“Very well,” the duke huffed.“Good day.”
The clergyman laid a hand on her shoulder.“Take your time, dear lady.Come find me outside when you are finished.I am usually puttering around the garden.”
Violet nodded.“Thank you.”
She let out a long breath at having a reprieve from the duke’s company.She kept her head bent and her eyes closed as the other parishioners filed out of the church.She certainly didn’t want to talk with nosy neighbors.She must pull herself together.There was no reason to doubt that Rhys would come for her.For goodness’ sake, it had only been three days!But what was delaying him?Well, if he didn’t come within the week, she would have to make a plan for her escape.No longer would she be a victim of her circumstances.If this Lady Lilly had escaped, then so could she.The old woman’s confusion from yesterday still niggled at her.Who was Lady Lilly?
The church grew quiet as it emptied.Violet rose and wandered down the aisle to stare up at the large stained glass window above the altar.Colorful glass was intricately mixed with beveled clear glass pieces, which bent the light and made the sunshine sparkle.She let the warmth and colors soothe her.How many years had the joyful scene depicting a choir of angels singing to the heavens lifted the spirits of parishioners in this church?
“It is a beautiful work of art, is it not?”Mr.Haddonfield came to stand next to her.
“Indeed, it is.”
“It was installed by my predecessor, sixty-some odd years ago.”
Violet turned to him.“Mr.Haddonfield, you have been the rector here for a long time, yes?”
“Yes, I baptized your late husband.Poor boy.”
Violet nodded solemnly.“Mr.Haddonfield, do you know if the duke was married before Stuart’s mother?”
“I don’t know.That would have been before my time here.But if you are curious about family history, you can find the records of births, deaths, and marriages in the register in that alcove over there.We have a long history in this village with the great dukes of Lavensham.”
Violet nodded but didn’t want to seem too eager.She placed her hand on her belly.“I was curious about some of the names that are prominent in the family line.Perhaps I will go take a look.Don’t let me keep you from your gardening.”
“As you wish, Lady Sommerset.”He bowed and walked back down the aisle and out the front door.
Violet hurried over to the alcove he had pointed to.A large leatherbound register had the place of honor on top of a wooden stand.She flipped open the book to the middle only to find the dates to be in the seventeen hundreds.She kept turning pages until she found the entry of Stuart’s birth, July 14, 1805.Violet turned the page backward, looking down the previous page, and found the record of the duke’s marriage to Lady Margaret Downing.Further down the page was the birth record of Stuart’s cousin, Abigail.
Violet licked the tip of her finger and turned back yet another page.Her eyes widened.September 27, 1800, James Stuart Walter Sommerset, Duke of Lavensham, joined in marriage with Lillian Kelley.There she was, Lady Lillian Kelley.Wait…Lillian Kelley?Wasn’t that the name from the investigative firm’s letters from the duke’s office?Yes, she remembered how she’d thought it was such a beautiful name.The duke had searched for his missing bride.When had she left?Why had she fled?There had to be evidence of her somewhere in that house.
Violet ran her finger over the woman’s name.What had sent her fleeing from the ducal household when she was pregnant with his child?Violet’s fingernail caught on the edge of the page.Curious, she licked her fingertip again, and when she went to turn the page, she discovered two pages had stuck together.The page after the marriage record of the duke and Lillian but before the marriage record of the duke and Margaret was a record of Lillian Kelley’s death.According to the entry, she died in childbirth on June 3, 1801.How odd.The letters she had found in the duke’s desk had been old but dated not more than fifteen years ago.Why would the duke be searching for a woman who was dead?He would have married and sired Stuart by then.Of course, if he wanted to remarry, Lillian would have had to be dead.But what if she hadn’t been?Would he have had her declared dead in order to free himself to marry again?
Good Lord.No, she was letting her imagination run away from her.Wasn’t she?Violet shut the book with a snap.She needed to talk with Mrs.Wells’s mother.She simply had to know the fate of Lady Lilly.
Chapter Thirty
“This is thelast thing.”Rhys gritted his teeth as he hauled the body up under the armpits.Nigel took hold of the legs, and they slowly made their way to the cliff’s edge.“I mean it.”
Nigel grunted.With two coordinated swings, they tossed the body over and into the churning sea.Nigel bent and rested his hands on his knees as he pulled in two deep breaths.“Damn, he’d gotten so fat.”
Rhys scowled.
Nigel raised his hands in a sign of surrender.“Last time I’ll ask you for anything.I swear.But dispatching the last of the Gorman brothers, don’t tell me that wasn’t satisfying.When he surfaced on British soil, I could hardly believe the intel.He wouldn’t have trusted anyone but you to get close enough to him to get the kill.”
Rhys crossed his arms and grunted.It had been satisfying to kill the head of the notorious gang that specialized in trafficking not just smuggled goods but also young women.Taking them from their homes in Ireland and Wales with promises of working in fine homes in London, only to actually put them on ships headed to the Americas and lives of indentured servitude.
Nigel was right; no one but him could have lured Harold Gorman away from his bodyguards.Several years ago, Rhys had spent a year undercover trying to dismantle the gang from the inside.Harold Gorman had disappeared to the continent, leaving his brothers to take the fall when the government raided their camp, thanks to the information Rhys had passed along.That bloody bastard deserved to meet a bloody end.
Rhys clapped Nigel on the shoulder.“Come on, let’s get back.I want to clean up and head out.”
His bad mood mostly stemmed from having to be away from Violet for almost a week now.When Nigel found him at the Blue Angel, he had been brooding over Violet’s comment that the duke’s goodwill was what would take care of her and her baby.The insult had felt like a punch in the gut.She didn’t think that he would take care of her?What had he been doing since the moment he’d met her?
Nigel had told him about the job that he needed help with, and it had seemed the perfect opportunity to take a few days away so that he could logically assess if he even had a future with Violet or if he had simply been deluding himself.He had seen firsthand how love could warp one’s view of the person you were involved with.He knew that there were social divides that could not be crossed.Would a lady like Violet even consider a future with a man like him?Rhys ran a hand through his hair.He could admit to himself, at least, that he had let old insecurities lead his decision to say yes to Nigel’s request for help.
Once he’d said yes to the job, he’d sent a note to Violet’s house to tell her he would be out of town for a few days on business.The trouble was that Harold Gorman was as cagey as ever, and it had taken him more time than he anticipated to track him down to this coaching house in Brighton, of all fucking places.
“Nigel, I thought you were disappearing for a long vacation to the continent?”
