Page 52 of An Honorable Deception
He prayed she would see his sincerity when he swore, “I’ll protect her, Samira. She’s safe. She’ll stay that way.”
“She’ll never be safe. Don’t you see?” She lifted a shaking hand to dash away the tears that spilled onto her cheeks. “Not if she thinks she has to save me, if she lets him control her with me. Tell her you found me dead—that’s the only hope she has. Tell her it was a random mugging, not to go looking. Don’t let her dig into this.Please.”
It was too late for that, and she had to know it—even if she didn’t know that another of Alethia’s friends had already fallen to a supposedly random mugging. That was probably why her tears still streamed down her cheeks, why her hands still shook.
“Victoria Rheams contacted her, said they had to meet, that she had information about you. Only Mrs. Rheams never showed up, so Alethia went to the Ayahs’ Home to see you,” he said softly. Gently. “But you were gone. She saw Rheams and Vernon taking Saanvi out—drugged. Hours later, someone named Courtney and another man barged into the church where Alethia had gone and shot her. We learned later that Mrs. Rheams never arrived for lunch becauseshe’d already been attacked too. The injuries killed her a few days later.”
He was making a few assumptions on motivations and the identity of the gunmen, but they seemed reasonable. And it ought to demonstrate that things had already gone too far for Alethia to keep quiet and let it go away. Someone had already died, quite possibly to protect this secret, if she’d learned of it.
The way Samira blanched supported his hypothesis. “She saw me—Mrs. Rheams, at the Ayahs’ Home. She was volunteering that day. She saw him getting into his car and ... and followed us. Here. Into the back rooms the ladies are never supposed to see. I tried to signal her to leave it alone, but that woman.” She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “She always thought herself unstoppable. Thought she alone, with her grit and determination, could right the wrongs of the world.”
And then Mrs. Rheams had contacted Alethia. Perhaps had noted their appointment in her book but hadn’t corrected the time. Those men, those murderers must think Alethia knew the same things about this place that Victoria Rheams had learned, about how the board of directors found the “poor creatures” they were going to “help.”
“Do you think ... do you think Rheams would have had his own wife killed to protect this place?”
Samira’s face twisted. “From what I’ve seen at the Home, he’d have had her killed just to shut her up in general. One time last year, I overheard her hissing at him that she would reveal to the world all his sins, all his secrets, that she would tell her father and ruin him. When he pointed out it would ruin her, too, she only laughed and said her life was a ruin already. Though she must have kept quiet, for some reason, about whatever else she’d discovered. Butthis?” She motioned to the room, shook her head again. “Mrs. Rheams would not countenance this. Would not let it go on once she knew. She’d tear her own life apart to stop it, without a doubt.”
Only the board members had torn it apart first, quite literally. And instead of helping the friend whose ayah had been kidnapped, she’d put Alethia into their crosshairs too. Alethia was a loose thread they couldn’t leave hanging. She wasn’t a child they could claim misunderstood. She was one of the most well-regarded young ladies of society. If she decried Lords Vernon and Dunne, if she pointed the finger at Rheams and the others, she wouldn’t be ignored, especially if she got her parents ...
A wrinkle that made it even more dangerous. What would happen if a young lady denounced her own father? She wouldn’t be believed so easily then. Other men, yes, perhaps, if her parents stood with her. But if they didn’t ... she could be labeled a lunatic. That accusation wouldn’t work for anyone else, but it would for her father.
Regardless, it would be messy. It could spell disaster for a political career. But if one’s only daughter were brutally killed—in a church, no less—thatwould give one a platform for whatever reforms one wanted to spearhead in Lords. That would get one limitless press. Allow one to tell whatever narrative would best suit one’s purposes.
Samira sank back to a seat on the edge of the bed, pulling him back to the conversation. “Weiss would have been the other thug. Courtney and Weiss.”
He nodded and noted the name. “You’re not protecting her by staying here, Samira.”
A loud guffaw of laughter broke through from below. Yates wasn’t surprised when moments later someone scratched at the door, and the woman’s voice said through it, “His lordshipis here. Hurry out now—we’ll give you five minutes but can’t promise more. You’ll have a credit for next time, though.”
Samira’s expression shifted back to resigned. “Go. Get Lucy out. There’s no time for anything else.”
Lucy was already scrabbling into the window.
Yates held Samira’s gaze. “Tomorrow.”
No hope flickered in her eyes. “He’ll know they let you in. He’ll have moved me somewhere else by then.”
“Then—”
“I can take care of myself, my lord. I’ve been doing so my entire life. You keep Alethia safe.”
He didn’t like it. But he didn’t know what else to do. “You could be wrong. I’ll check. Promise me you’ll come with me tomorrow if you can.”
Something about her shrug put him oddly in mind of Lavinia when she’d capitulated to the insistence of food. An acknowledgment of a need—and a deeper knowledge that it would change nothing. “If so, then yes.”
It would have to do for now. After a glance and a nod to Lucy, he let himself out of the room.
SIXTEEN
Lavinia noted it the very moment Yates reemerged from the side door. She paid for her pudding, smiled her thanks at the same waiter who had served them their dinner, and proclaimed that her father was coming.
She’d gained the street within a minute, but Yates was disappearing around the far corner of the Empire House, not coming back toward her. For a second, she paused, debated. Then she rushed after him.
Sticking to the deepest shadows she could find, she knew very well she wasn’t moving as quickly in her corset and stylish pumps as he would be. Even so, she nearly gasped when she ducked into the alleyway he’d taken and saw that he was scaling the wall, his shoes on the ground, along with his stockings, so that bare toes and fingers could find purchase in seams and mortar that certainly shouldn’t have allowed it. He’d already reached a window on the first floor by the time she made her way to his shoes, and she craned her neck up in time to see a slender arm slip through a window bar. A leg followed, with a skirt pulled up over the knee. And then a torso and head appeared.
From down here, in the night, Lavinia couldn’t tell anythingmore about the escapee, other than that she was so much smaller than Yates, as she climbed onto his back, that she could have been a child. Perhaps it was the perspective? Lavinia held her breath as he traveled back down as quickly as he’d gone up, a million prayers of gratitude tripping over one another in her mind.
He was on the ground a moment later, depositing his new friend on the pavement. Lavinia frowned, even as a surge of love for him hit her so hard she had to put a hand to the warm bricks to steady herself. Itwasa child. A little girl who looked Lavinia straight in the eye as if not at all surprised to see her. “’ello.”
