Page 67 of Taken to the Grave
Knowing her maid would only stiffen at an embrace, Audrey merely took her hands in hers and squeezed. Greer’s eyes filled, but she sniffed and straightened.
“I’ll fetch you a gown,” she said, back to her usual no nonsense self. “The viscount is waiting for you downstairs.”
Audrey brightened, eager to see Hugh and learn what had happened at Burdick Close after she’d left. And perhaps even discuss what would happen now. Her stomach flipped as Greer went to the wardrobe to select a gown, and Audrey sat again, reaching for her hairbrush. But seeing the letter Greer had brought in, she picked that up instead. The seal was unfamiliar. A dark burgundy pressed with an olive branch. She released thewax wafer with her nail and unfolded the letter. But as soon as she began to read, she knew what the letter was. With every word, every sentence, a chiming in her ears grew louder. Audrey couldn’t breathe. She tried to stand, but her knees went soft, and she came down again, into the chair. Her elbow knocked something aside with a clatter.
“Your Grace?”
Audrey turned to her maid. “Bring Lord Neatham at once.”
Hugh paced the drawing room,oddly nervous. The day had been no better than one belched up from hell, and yet he wasn’t tired in the least.
After leaving Bow Street, he’d stopped briefly at his home to change before setting out for Violet House. He had needed to see Audrey. Needed to be certain she was well. Everything had unraveled so quickly after Abbey had been taken into custody, his injuries severe from the bullet in his side. He was alive, for now. If the bullet wound didn’t kill him, once convicted of the murders, he would surely swing. Rightfully so.
With Abbey and his henchmen in custody, the Sanctuary was shuttered. But what of its members? In their search of Abbey’s belongings, Bow Street might find a list of names. They would be questioned, of course, but belonging to a club wasn’t a crime in and of itself. And what was to stop someone from forming another society like the Sanctuary?
“Where there is one, there is bound to be another,” Sir Gabriel had said when Hugh posed the same question to the magistrate. “We won’t be able to dismantle them all.”
Hugh could only hope that the names of its members might find their way into a newspaper article, bringing them exposure and shame. But that wasn’t for him to decide.
Neither was Stevens’s fate.
While the officer had claimed to have never taken part in any of the rituals, he’d admitted that protecting the Sanctuary had been lucrative. When Lord Stromburg and Madame Lee had come to Bow Street, it had been pure luck that Stevens was on duty and able to take the complaint about Opal. He’d never filed it, but instead, went to Abbey, who in turn had silenced the pair of them. And when Harlan Givens came to Bow Street claiming to know something more about the bodies found at Vauxhall, Officer Tyne had brought him on as an informant. Givens was to learn as much as he could about this Sanctuary that he’d heard of through the Red Lotus. Stevens had, of course, tipped Abbey off to that as well.
As for Comstock, the constables that Miss Lavinia Clark mentioned had indeed filed the report of his death; Stevens, however, pulled the record and misfiled it to keep the news from ever reaching Tyne or Sir Gabriel.
The Bow Street officer would lose his post, but since he hadn’t done the murders, he would likely only spend a little time behind bars. Of course, Newgate wouldn’t be friendly to a former officer of the law.
“Let it be a lesson to any officer thinking of doing the same,” Sir Gabriel had said, feeling no pity for the man.
Hugh crossed the drawing room at Violet House for what might have been the fiftieth time. He’d already proposed to Audrey, and she’d already accepted, but now… Now it was time to make arrangements. His hands began to sweat. It was absurd. It was a wedding. Not a march to the gallows.
The door to the drawing room opened, and Greer appeared, her eyes slightly wild.
“Her Grace needs you, my lord,” she said, breathless.
She started away immediately, and Hugh followed.
“What is it?” he asked, taking the stairs after Greer, his pulse beginning to pound. “Is she hurt?”
“No, my lord,” she replied, rushing through the hall upstairs. “Hurry.”
His mind reeled as Greer led him into a bedchamber, where he saw Audrey in her banyan robe, pacing the carpet. Her hair was loose and damp; she looked to have come straight from a bath. Clenched in her hand was a sheet of paper. She turned to Hugh, and he saw that her cheeks were wet, her eyes glistening.
“Audrey? Christ, what has happened?”
She held up the paper, creased in the fashion of a letter folded for posting. He could see handwriting through the thin cotton. “It is him,” she whispered.
Hugh stared at the letter again as a strange weight settled over him. His pulse skipped, and it throbbed an echo in his ears.Philip. He’d told Audrey he would write to her one day. And it seemed he had. Dread poured through Hugh as he forced himself to move toward her, his legs heavy.
“What does it say?”
That he was coming back? That he’d changed his mind? Even as the instant fears fed into Hugh’s mind, he knew it couldn’t be so. Philip could not return. In his heart, Hugh knew that. But Audrey’s tear-dampened cheeks worried him.
Greer left the room, shutting the door behind her, and Audrey took a seat on the divan at the foot of her bed. Hugh lowered himself rigidly next to her.
“Will you read it to me?” he asked.
She nodded, the motion rough and shuddering. “Dearest Audrey,” she began, her voice constricted. She coughed and started again:
