Page 43 of Silence of Deceit
“Hugh Marsden.” She fell back onto her heels and stared up at him in wonder. “Are you telling me to go home?”
Hell.Hugh clenched his jaw and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “You do not have to leave, but I can’t stay. I’m investigating two murders that are connected and—”
“Who is it?”
He paused. “You wouldn’t know them, I’m sure.”
She tapped his shoulder, almost playfully. “Not the murder victims. The woman you are sleeping with.”
He lost the ability to speak for a moment as he stared at her. Then, fumbling for a reply, said, “I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”
Gloria chuffed a laugh and eased away from him. He frowned at the barbs of irritation under his skin.
“I am not lying. We have an agreement, Gloria, and I am a man of my word.”
Kissing the duchess had hardly been a violation of their arrangement. Though, not for the first time, he regretted his moment of weakness. It was as if the darkness of that upstairs alcove had given them permission to trod over the boundaries of propriety and convention. It had erased their different positions in society and all the reasons a kiss like that would be impossible by the light of day.
“It is the duchess, isn’t it?” Gloria asked as she wrapped an arm around the post of his bed. She looked utterly tantalizing and seductive, and yet, Hugh stayed where his feet had sealed to the floor.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She shook her head. “Lying is beneath you.”
It was. Hugh went to the decanter he kept on his bedside table and splashed some whisky into a glass. It seared his throat, and he relished it. “I am not sleeping with her.”
“She could take you as her lover,” Gloria said with a blasé lift of her shoulder. There was no show of jealousy or possession. Just straightforward honesty. With a surprising pinch of injury, he came to understand the stark truth of Gloria’s feelings. Their long-standing arrangement might have been an intimate one, but she was not enamored with him any more than he was with her. Of course, there had never been any talk of love or admiration. Theirs was a relationship of pleasure and sometimes companionship. But her suggestion still somehow dazed him.
“Duchesses do not take Bow Street officers as their lovers,” he finally managed to reply.
And with another burst of startling clarity, he knew in his soul that he would never consent to such an arrangement. He had far too much pride.
“Whatever you say,” Gloria said lightly. She came to him, kissed his cheek, and then took her leave.
Hugh listened to her footfalls growing fainter, the shutting of the front door, and the silence of the house. Without needing her to say it, he knew she would never come back.
ChapterFourteen
Esther Starborough’s home in Kilburn, just west of Regent’s Park, was not a fashionable address, but it was neat and well-kept, and solidly middle class. It reminded Audrey of Hugh’s modest home on Bedford Street, in fact. As she viewed the brick and stone home from where she sat within her carriage, she again strove to push the Bow Street officer from her mind. It had been no easy task since her return to Violet House earlier that afternoon. She’d wanted to beat Hugh to Esther’s home, and in rushing through a bath and allowing Greer to dress her and style her hairwithoutrushing, all she had managed to do was keep the man in the forefront of her mind. As if he had not already taken up permanent residence there as of late.
It did not help that Philip hadn’t been at home to distract her with any complaints or questions. She hadn’t expected a warm welcome from him, but she had expected him to at least be there. Instead, his valet informed her that the duke had left the evening before and had not yet returned. With a ball of ice lodged in the pit of her stomach, Audrey had at last called for Carrigan to ready the coach.
During the long, bumpy ride back to London, Audrey had determined that sending Greer to the servant’s door at the Starborough’s home was too much of a risk. If, in fact, Esther did have something to do with the blackmailing and murders, Audrey would not endanger her maid. No, if she wanted information, she would get it herself—with Carrigan at her side, of course. Hugh could not launch a diatribe against her if she brought male protection. However, she was beginning to think what he truly meant by male protection washisprotection. With great reluctance, even within her own mind, Audrey had to admit she liked the idea.
Upon leaving Shadewell, Carrigan had spurred the horses on for several more miles than was probably wise to a posting inn far enough south for the grip of the asylum to loosen around Audrey’s throat. But only on the second night on the road to London did she feel as though she could truly breathe again.
She and Hugh had not discovered much and for that she had been greatly disappointed. But another part of her was relieved that she had finally, at long last, faced her fears of that wretched place. It had been messy—she had panicked. She had lost her composure. But now, the asylum and her memories of it did not loom so ominously in her mind. She had, hopefully, put that part of her life firmly behind her.
Though perhaps that would not be totally possible until after they had caught the murderer.
With afternoon sunlight quickly fading, the windows of Esther Starborough’s home lit with lamplight. She’d been sitting within the carriage for nearly half an hour, and finally her impatience had burned through her cautiousness.
“Carrigan,” she called, and her driver instantly climbed down from the box. He’d surely been chomping at the bit to do something other than sit there with night falling.
The door opened and he helped her down. “Your Grace, if you don’t mind my cheek, I don’t believe Officer Marsden would approve of this.”
During their few days traveling along the post road, Audrey had suspected Hugh had informed her driver on the basics of the case. Blackmailing. Murder. Perhaps even that the murderer might be a woman. And while Greer and Carrigan knew they had visited an asylum, she did not quite know if they understood her own connection to it. Though if they suspected, she trusted they would keep her confidence.
“I don’t mind your cheek,” she replied. “However, I am also not curbing my actions. I value your presence, Carrigan. I count upon it.”
