Page 15 of Murder at the Seven Dials
Nota kept mistress? Hugh didn’t believe it for a moment. It was simply the way of their world. Porter was either lying, ignorant, or he was protecting someone.
“Your Grace. Sir,” Bernadetto said, addressing them. “I think you should take your leave. We have told you what we know.”
Hugh wanted out of this backstage warren, but he couldn’t walk away from a lie. “Her roles. Who purchased them?”
If he could get the benefactor’s name—the duke’sname preferably—he could serve up his case like a roast on a platter to the chief magistrate, Gabriel Poston.
Bernadetto rubbed his temple and bared his teeth. “Miss Lovejoy needednoendorsements, sir. If she had an arrangement with a gentleman, I was not aware of it, nor was it my business to pry. Now I would like you to leave, at once.” He made a half-hearted bow toward the duchess. “Your Grace, forgive me my terseness, but it has been, as you can imagine, a trying day.”
The duchess wouldn’t turn her back on Porter, who still stood within the doorway. It was perhaps the most intelligent thing the woman had done all day.
“For us all,” she said, and with a tight nod to the manager, moved toward Hugh and the door. Porter remained where he was. Though taller than Hugh, the actor was lanky and had an underfed look to him. He would fight well, Hugh determined, fueled as he was by anger.
“Step aside,” Hugh warned, his voice low, his hand flexing on his pistol’s handle.
“Porter,” the manager said, this time his voice like the lash of a whip.
The actor heeded the order and cleared the doorway. Hugh saw the duchess through first, and then followed, turning back to make sure the man didn’t lunge after them. Porter slipped into Bernadetto’s office and the lamplight inside blotted out as the door shut.
“Here.” Hugh cut ahead of her and opened the door to the corridor that the broom sweep had shown them through.
“I know where I’m going,” she replied as she shuttled past him.
“Do you? What a relief.” He slammed the door shut, closing them in darkness.
He heard her skirts swishing on ahead. Hugh took long strides over the old carpet to catch her just before she entered the light of the single candle sconce. He knew it was a mistake as he reached for her elbow, and yet he still did it, jerking her to a stop. Alarm and…something else…widened her eyes as she stared up at him. Fear? That’s what he thought he saw before she wrenched her elbow from his grasp.
“I can’t bloody begin to count how many mistakes you made back there,” he said, his tongue loose and wild, his blood pumping fast.
The duchess gathered herself up, looking as if she were ready to launch a fleet of war ships right at him. “At least I asked the questions that needed asking!”
“And what answers did you receive that will help the duke? None. You bungled it all up by giving them your name.”
“My name?” she echoed, incredulous. She was a dragon, all hard scales and flaring nostrils. If she could have breathed fire, Hugh would be ducking right then.
“You tossed your title out before you, no doubt believing it would buy you respect and what? Some level of importance? However, this time,Your Grace, that name of yours tripped you up and sent you sprawling.”
Hugh pressed forward before she could respond. “The people here, they don’t give a damn about you or your husband. You are nothing to them. Belladora Lovejoy was their friend, their colleague. And you traipsed in there and told them the man arrested for her murder was innocent, dashing their hopes for justice. What did you believe they would do, thank you? Devote themselves to your cause?”
The flame of the candle reflected off the tin shield behind it, scattering low, changing light over the duchess’s face. Pricks of color stained her cheeks, and her eyes looked glassy. Whether it was with ire or humiliation, Hugh couldn’t be certain.
“Philip was not her benefactor,” she said, twirling around a direct answer to his question like any skilled debutante. No, nothing so young and innocent. This was a married woman of status. Far from a debutante. “You heard them both deny that she possessed one.”
“A woman can have a lover without him keeping her as a mistress,” he scoffed. Her color darkened, and Hugh felt a pinch of remorse. “You opened this door, Your Grace, so you should be prepared for unsavory truths.”
“As you should be, Mr. Marsden, like the fact that you arrested the wrong man,” she replied before moving farther down the corridor, drenching herself in darkness again. “That Porter fellow seemed overly protective of Miss Lovejoy.”
Once they were back in the foyer, with the candelabras snuffed out and the broom sweeps gone, he fell into stride beside her.
“She had her admirers in the audience, as well as among fellow performers. I’m sure Porter was one of them,” he agreed.
Jealousy could have been why he’d so vehemently denied Miss Lovejoy was a kept mistress. It gave Hugh a moment’s pause as he opened the door for the duchess and held it wide as she glided outside, drawing up her cloak’s hood. Jealous men killed in mad rages. He’d seen it a number of times before. Women killed as well, though it was rare for them to use blades. Women chose poison more often than not, or a bullet direct to the back of the head. The opera singer’s body had been mutilated, and it could not be denied the person who’d done it had been in a violent rage.
If Porter had followed Miss Lovejoy to the duke’s rooms and seen them together, it was possible he could have lost his temper. He nearly had tonight. But then, why leave the duke without so much as a scratch? And how had the duke’s clothes become so wrecked with blood?
“You look like you’ve swallowed old mutton. What has come to your mind?” the duchess asked as she came to a stop beside her hired hack. The jarvey and his tired nag, and even more tired carriage, still sat in front of Hugh’s own.
“Nothing that I care to discuss,” he replied, and then, remembering the etiquette ingrained in him as a child, bowed slightly and added, “Your Grace.”
