, widowed countess currently shocking thetonwith a barely concealed affair with Lady Dutton’s son-in-law.
There were only three people Audrey trusted explicitly. Two of them were currently in the prison cell with her, and the third was Michael’s wife, Geneva.
Michael released Audrey’s shoulders. His promise to stay with Philip gave her a thread of relief. He wouldn’t allow any brutish Bow Street officer to so much as touch him. She took one last look in her husband’s direction. He was still rubbing his fingers over his thighs, his eyes cast to the floor. What was he seeing inside his mind? What wasn’t he sharing with them?
“I will show you out, Your Grace,” Mr. Marsden grumbled as he picked up a covered box, four hands long and equally deep.
“It is hardly a challenge to show myself out, thank you,” she replied, stepping past him, and starting up the stairs, into the empty tavern.
“All the same, I can’t have you wandering the Brown Bear unaccompanied,” he said, practically treading upon her heels as they left the cellar.
She bristled at that word:wandering. As if she were a heedless puppy or young child.
At the entrance, he reached past Audrey’s arm and opened the door before she could do so herself. He stood aside, balancing the box in his other hand, and with a mocking dip of his head, murmured, “Your Grace.”
His disdain for her—no, not for her personally, but for her station in society—was written all over his person, from his expression to his tone to the piercing bite of his glittering brown-eyed glare.
“You do realize, Mr. Marsden, how foolish you will look when my husband is proven to have nothing to do with this crime?”
