Page 19 of Fatal By Design
“You refused the match based on skin pigmentation?” Audrey asked.
“Not just that. The boy had no proper respect for his own position,” Edgerton snapped. “Montague is to blame. He brought the orphan to England and put him through school in France—at great expense. Gave the boy airs. Ambition.”
Hugh gritted his molars. “Heisheir to a marquessate.”
“Lord Redding was far more suitable for Millie,” the baroness said.
No doubt because of his skin color. Hugh would have thought money and titles would be of primary importance to the likes of Edgerton and Audrey’s mother. But it appeared their depths of character were even shallower than he’d first discerned.
Audrey stopped before a small oil portrait of a young woman, framed in gold filigree. Three paintings had been framed and set upon the table. Audrey’s had been obscured and set behind a vase, but Millie’s and that of a young man were on more prominent display.
Hugh observed that Millie had dark hair, closer to brown than Audrey’s gold. Her squared jaw lent her a bold appearance, her straight nose and thin brows sharpening it. Audrey’s portrait accurately depicted her own heart-shaped jawline and soft lips, her upturned nose, and perceptive eyes, so Hugh presumed Millie’s was a fair representation of her. The third portrait was older, from a different artist, and he presumed it to be of James, Audrey’s late brother. He had Millie’s bold jaw, but Audrey’s upturned nose.
“Why did I not know anything about Lord Cartwright?” Audrey asked.
“Why should you have?” her mother replied, impatiently. “You were a child. No more than eight or nine. It was none of your concern.”
The callousness shown toward Audrey made Hugh want to set the whole of Haverfield afire and burn it to the ground. His own mother had rejected him, but she’d at least given him the chance to be loved by another woman, one who’d longed to be a mother. Lady Edgerton had never made an effort. He bit his tongue against words of anger and instead kept his focus on questions that needed answers.
“Did your daughter keep in contact with him?”
The baroness sent him a scathing glare. “Don’t be absurd, of course she did not.”
“But did she love Lord Cartwright?” Audrey asked.
At this, her mother scoffed and turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “She knew her duty and did not cause any fuss. Millie, for one, was grateful for all we did for her.”
The bastions holding back his temper threatened to breach, but Audrey was fast to intercede—probably sensing his crumbling will.
“Millie is missing,” she said. “Her driver and maid have both been killed.”
Edgerton and her mother both went to stone. Then erupted with dueling shouts: “Why did you not say from the beginning?” and “Where was this?”
Rather than answer their questions, Hugh pressed forward. “We have reason to believe Lady Redding and Lord Cartwright planned to meet here, today. But before that could come to pass, she was abducted, and her servants killed.”
A show of genuine emotion gripped the baroness as she squealed and covered her gaping mouth with her hands. “Not my Millie!”
“Cartwright, that good for nothing rapscallion,” the baron seethed. “He is behind this!”
“Why would you suggest that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he blustered. “He is taking out his revenge on us. I thought you were supposed to be the inspector.”
Hugh fought a groan. Revenge, after nearly fifteen years? He thought not.
“Uncle, this has nothing to do with you, I’m sure. Millie is the one in danger here, not you,” Audrey said. “Can you recall anything she might have said when she was here last? Any indication that she was in trouble?”
The baroness stood, her chin hitching. “Your sister is above reproach. Unlike you, traveling alone with an eligible bachelor, while you are in mourning, no less. Have you no shame?”
“Finding Millie is far more important than heeding mourning rules, Mother.”
The woman seethed but held her tongue.
“Find Cartwright and you will find her,” the baron said. “Though I doubt she would be associating with the likes of him willingly, now that there’s a proposal on the horizon.”
Interest streaked down Hugh’s spine, and with it, a completely new avenue of possibilities. “She is expecting a proposal of marriage?”
With a haughty arch of her brow, Audrey’s mother replied, “Yes. Lord Westbrook has intimated as much.”
