Page 73 of A Proposition for the Comte
Chapter Ten
They reached Addington Manor by sunset and retrieved the list buried in the wooden box she had placed it in. What could have been a difficult task became easy as the family who had purchased the property were abroad and the main servant who had been left in charge was more than happy to allow Aurelian the time and space to find what he needed in the outside gardens on the strength of a heavy purse of coinage.
After leaving the manor they stopped in a copse of woods a good hour south and Aurelian allowed her the first opening of the box.
The list was still wrapped in cloth, a few dried flowers alongside it. Violet took it out carefully and unravelled the sheet of paper looking to see if what she remembered on the note was still there before handing it to Aurelian for a closer look.
His finger traced the initials.
‘“Stephen Miller” and “George Taylor”. “Douglas Cummings” is here, too, as well as “A.W.”. Alexander Whitely. “J.C.” is a question, as is the letter “A”.’
Violet looked at him, frowning.
‘It could belong to Antoinette Herbert, his French mistress. She was one of the last people to see Stephen Miller alive. I went to visit her and she knew who I was.’ He pushed his hair back with his free hand and spoke more softly. ‘I knew her name, too, from Paris. She said she was one of the contributors of the French gold.’
‘But you think she was more than that?’
‘Much more. She gave and then she took. It was a way in to find the gold.’
‘Is she blackmailing Cummings?’
‘Into killing, you mean? No.’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps not that. Cummings has a sick sister, an ageing mother and an estate that looks as though it is in the last stages of falling down. He also has, according to that same mother, a heart of gold. I was there the day you were taken when I should have stayed and watched that you were safe.’
‘I am safe now, Aurelian. But why did you want to see the list, then? What could it tell you that I have not?’
‘This.’ His finger ran across a mark next to the initials of the letterA. ‘Harland Addington rubbed something out.’
He turned the paper over and held it up to the fading sky.
‘A cross was placed there, in capitals.’
‘A kiss?’
‘Or the first sign of his realising that Antoinette Herbert, his mistress, needed to be dealt with?’
‘You think he might have tried?’
‘The fight you mentioned and the broken necklace. Perhaps Antoinette Herbert also saw this list and needed a way to tear Harland Addington into pieces.’
‘That makes sense.’
Lian looked pensive. ‘Did your husband ever hurt your nephews?’
The world spun around Violet in a frightening and dizzy whirl and she was suddenly hurled back into the horrible years of her marriage.
Harland’s tastes were strange to say the least and he could be more than violent when he drank. Laudanum was there too, the sweet and sticky smell of the drug clinging to everything.
After Michael and Simon had come to live at Addington Manor she remembered bruises that had often been on their arms or cheeks. She’d put them down to the boys’ boisterous games. But had Harland been threatening them with his certain sort of brutality until Amaryllis had simply snapped?
‘I think he may have...’ But she could barely say the words, the shaking that had started as soon as Aurelian had mentioned her nephews now taking over everything. It explained so much. Why Amaryllis had killed her brother and why she had hated him just as much as Violet had. It would also explain why Michael and Simon were so withdrawn for boys their age. They had lost a beloved father and then been sent to live with a vicious and sadistic uncle, often journeying down to London with their mother to the town house in which Harland mostly stayed. He would have had a freedom to hurt them that was astonishing and Violet knew he would have enjoyed it.
Her husband had deserved so much more than a simple blow from a hammer. The fury in her made her cry out even as she felt herself falling.
Aurelian laid Violet down carefully and covered her with the blankets, trying to quell the shaking and make her warm.
She was freezing, her lips blue with the cold and each finger curled in a hard fist against her palm.
He had heard rumours in London of Addington’s aggression. Now he knew that she had experienced what he had prayed that she would not have and that the dreadful truths of her husband’s cruelty were also her truths.
