THEY
sat in silence, staring at one another. The carriage suddenly seemed uncomfortably small and closed to Blake. He glanced out of the window at the passing coaches and broughams, riders, and pedestrians. “Lady Goodwin, might I take you home?”
She stiffened. “I … er … I ain’t goin’ home just yet.”
He noted her discomfort. What was she hiding? “Where are you staying?”
She spoke after a pause, her words tumbling in a rush. “I got me a room at a ’otel.”
“Hotel,” he said. “With an H. Which hotel?”
“Why do yew want t’ know?”
“Why are you now belligerent? Let me take you back to your rooms.” He smiled.
“I’m stayin’ at the St. James.”
His brows lifted. “Why, that is a favorite haunt of the Europeans.” He rapped on the ceiling. “Godson. To the St. James.”
Immediately the carriage rolled forward. Violette sat without expression, staring at him. Blake studied her, causing her to drop her gaze. He knew she was not staying at the St. James; she could not afford even a night or two. But why would she try to deceive him about this matter?
He continued to stare out of the carriage window, thinking now about Sir Thomas’s death. He still believed the elderly knight died from natural causes, in spite of Joanna Feldstone’s wild accusations. But Violette had fled Goodwin Manor the moment she had learned that her husband’s creditors would possess everything—just two days after his death.
“Wot’s wrong?” she asked quietly.
He met her gaze. “Lady Goodwin,” he said slowly, “was there a reason you left the country in such haste?” His gaze was direct, piercing.
Her stare widened, but did not swerve. “Yew mean, after I learned o’ me ’usband’s debts?”
Blake nodded.
She folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why, eggsactly, we ran away.”
We, he thought. “Exactly,” he murmured. “But you did run away.”
She nodded, mouth pursed. “I was scared. Scared o’ losin’ everythin’ I ever dreamed o’ ’avin’.”
He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he did not. “Is that the only reason you were scared?” he asked softly.
“Yeah.” But she hesitated.
“There is more, is there not?”
She shrugged, avoiding his eyes for a moment. “Yeah. There’s more. Ralph wanted t’ leave. ’E wanted t’ leave fast, right away.”
Blake’s heart was hammering now.
Ralph
. Violette was not capable of murder. But was the manservant? Was he a murderer? If there had even been a murder? “And do you always obey your manservant?” The question was caustic, which he had not intended.
She jerked. “I told yew. I’ve known Ralph since we was little. We growed up together, ’im an’ me. ’E’s me family.”
“I see,” Blake said. “Are your parents alive, Lady Goodwin? Do you have any brothers, sisters, cousins?”
“No,” she said. “Just Ralph.”
He stared.
They did not speak again until the phaeton paused in the circular lamp-lined drive in front of one of London’s tonier hotels. Violette smiled at him. “Wot about me job?” she asked, preparing to rise.
“I will make inquiries this afternoon and tomorrow.”
“An’ ’ow will yew—you,” she smiled at him, “leave word fer me?”
“I will leave a message here at the St. James.”
She looked everywhere but at him. “Thank you, Lord Blake.”
“Blake,” he corrected, seizing the door handle before she could grab it herself. “Lady Goodwin.”
She froze, crouched in the coach.
“A gentleman always precedes a lady out of a conveyance, in order to aid her in stepping down.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.” She sank back down on the seat.
He shoved the door open, climbed out, and reached up to take her hand. “No jumping,” he added.
Violette hesitated, then stepped carefully down onto the street.
Blake bowed. “On the morrow, then.”
She nodded with an eager smile. “On the morrow … Blake.” And she curtsied—perfectly.
He followed her, of course.
She waited for his carriage to drive away and turn the corner, standing in front of the hotel, watching him leave, waving. How obvious she was. The moment his phaeton turned the corner, Blake ordered it to slow and he jumped out, then told his driver to continue home to his town house. He hurried back toward the hotel and arrived just in time to see his quarry enter a hansom cab. Blake followed suit.
The hansom headed west, toward Mayfair and Belgravia, then turned sharply south. The stately residences of the upper classes disappeared, double- and triple-story red-brick dwellings on shady streets taking their place. The hansom veered again. The pleasant, well-kept homes and gardens of the city’s merchants and traders also vanished. In one instant, Blake found himself transported into a crumbling neighborhood of back-to-backs, groceries and grog shops, with the smokestacks of several different factories belching overhead.
Her cab had stopped. Blake rapped on the partition separating him from the driver, far more than grim. There was a knot in his stomach, one acutely unpleasant and unpalatable.
He observed Violette as she disembarked from her hansom and paid the driver with a friendly smile. As the cab rolled away, she paused, staring up at one of the flats. These row houses had no front yards, no porches, no fencing. When she finally hurried up the three front steps and unlocked the weathered door, Blake alighted from his own cab. He was barely aware of paying his fare. He stared at the tenement where she had disappeared.
He should have guessed. This was what she could afford. He himself was building row houses like this one for London’s poor, as were several of his peers, so he should not be dismayed at her choice of residence, but he was.
It was one thing to build homes for those less fortunate than himself. It was another to actually see such homes up close, occupied, in an actual working-class, impoverished neighborhood.
And he did not have to walk closer to instantly remark that these particular row houses had been constructed both rapidly, cheaply, and poorly. He could see at a glance that the thinnest bricks had been used, a cost-saving device. But that meant that
the walls would soon crumble in places and leak when it rained, which was, in London, on average one out of every three days. Inferior shingles had been used on the roofs. Undoubtedly they would leak too.
