Page 82 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
‘The girl was a maid who had worked for us. She disappeared a few weeks after she quit the job and moved in with a new lover.’
‘Did the lover kill her?’ Nick’s attention was caught by the story.
‘No, he was absolved because he had been drinking at a tavern close by and her body was found miles away down by the Isle of Dogs.’
Jacob continued with the recount now. ‘You might have known the girl, Nick, for it was the month after you disappeared that this all happened. She was slight and dark and from the country. Cornwall, I think. Sally was her name. The strange thing was the way she had been murdered. There were rows of distinct cuts all over her body, cuts that were precisely placed in every sensual zone. She’d bled to death, it was determined, and the constables named it as a sexual crime. They wondered if there was anyone at Vitium et Virtus who might have known her well enough to want her dead, though they never caught the perpetrator.’
‘My God.’ Nicholas stood now, his whole body shocked by such a revelation. ‘I know who did it. It was Bowles who killed her.’
‘Nash Bowles?’ The others looked at him as though he had just lost his mind.
‘I had found him doing exactly the same thing to exactly the same girl a week before I lost my memory. He said he had paid her handsomely for such a service even as I threw him out of the club by the scruff of his neck. He had a little knife in his hand and there was a look on his face that was...deranged is the closest I can come to naming it. I didn’t have the time to tell you all of it before I was taken.’
No one spoke for a second as they tried to understand the sense of it all.
‘It’s why he wants you dead, then. This secret.’ Oliver said this, the truth of his words undeniable. ‘He figured out you could put it together like you just have and identify him. When you arrived home here again every part of his life was compromised.’
‘It was only a matter of time and he knew it. That is why he had your carriage attacked.’ Jacob stood and hit his hand hard against the mantel. ‘The bastard. I never liked him. Where the hell does he live now?’
‘We’d have to go to the club and get the files,’ Fred said. ‘I heard he had moved earlier last year, but he was still somewhere here in the city.’
Within a second they were all ready to leave, jackets and hats on and each of them bristling with anger.
* * *
Eleanor needed to get out even for an hour, her chamber squeezing in on her with all its memories and spilled tears. Lucy was tired, too, a broken night’s sleep leaving her irritable. Jacob had not come home at all, she found that out as she’d met Rose at breakfast, her face tense and strained by the fact.
‘Where did he go?’ Eleanor asked the question, a growing alarm building.
‘He just said out. When I questioned him he told me to go to sleep and he would be back by dawn. He wasn’t.’
‘My God, if this has anything at all to do with Nicholas...’
‘I would say it has everything to do with him, Ellie. The note. Your sadness. Jacob’s friendship with a man who has betrayed you. He was gone most of the afternoon yesterday, too.’
‘I will visit Nicholas Bartlett.’
‘Do you think that wise?’
‘I don’t know any more but to just sit here...?’
‘Take Lucy for a walk in the park first to get rid of some of your energy. After that either Jacob will be home and be able to tell you the news himself or you can go to Bartlett, but in a better frame of mind.’
The plan sounded like a good one and Ellie went upstairs to find her warm cloak hat and gloves before calling for her daughter to do exactly the same.
* * *
Half an hour later she did feel better. The rain had held off and the wind had lessened and although she was cold she was also less wound up.
‘Will we go home soon, Mama? Back to Millbrook House?’
‘I am not certain, sweetheart. There are a few things here in London still left for me to do.’
‘Is Papa one of those things?’
She stopped and looked at her daughter. ‘Why do you ask that, Lucy?’
‘Because you have seemed sad and lonely and you said I would see Papa soon. I wish I could.’ Lucy was holding her hand as they walked to head back to their carriage when another conveyance drew up closely beside them.
