Page 31 of Silence of Deceit
Hugh had started up the steps, but now pivoted back toward his valet. “What? A visitor? Why didn’t you say?”
“I just did,” Basil pointed out with an incredulous wrinkle of his brow. “She arrived only a minute ago. She is waiting in the kitchen.”
Hugh set his hands on his hips, more flustered than before. “The kitchen? Why would you install a visitor in the kitchen?”
Basil merely gestured toward the back of the house, giving him theGo see for yourselflook that he had perfected over the last few years.
Hugh stomped toward Mrs. Peet’s kitchen, knowing the woman would not be there at this hour. She arrived at dawn and prepared breakfast and dinner, leaving most days around midafternoon. Hugh was capable enough to warm his dinner in the oven or to be unmotivated enough to eat it cold.
A thin, ragged looking woman sat at the kitchen table. A baby, swaddled in a frayed blanket, lay squirming in her arms. She jumped to her feet, her widened eyes locking onto Hugh as he came to a stop.
“How may I help you?” he asked, confusion holding him back from being any more welcoming. He had never seen this woman before, and the expression she wore was one of fright. A layer of dirt clung to her sallow cheeks, a darker smudge of soot on her chin. But the discolored skin under her left eye would not have washed off had she tried. Someone had struck her.
“I’m Lucy Givens,” she stated. “My Davy works for you. Runs errands and such.”
Hugh cocked his head. “Davy? I don’t employ any boy named—” Comprehension flooded him, raising the small hairs on his arms. “You mean Sir?”
The woman bit her lip and shook her head. “My boy says he comes here, does work for you. You’re Mister Hugh Marsden?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, stepping forward, his posture loosening now that he understood. “You are Sir’s mother? I’m sorry, he never told me his real name, so I just call him Sir.”
A smile wobbled to her lips, as if the idea of her boy being called such a thing amused her. But then, her grin crashed. Tears slipped from her eyes, and a cold drizzle of dread filled Hugh’s chest. “What is it? What is wrong?”
“He’s in hospital,” she said, her throat constricting into a rasp. The baby began to fuss. “Stabbed, he was.”
The floor tilted beneath him. Hugh stumbled toward her. “What? My god. What happened?”
Sir’s knobby shoulders and knees, his perpetually dirt-streaked face and unwashed black hair covered by a cap, his crafty mind and sharp eye, all swarmed in his mind as he awaited the woman’s answer.
“I don’t know, he’s…” Her face screwed up and she fought a sob. “He’s not awake. The doctor says…he might not.”
At that, the poor woman collapsed back down into the chair. Basil leaped toward her side to make sure she didn’t slip off the edge of the seat and hit the floor. A ball of icy fury roiled in Hugh’s sternum.
She sniffled into the handkerchief Basil had produced for her. “I shouldn’t have come here, probably, but I didn’t know who else to go to. Davy speaks so highly of you, sir, and you’ve been so kind…”
Overwhelm threatened to consume Hugh, and emotion began to prick at the backs of his eyes and squeeze his throat.
“Of course, you should have come,” Basil said, his own voice strident.
“Basil, hail a hackney. Mrs. Givens,” Hugh said, flexing his fists, his mind racing ten steps ahead of his body. “Take us to the hospital where he is, if you will.”
The next several minutes passed in a blur, ushering the woman and fussy baby into a hack and giving the jarvey the destination—the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. All the while, questions of where on his body Sir had been stabbed, how serious his injuries, and who had done it swirled like a maelstrom in his head. Whoever it was, Hugh would crush them. He’d hunt the bastard down and pummel him to within an inch of his life.
Dimly, he realized the only sounds on the short ride to Whitechapel had been the infant squirming in its mother’s arms. Sir was always going on about needing more coin for his mother and several siblings and his ailing father, though often, the mother was ailing, or one of his baby sisters. Whichever one would pull on the heartstrings more. A strange and unreasonable grin twisted Hugh’s lips. Then, the band around his throat squeezed tighter.
Mrs. Givens led them into the hospital, and they were quickly directed to a male ward where patients in different states of agony and consciousness lay on beds stretching in rows through the vast room. Some had bandaged heads and limbs, others were groaning and writhing, and others looked to be sleeping. Men of all ages were placed here, it seemed, but Sir’s slight figure beneath a blanket stood out among the rest. He was by far the youngest patient. Hugh swiftly strode to his bedside, growing alarmed by the chalky color of his skin. He was clean, he noted, likely washed by the attending nurses. If he’d been conscious, he would have ribbed the boy about getting himself stabbed just so he could get someone else to bathe him. Though, the amusement at the potential banter quickly fled.
“Doctor,” he called to the man who stood a few beds down. He signaled for Hugh to wait and after tucking in another patient, made his way over.
“Ah, Mrs. Givens, have you fetched Mr. Givens?” the man asked, looking between Hugh and Sir’s mother.
“Cor, no!” she replied waving a hand. “Davy is this gentleman’s errand boy.”
The doctor turned his inspection to Hugh with less warmth. “How can I help you, sir?”
“What happened? How severe are his injuries? Where was he found?”
“He was brought in,” the man said, looking slightly appalled by the abrasive questions. “A woman delivered him. She gave her name as Winnie. She asked that when the boy woke, we tell him that she was sorry for what happened to him.”