Blake strode slowly up the walk; the pavement was broken in places. The sidewalk was littered with rubbish and even broken glass, although not, thank God, with sewage and other excrement. He hated the fact that Violette lived here. He hated it violently.
He knew he should leave her with her pride intact, but he could not.
He continued up the walk and to her front door. The factories behind the tenements were causing an unpleasant odor, one that could not be healthful, one containing the fumes of gas. He could also, finally, detect the odors coming from the privies, which he knew were behind the row houses. Blake refrained from using his handkerchief to cover his nose. He did not hesitate, but knocked loudly, not once, but several times.
The door opened immediately, revealing Violette, who had removed her hat. She turned starkly white when she saw him, then started to slam the door in his face.
Blake thrust his shoulder against it and shoved past her.
She cried, “Yew can’t come in ’ere!”
But he was already inside. He stared at the small, dreary foyer where he stood, a windowless room which he knew doubled as a parlor. He recognized the rug which had adorned Violette’s bedroom floor in Goodwin Manor. But there was not another stick of furniture in this room, other than a small pallet on the floor.
“Wot yew think yer doing?” she shouted.
He ignored her, striding to the doorway that let into a small, dark, ugly kitchen. He saw the outdated stove, the wooden counter, the chipped plates and bowls atop it. He saw the single wooden table and the two spindly chairs, one of which was distinctly off balance.
“Yew can’t come in ’ere,” Violette repeated from behind him. Her tone was laced with tears.
He didn’t really hear her. He was too appalled. He turned to look at her, stunned, then walked over to the other doorway to peer into the bedroom. It contained a single mattress and numerous blankets, and all of Violette’s clothes, hanging on wall hooks.
“How dare yew,” she cried from behind him.
He faced her. “I had to know.”
She was close to tears. He saw that now. “Well now yew know! Are yew ’appy?”
“Not at all,” he said quietly. “You cannot remain here.”
“Oh, right! An’ where will I go?” She was bitterly sarcastic. “T’ ’Ardin’ ’Ouse?”
It was a possibility, athough not a solution. Blake extracted his billfold and opened it.
“Wot are yew doin?” Violette asked fearfully.
“I am writing you a banknote. Surely you have a pen and inkwell?”
She stared wildly, not answering him.
He walked into the kitchen, looked around, and realized that he would not find what he was looking for because Violette could not write. He turned, extracting one of his business cards from his breast pocket.
She took it and stared as if she had never seen a card before. “Wot’s this?”
“The address of my bank,” he said. “Tomorrow you shall find a draft there, made out to you, for the sum of five thousand pounds. You may cash it then and there, or at any other bank you choose.”
She gasped. “Five thousand pounds? Are you daft? I can niver in me life pay yew back.”
“I do not want to be paid back. It is a gift. There are some pleasant flats in Knightsbridge. Also in Bloomsbury. Shall I take you there now?”
She continued to stare at him. “I don’t understand. Wot do yew mean, a gift?”
“Have you never received a gift before?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “Sir Thomas gave me the necklace. An’ me clothes. An’ me pin money.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “A fiver every month.”
His jaw flexed. “We now know that Sir Thomas was indebted and could not afford more.” But Blake knew he had not been that indebted. He had been miserly with his bride. In spite of loving her, he had been cheap.
“I … I …” She faltered. “’Ow can I take this?”
“You can and you shall. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It is a gift.” Blake did not take his gaze from her pale face, her trembling lips. “Come to the bank tomorrow. If I am not there, ask for my assistant, Christopher.”
“A gift,” she whispered, staring at him like a child bewildered
on its first Christmas by too many presents to contemplate.
Finally he started to smile. “It is my pleasure, Vi—Lady Goodwin.”
Their gazes locked. “Yew can call me Violette,” she whispered.
He did not move. He had not been having illicit thoughts until that very moment. But her eyes were shining, her face rapt. She was so beautiful, so vulnerable, and so damnably honest. The silence within her horrid flat was astounding; he could hear his own soft, even breathing, and hers, harsher and more ragged. And somewhere, outside, he could hear the distant sound of machinery grinding and whirring. In one of the neighboring flats a child was crying.
But none of that really registered. Blake looked at her mouth, recalling its taste and texture. It was hard to remember why she was forbidden to him. He ached to hold her, to make love to her, and then teach her the ways of the world. It had been such a long time since he had been so strongly drawn to a woman, not since he had loved and lost Gabriella—eight years ago.
His heart lurched, his body stiffened, dread battling desire. Violette was different, and not just from Gabriella, but from anyone he knew. She was far more than beautiful, and he was in danger of losing control of himself and his emotions. He could not, must not, let that happen.
She remained motionless. Her gaze was glued to his face, her heart—her love for him—shining in her eyes.
Christ
, he thought, ready to reach for her.
And the front door suddenly slammed, footsteps sounding. Blake started. So did Violette.
Ralph entered the kitchen, staring at them both. “Wot the bleedin’ell?”
Blake’s pulse began a distinct roaring in his ears. He suddenly recalled the single mattress in the bedroom. And Violette had fled Tamrah with Horn. “Are you visiting Lady Goodwin?” he asked. It was hard to maintain one’s calm, hard not to snarl like a jungle animal. For he already knew the answer to his question, and in that instant, the depth of his anger and jealousy amazed him.
It was inappropriate, beyond the pale, for them to be sharing a flat, even if Violette considered Horn family.