Page 105 of A Murder in Trinity Lane
She shook her head, sobbing softly. Her wrists were bound tightly behind her. I reached for the cords?—
“Don’t,” Vale said sharply. “Not unless you want to see what happens when I lose my temper.”
I turned slowly to face him. “She’s eight months pregnant. You tied her to a chair and left her here crying. What kind of man does that?”
“A man with a purpose,” he said coolly.
“She’s no threat to you. Let her go,” I said, rising to my feet. “You have me. You don’t need her, too.”
“Oh, but I do,” he said, stepping closer. “She’s not walking out of here alive.”
My breath caught. “Why?”
His expression darkened. “Because she shouldn’t be allowed to bring another abomination into the world.”
“Is that what you think her babe is? An abomination?”
“Yes, and so is she. She’s filth,” he spat. “A blight. An imperfection in a world already drowning in them.”
“You mean because she doesn’t meet your twisted idea of purity?”
His smile was sharp, cold, unhinged. “You catch on fast.”
I stared at him. He seemed to be in a confessional mood. If I kept him talking, maybe he’d reveal more, maybe even everything.
“Is that why you killed Elsie?”
His gaze sharpened. The mask slipped.
“Of course it is. She got herself with child—my brother’s child. The Vale line tainted by a gutter rat who couldn’t keep her legs closed.”
I flinched at his words—and the hate behind them. He said it so casually. So easily.
Then the realization hit me. Elsie had already given birth. If he’d killed her, what would he do to her child? Would his obsession with purity allow him to live? “Elsie’s babe.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
His mouth twisted into a mocking grin. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll find the little bastard. And I’ll end his life just as I ended hers.”
A sick wave of horror crashed over me.
He was mad. Not angry—mad. His obsession with bloodlines, with control, with some grotesque vision of perfection, had rotted his mind from the inside out.
“You’re insane,” I whispered.
“I’m a visionary,” he said. “You just never understood. I thought you might. I thought you could be the one.”
Although I already knew from Harriet’s letter, I drew back a step, feigning confusion. “The one for what?”
“The one to carry forward the Vale name,” he said, almost tenderly. “To cleanse it. To make it whole again.”
“You’re deranged.”
“I would have made you mywife,” he said, voice rising. “But you proved yourself false.”
“I never led you on.”
“You let me court you. You let me believe. But last night—” His eyes narrowed to slits. “I followed your hackney.”
My stomach turned to stone.
