Lady Annabelle immediately grabbed Eric’s arm, leading him firmly up the steps towards the theatre. “We’re going to miss the show,” she purred, clearly thinking that she had won.
Eric shook his arm free, however. “The last thing I want to do tonight is go to the theatre,” he said in disgust. “Pardon me, but I have to go.”
He was certain there was nothing more that he could do tonight to help prove Dr. Ellington’s innocence or to track down Harvey Parsons, but the last thing he wanted was to sit around in the theatre pretending as though everything was all right and that he didn’t hate society as a whole with a passion right then.
If this destroyed his reputation, then so be it. He stalked off alone towards home, the crowd parting silently to let him past
Chapter 24
Lord Eric Cumberland, Duke of Havenport
Eric knew that there was nothing he could do that night regarding Harvey Parsons, so halfway back to his manor, he changed directions. He remembered the look in Charlene’s eyes as she had darted away from the theatre. She had looked as though she had finally lost all hope. It had cut Eric to the core.
He had to make sure that she was all right. He had to at least make sure that she made it home all right. He had never seen her look so bedraggled before, as though she was totally out of her mind with sorrow. He hated that things had come to this.
He only hoped she wouldn’t rush straight to the Marquess’ place to announce that she had accepted his proposal. But as Eric rushed past Lord Ambrose’s home, the place was thankfully unlit. The Marquess wasn’t home. Perhaps he had been at the theatre as well.
Eric certainly hoped not, as the last thing he wished was for word of that scene to reach the chief investigator before Eric made certain that Charlene was okay.
He knocked on the door to Charlene’s home and was surprised when Helene herself answered it. The woman looked worried. “Lord Eric,” she said, wringing her hands. “Perchance might you have tidings of Charlene?”
Upon closer inspection, the woman appeared exhausted.
“Is she not here?” Eric asked worriedly.
Helene shook her head. “We received word that the trial had been set to this week, and she rushed out of here. I thought she might have gone to see you. I sent out all the servants to search for her, but they all have yet to return.”
Eric winced. “She came to the theatre to find me,” he told the woman.
“Ohh,” the woman sighed, looking to the side. Her mouth drew into an unhappy line. “And I suppose that there was a scene? But now why are you here?”
“She was quite distraught when she left,” Eric said slowly. “She was quite distraught when she arrived, I suppose, is a better way to phrase it.” He paused. “She ran away, and I was hoping that she had come back here. I wanted to make certain that she was safe.”
If anything, Helene looked even more worried. “She hasn’t returned here,” the woman said, shaking her head.
“Is there anywhere that you believe she might have gone?” Eric asked. “Perhaps to the comfort of a friend?”
Helene shook her head again. “None of her supposed friends will have anything to do with her now, with the scandal that is hanging over her head.”
Eric winced. “I do apologize for all of that,” he said. “I was simply trying to help with the doctor’s case. I know we didn’t do things the way that protocol demands, but I promise you, I did not take advantage of her innocence.”
Helene waved away his apologies. “I never believed that you would. And believe me when I say how grateful I am to have a man of your esteem looking into my brother’s case.” She paused. “He will swing either way, though. Lord Ambrose will make sure of it. They need someone to blame.”
“He will not hang,” Eric said sharply. “I know who truly committed the crime, and I am putting together a case strong enough to refute any evidence that Lord Ambrose brings to the trial. You have to convince Miss Charlene that marrying the Marquess is not the only way.”
Helene shook her head, a small, sad smile on her lips. “I can see why my niece likes you,” she said quietly. “Even if you manage to save her father, however, a marriage to Lord Ambrose is the only way for Charlene to save her reputation and have a future in this city.”
She looked away from the duke. “I wish that there were some other way. I truly do. However, you must let her go.” She paused. “I believe that Charlene has enough fire to last her through her days as the Marquess’ wife.”
“Shouldn’t have to simply survive her days,” Eric said, outraged. “She deserves happiness.”
Helene gave him a sharp look. “Happiness?” she scoffed. “There is no happiness in a life such as this. There is simply duty, to one’s family. Perhaps she may find heaven at the end of her suffering. That is the best we may all hope for.”
Eric stared at the woman for another long moment, feeling even more agitated and frustrated. But he could tell from Helene’s impassive look that there was no arguing with her. Let her believe as she believed. He needed to stop wasting time and find Charlene, before it was too late.
Where else might she have gone? She wasn’t with the Marquess, and she wasn’t at home.
Suddenly, he remembered something that Charlene had told him in that one letter that she had sent him, so long ago now. She had mentioned a small office that her father kept here in London, for when he had patients to treat on his infrequent visits to the city. The rest of the time, there was an apothecary in the place, if he remembered correctly.
