Page 50 of Silence of Deceit
“Yes. But what could she stand to gain by this plot? You heard Warwick—they have needed to live carefully to carry out their false marriage.”
For Christ’s sake, Warwick had not even dared report her as missing. Any attention, at all, could undo all the lies upon which they’d built their life.
“Perhaps that is why Esther had Delia approach everyone in person and she remained hidden,” Audrey suggested.
“And if Esther had decided to take on a new identity again, perhaps with some new beau, she could have wanted a hefty purse to support them.”
The pieces fit together, but something still bothered him. The child. Catherine.
“Why was Esther sent to Shadewell?” he asked.
They exited the gate, and Carrigan rushed to open the door to the carriage.
“That is exactly what doesn’t make sense,” Audrey replied, pausing before allowing Carrigan to help her up into the conveyance, where Greer waited. “Her infant son died. She was so distraught, she tried to take her own life.”
“Why then would she leave her young child now?” Hugh asked, musing aloud.
Unless she planned to come back for the little girl. But then, why not take her right away? No, something was not aligning.
After a few moments of standing on the curb, pondering what they had discovered about Esther, a rustling wind sent the duchess’s scent of camellia and rose toward him. She had held herself well during the interview with Doctor Warwick.
“What do you make of him?” Hugh asked. “The doctor, I mean.”
She peered back at the asylum, of which they had been fortunate enough to only see the polished face of. The three stories of cells, females in one wing and males in the other, were a sight Hugh had tried to expunge from his mind.
“He seemed…human. Fallible.” She turned her back on the place. “And yet still arrogant. The ruse they pulled on Mr. Starborough was cruel. Allowing the man to grieve his wife when she was not dead…it’s heartless. How could they live with themselves?”
Hugh’s bet was they had not lost a wink of sleep over the deceit. Had they been the sort to care, they would not have done what they had.
“It was inclination over duty, apparently,” he muttered. “Delia and Esther were connected, there is no doubt. But I am not convinced Esther discarded Warwick and their child as readily as she did Starborough.”
Audrey pressed one blond brow lower than the other, something she did whenever she was formulating some new stratagem—usually one Hugh did not like. “I could—”
“Go home to Violet House,” he said, earning himself a powerful glare of contempt. “Please, duchess. I have to update the magistrate and put out a hue and cry for Esther.”
Audrey’s pensive frown reflected his own feelings of conflict in revealing Warwick’s actions, but there was no getting around the fact that the doctor had committed a crime.
“Mr. Starborough will be crushed that his new marriage won’t be valid,” she said. “His wife is ill, he said. And he, too, seemed so aged. He used a cane for his limp and with his graying hair, he appeared so pallid. So forlorn.”
“I am sorry for the fellow, I truly am. But to explain Esther’s connection, I cannot leave out such important details.” He’d already given the magistrate a chopped-up version of the duchess’s involvement regarding the dead woman in the Thames; adding another lie to the story would eventually founder it.
She nodded primly and then took the driver’s hand, climbing into the carriage. Hugh remained on the curb.
“I’ll hail a hack,” he said, even though he knew it was a risk not seeing her back to Violet House himself. She could go anywhere from here, and he noted that she had not agreed to return home.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I haven’t yet decided,” she replied, then addressed her driver to shut the door.
Carrigan did and, with a contrite glance at Hugh, got into the box.
“Liar,” he grumbled as the carriage pulled away into traffic along Lambeth Road.
He turned around to search for a hackney or omnibus to hail. Luckily, a hack was approaching the pavement outside the brick walled courtyard. Hugh signaled the driver as he pulled the horses to a halt. The jarvey nodded to Hugh as he stepped down from the box to let out his current passenger. The man descended, his walking stick proceeding him, and paid the jarvey.
“Where to, guv?” the jarvey then asked Hugh.
He did need to go to Bow Street, but something weighed more heavily on him. “London Hospital,” he instructed, and then hefted himself into the carriage.
