Page 20 of Silence of Deceit
Ignoring the mention of Philip’s arrest, Audrey asked, “How long had Miss Montgomery been paying you calls?”
“Montgomery,” she snorted. “Was that the chit’s name? Your servant must have done something considerably wrong to have raised a daughter who would dare extort money from a peer.”
The woman had a right to her bitterness. Had Audrey not known Delia, she would have readily agreed. However, she had known her. So had Mary Simpson.
“How did you know her?” she asked Lady Rumsford.
“I?” she replied, aghast. “I did not know her at all.”
“But she knew something about you,” Audrey pressed.
“What are you about?” the viscountess asked again. “How are you involved in all this?”
“She was murdered. My servant wants to know what sort of trouble their daughter was wrapped up in,” she lied, yet again. It was becoming entirely too easy. How often did Hugh lie, she wondered, to get the answers he sought?
“What use could that be for your servant now?” she retorted, and Audrey had to admit, she was right. But she could not let the viscountess wiggle her way out of an answer.
“You were not the only one being blackmailed. Another woman I have met was paying Miss Montgomery a large sum of money to keep a secret about her daughter from being fed to the scandal sheets.”
Delia, Mary, and Audrey were all connected to Shadewell. What were the chances Lady Rumsford’s loved one was as well? To ask was a great risk. Mrs. Simpson’s position in society would not allow her to cross the duchess, and though the viscountess was lower than Audrey in social rank, she was a formidable and shrewd woman.
“What secret?” Lady Rumsford asked.
“I shouldn’t say. But she would not have been able to weather the scandal of it, had it been made known.”
She huffed. “Neither would the viscount.”
It was her husband, then.Lord Rumsford. Audrey did not know a single thing about him.
“You were instructed to keep him ignorant of the blackmailing?” she presumed. The viscountess confirmed it with a solemn nod. “And to give one of your calling cards?”
Lady Rumsford again peered at Audrey with barely concealed mistrust. “I didn’t understand why, but yes.”
Delia must have used that card to her advantage. To gain entry into yet another fine home in London, perhaps.
They strolled in silence for a few more moments before Lady Rumsford blurted out, “You are sullying yourself dealing with these matters, Your Grace. Or is it that you’ve grown bored with the duke and have taken an interest in that Bow Street ruffian I have heard so much about as of late?”
Audrey’s feet tripped to a halt. The mention of Hugh Marsden seemed so misplaced and unbidden that she could only stare incomprehensively at the viscountess. This was the first gossip she had heard yet hinting at her connection to Officer Marsden.
The viscountess’s lips turned up as she realized she’d hit her target. “Don’t tell me that disgraced by-blow has charmed you into believing you can be of use to him? How provincial.”
Audrey nearly clapped back with the argument that Hugh wasn’t a disgraced by-blow but bit her tongue. Hehadbeen born on the other side of the blanket, and even he had admitted it. That Lady Rumsford had seen through to the truth of the matter—that Audrey had started to feel useful in these investigations—made her feel uncomfortably transparent.
“There is more to me than just my title, Lady Rumsford,” she said, though she hated giving the woman’s taunting even an inch of acknowledgment.
“Perhaps there is,” the viscountess said. “However, your title is the only thing that has kept London society from sweeping you out the door. If the blackmailer is dead, then there is nothing more to be said on the matter. I will ask you not to approach me again. Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
Shame nearly drowned her as she watched Lady Rumsford’s stout figure walking away, her footmen and dogs following, the latter yipping happily. No one of rank had dared speak to her so bluntly since Philip’s scandal. While she’d feared their top-ranking status had been the one thing keeping them from being totally shunned, hearing it from the viscountess—a woman she did not even know—had felt like being plunged underwater and held there to splutter and flail while her chest burned for oxygen.
Again, Greer let out a dainty cough. Audrey blinked, coming back to attention, and immediately moved toward where Carrigan waited with the carriage. The flames on her face had cooled slightly when the driver met her with a wrinkled brow.
“You’ve a visitor within the conveyance, Your Grace,” he said, looking as though he’d sucked a lemon.
“Inthe carriage?” Audrey echoed.
“He wouldn’t allow me to deliver the message, and I couldn’t have him standing about, considering…” He opened the door. “I didn’t think you’d object, Your Grace.”
Her olfactory senses certainly did. Her nose traced him before her eyes did. As Carrigan handed her into the carriage, she touched the tip of her nose to block the odor of onions, manure, and unwashed hair and clothes. “Gracious, Sir,” she said, coming to sit across from the boy. He laid on his back, lengthwise across the bench, arms crossed behind his head.