He wondered if that office still existed. And if so, he wondered if he could find his way there. He had a feeling that that was where Charlene would have run off to.
Surprisingly enough, it did not take long for him to locate the place, with the help of a friend on the city guard. The doctor’s office wasn’t in the best part of town, but at least the street seemed reasonably clean. Eric wondered if he should be there on his own, especially dressed as he was for the theatre.
There was no time to go home and change, however. He was certain that he needed to be here tonight, some dark feeling drawing him onwards.
He made quick work of the lock on the office door. There was no one in the street to see him, thankfully. He slipped inside and lit a candle, searching around the shop. He was surprised to find more of the doctor’s journals in here. They were closed away in one of the drawers. Eric recognized the doctor’s spidery handwriting immediately.
Clearly Charlene hadn’t been here, or else she would have sent the journals to Eric already. However, even if he hadn’t found Charlene yet, he couldn’t help but feel he had scored some victory tonight. Perhaps the clue about Harvey Parsons was somewhere in these journals.
He turned towards the door just in time for it to slam shut again, after he had left the place cracked open just the tiniest bit. He frowned, wondering if it was an errant burst of wind spilling down the street. Perhaps it would begin to rain again, and he would look just as bedraggled as Charlene.
He heard a thud outside the door, however, and when he made to push it open, he met with resistance. He frowned, wondering just who might have blocked him inside and to what end. Perhaps the apothecarist had somehow noticed his entry and had blocked him inside until the guard could come?
He supposed it had been foolish for him to break into the place, especially when, from the lock, it was clear that Charlene wasn’t there.
Except that now he held two more of the doctor’s journals in his hands.
Suddenly, there was a crash of breaking glass, and the next thing he knew, the place was on fire. He wasn’t sure what they had used to make the place go up so fast – or perhaps it was just that the wood of the floor was old and dry and ignited easily.
Whatever it was, the place immediately grew hot, flames licking nearly to the ceiling before Eric could move.
He gave a couple more shoves to the door, but although the wood creaked and groaned, he couldn’t seem to make it budge. He ha
d to get out of here, though, and his eyes furiously scanned the place for another exit. It appeared that there was a hallway that led away into the back, but Eric wasn’t sure if there was an exit that way. Besides, there were already flames spreading down that hallway. It wouldn’t be safe to investigate.
He cursed himself for not having scoped out the office more carefully first, maybe in daylight. He shouldn’t have rushed into things like this. He knew that this man Harvey Parsons was dangerous, and that the man knew that Eric was involved in this case.
No one knew Eric was here in this office tonight. If he burned alive, there would be no evidence linking Harvey to the murder, and indeed no one who would ever know what had truly become of the young duke. There would be only a pile of ash and bones when they finally got the fires out.
He swallowed hard. That was not to be his fate. He had to get out of there.
He made certain that the journals were tightly tucked into his shirt and then ran for the window. It was his quickest way out, he was sure. And as he looked over his shoulder at the flames, he knew that the quickest way out was the only way out.
He raised a chair and smashed the glass, ignoring how it rained down over his hands. A few mild scrapes were nothing compared to roasting alive.
As the fresh air whooshed into the room, the flames danced ever hotter. Eric had to get out of there now. He hurried back across the room slightly and then took a running leap, rolling into the street as he connected with the ground. It was muddy after the earlier rain, but for a moment, all Eric cared about was getting a breath of cool air into his lungs.
People were starting to gather. In this part of town, those flames would spread quickly from building to building. Eric was torn between the desire to find whoever had blocked him in and set the fire and the desire to get the hell away from there before anyone questioned what he was doing there.
Finally, he decided to run. After all, he doubted that Parsons would have stuck around. The guy was too clever for that.
Eric slipped away from the crowd and darted up the deserted streets, heading back towards his home. A couple times, he touched the journals under his shirt, ensuring that they were still there.
His feet only paused when he was practically on his doorstep. Charlene. He still hadn’t found her. He glanced back over his shoulder, though, and was nearly certain that he saw a man slip away into the shadows. An involuntary shudder passed through him.
He hoped that Charlene had followed sense and gone home to her own bed that night. If not, he hoped she was somewhere deep in hiding. But Eric knew better than to go back out himself, especially with the journals in his possession.
If he hadn’t been certain, before, that someone was trying their best to cover up a crime, he was certain of it now.
He headed inside and had Michael summon one of his investigators out of his own bed. “I need you to find Charlene and make sure that she is safe,” he told the man. “Check her house – see if she’s come home.”
