Page 4 of Silence of Deceit
“If it is Delia, I need to be certain,” she now replied.
“I cannot believe you kept her visits from me.” The duke’s tone, taut with displeasure, sounded like a reprimand from a peeved nanny. She refrained from rolling her eyes and instead, stared at the darkened window.
Audrey had her reasons for keeping Delia’s visits a secret, and not just because her husband would have deterred the young woman from coming to Violet House. Audrey could not truthfully say she had enjoyed Delia’s visits either, but she had felt a duty to her. A comradery, even. She and Delia shared a past—one they had both been trying to put behind them.
Audrey chose not to defend herself, at least not for now. She would not quarrel with her husband in front of Hugh. It was already uncomfortable enough sitting within the same carriage, the three of them together.
When she saw Hugh standing within the foyer of Violet House, it was as though the last two months—which had passed glacially—had suddenly been nothing but a blink of time. The Little Season was firmly underway in London, with dinners, concerts, balls, and routs to attend nearly every night of the week. But even with her busy schedule, Audrey felt each week limping along, farther and farther away from the week in Hertfordshire when Hugh had helped her hunt down a murderer. That investigation had ended with Audrey’s near demise—and with Hugh nearly kissing her as they stood precariously on a ledge in a quarry pit.
The unbidden, soaring thrill of seeing him again, of remembering his lips, so close to hers, had almost completely snuffed out when she comprehended the only reason he could have for a midnight visit.
“Identification could be difficult, considering the supposed state of the remains,” Hugh said gravely. “The patrolmen who retrieved it suggested the face was…greatly deteriorated.”
Philip made a low sound in his throat, and Audrey, too, felt a spike of repulsion.
Hugh had believed the body to behers, she now understood, and after rushing to dress and prepare herself for an outing to the dead house near the river, Audrey was now just beginning to contemplate the way he had gripped the newel post at the base of the staircase when he saw her. He had, for a short while, believed she was dead. His trip to Violet House had been to verify that she was missing and to inform the duke of the body found in the water. The calling card case was, after all, ample evidence. Hugh had not been able to mask his relief at finding her alive and well, and she could not stop the flutter of sentiment in her chest that he had worried so.
“I would like to see the gown at the very least,” Audrey said.
“Because you believe it is your own?” Hugh was only repeating what she had hastily explained before leaving Curzon Street.
“Yes, I’ve given Delia a few of my cast-offs. Greer sometimes takes them too, to sell, but she prefers my simpler gowns. Delia always adored the more elaborate ones.”
Audrey could not even imagine her lady’s maid, Greer, wearing one of her old ball gowns, but Delia…she had fawned over them.
“You gave this woman your cast-offs because you are old friends?” Hugh asked.
His voice filled the interior of the coach with strange vibrations. Or perhaps that was just Audrey’s reaction to hearing it after they had been so long apart. She hadn’t thought she would see him again. Half-hoped she wouldn’t. Being in his company would only makenotthinking of him more challenging.
“Of a sort,” she replied, not ready to fully explain. However, she knew the Bow Street officer wouldn’t stand for that.
“I’d like to hear how you and Delia are acquainted, and why the duke is not happy about it.”
Philip sat up, more alert. “I never said as much.”
“You did not need to.”
Hugh was one of the most observant people she had ever met. Audrey could understand why Philip would chafe from such close inspection—she had been on the receiving end of Hugh’s scrutiny many times as well. There was no point in putting him off.
“I knew Delia some years ago,” Audrey started off vaguely. “In September, I saw her in passing on Bond Street and invited her to Violet House for tea. Since then, we’ve met a few more times.”
“How could you risk it?” Philip spluttered. “She is…”
“Of reduced circumstances?” Hugh offered, quickly puzzling out that she must have been, to have accepted Audrey’s cast-offs.
The duke scoffed. “I am not so high in the instep to object to someone merely because of their financial circumstances, Marsden.”
Hugh held Philip’s stare, unflinching. “Then why?”
“Because ofwhereshe and my wife made their acquaintance in the first place,” he answered, practically growling.
Long ago, Audrey had told her husband of her time at Shadewell Snatorium, an austere institution in northern England. She also told him of the few acquaintances she had made while there. Delia Montgomery had been one of them.
Philip deplored that Hugh also knew Audrey’s deepest secret—that she had been committed to this asylum when she was but seventeen. Her mother and her uncle, Lord Edgerton, had arranged for the confinement after Audrey made the mistake of believing her gift—the ability to read the memories of objects and see into their immediate past—was something that made her special, and thus, something to share, at least with her family. But her mother, sister, and uncle had all been horrified, and off Audrey had been trundled to Northumberland for a two-year-stay to clear her “troubled” mind.
Hugh had vowed his confidence, and while Audrey trusted him, Philip was more skeptical. Probably because Hugh also knew of theduke’sdeepest secret. He wasn’t comfortable with a Bow Street officer knowing a truth about him that could lead to arrest, public humiliation, and quite possibly, execution. A forced stay at an insane asylum much like Shadewell could also be levied. Philip’s first love—a young man he had met while at Cambridge—had suffered that last fate and ever since, Philip had feared exposure.
As the sixth Duke of Fournier, he had a responsibility to his title and family legacy, to maintain a strict level of respect and honor among his peers. The truth of his attraction to men would destroy not only him, but the Fournier name. Audrey understood his fear, and Philip matched hers with his understanding of why it was imperative no one find out about her time locked away at Shadewell. He did not discredit her for it, just as she did not discredit him for his feelings. She was quite certain that there were a number of men and women, even within their own social strata, that felt the same non-conforming desires. But they all lived within a fragile glass bubble, Audrey knew, where nothing was real or genuine, and the slightest crack could cause irreparable damage.