The man nodded and slipped away. Eric slumped on the divan and opened the first of the journals as he waited to hear the news.
Chapter 25
Miss Charlene Ellington
Upon running away from the theatre and the horrible crowd there, Charlene began heading back towards her aunt’s house. But she couldn’t bring herself to go inside. What was there for her here?
Her aunt had barely spoken to Charlene lately, ever since the scene with the Marquess. Charlene had to expect that even if they managed to pull through this, her relationship with her aunt would never be the same again.
They would never be close, or feel like family, again.
As for her father, when he found out about the scandal that she had brought upon the family, he would likely want nothing to do with her either. He would be disappointed.
And that was assuming that her father was freed in the first place. Charlene couldn’t help but doubt that that would ever be the case.
At the theatre, Eric had seemed confident that he had come up with a way to save her father. That he knew how to prove the man innocent. But if he truly had come up with the evidence that he needed, why then had he asked for the trial to be put off indefinitely?
He wouldn’t have wanted Dr. Ellington to waste away in jail, nor for Charlene to waste away in the uncertainty of it all. So if he didn’t think that he was ready yet for the trial, that meant to Charlene that he didn’t have all of the evidence he needed.
Which meant that now that the trial would be occurring this week after all, the only way to save the doctor would be to agree to be engaged to Lord Ambrose.
Of course, that came with its own host of issues. There was something that had been holding her back right from the very start.
It was the fact that she had no means of guaranteeing that if she promised her hand to the investigator, he would actually free her father.
And somehow, she doubted that he would do something like that out of the goodness of his heart. It was no secret that the Marquess was a ruthless man, and Charlene still had the secrets about his first wife in the back of her mind.
The Marquess would want to show his dominance over her. What better way to do that than to scorn their supposed bargain and remove her closest family member from the picture? Especially given that the whole town seemed to think that Charlene’s wild ways were the result of her upbringing by her father.
If the wild horse had the right master, it could be tamed. Allow someone such as the doctor to continue to coddle her and it was no wonder she acted the way she did. She was sure that the Marquess was thinking along those lines.
Either way, Charlene wasn’t sure that she could promise her hand to the Marquess. As much as she loved her father, she had to admit that there was someone else that she loved more.
It was impossible for her to ever profess her love for the Duke or anyone. She could never even admit such words to Eric himself. But she knew in her heart that she could never willingly belong to another man as long as she was in love with Eric. No matter what was at stake.
Was she selfish for that? Perhaps she was. Perhaps she owed it to her family to do whatever she could to save her father.
She couldn’t believe that her father would wish for her to waste the rest of her life married to a mean man like the Marquess, however. He would have wanted more for her, even if it meant giving up his own life.
So she believed, anyway. She only wished that she could talk to the man. Explain to him why she was unable to save him. Hear him assure her that he expected nothing more from her.
Charlene found herself wandering aimlessly through the streets. Where would she go, if she wasn’t to return to her aunt’s house? She had enough coin on her to survive for a few nights in a cheap inn, but she would need to make more money if she hoped to survive on her own for much longer than that.
She wondered if her aunt would send men after her. If they would comb the city trying to find the disgraced Miss Ellington, daughter of the murderer.
She refused to stay anywhere for more than a night. The more she could keep moving around the city, the less likely she was to be found.
As a few days passed, she felt her gloom begin to lift marginally. Perhaps this wasn’t the life that she had ever wanted for herself. Perhaps she was going to spend the rest of her days scrubbing at pots and working like a servant.
Even this was better than being the wife of the Marquess, though. She was sure of that, if nothing else.
It did feel cowardly to hide away like this. Charlene finally turned her attention towards her father’s case. She had had a vision in the night, and she suddenly remembered Harvey. He hadn’t been Parsons then; he had called himself Harvey Blake. But she was sure the two were one in the same.
Harvey Blake had been removed from her father’s apprenticeship. She couldn’t remember all the details, but she remembered her father’s white-lipped face and the fury with which he had spoken of the incident.
The man h
ad been banned from ever practicing medicine, and her father had known it was for the best.
Somehow, Harvey must have concocted his revenge.
She wished that she could talk to her father about all of this, but she knew that that was impossible. She couldn’t head back to Newgate to see him; they would never allow her in.
If the trial hadn’t already happened. For all she knew, her father could already be dead. She wanted to believe that she would have heard the news if he had been hanged, but she wasn’t sure that she would given her current state of existence.
She was lucky on the third day when an old widow took her in and told her that she could stay as long as she looked after the woman’s tiny apothecary. Charlene had no formal training beyond that which she had received from her father, but the woman seemed to approve of her methods nonetheless.
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