Amanda Quick - The River Knows

“Hush, now,” Mrs. Galt said quickly. “We’ve known from the start that this is an odd household. It was no secret that Lady Ashton is a noted eccentric, but the wages are excellent. Don’t you dare do or say anything that might cause all of us to lose our posts.”

Louisa sighed and continued down the hall. It wasn’t easy keeping secrets around servants. One had to constantly bear in mind that there were always other people in the house aside from herself and Emma.

Not that Mr. Galt had spoken anything less than the truth. She had come home quite late last night, and she could not deny that arriving back here at Number Twelve in a carriage other than the one in which she had departed was certainly a first. So was being walked to the door by a gentleman.

In the study she found a cheery blaze crackling on the hearth.

“There you are, ma’am,” Bess said, getting to her feet. “It will be nice and cozy in here soon enough.”

“Thank you,” Louisa said.

“Here’s your tea, ma’am,” Mrs. Galt said from the doorway. She set a tray on a table. “Let it steep a bit.”

“I will,” Louisa promised. She needed her tea to be strong this morning. There was a great deal of thinking to be done.

She waited until she was alone before she sat on the chair behind her desk. Clasping her hands on the blotter, she surveyed the small room. The bookshelves were gradually filling up with volumes, among them a wide assortment of sensation novels. She had developed a passion for them in the past year because they generally featured stories of illicit love affairs. It had become clear to her that, given her secret past, an illicit love affair was the only sort she could ever hope to have.

Each new book increased her sense of security. It was as if every addition to her small library was a brick in the fortress wall that she was constructing around herself.

But the reality was that she would never be truly safe. Emma had done her best to make her feel welcome, but the small flame of hope that burned within her, refusing to be entirely extinguished, was enveloped in an icy dread. She felt this same gloom almost every morning when she woke up, and it was usually the last sensation she experienced every night before she went to sleep.

The emotion had a depressing effect on her spirits at times. Even on the sunniest days, the knowledge that someday she might be discovered and arrested on a charge of murder was always there, hanging over her head like an ominous thundercloud.

Meeting Emma had been a stroke of the most incredible good fortune. But she was only too well aware that the new life she had found for herself could be destroyed in an instant if her dark secret were ever revealed to the world.

Don’t think about the past or the future and, most of all, don’t think about Anthony Stalbridge. Concentrate on your work.

Her new career as a secret correspondent for the Flying Intelligencer was the one bright star in her life. It provided distraction from the melancholia and fear and gave her a strong sense of motivation and purpose. She had determined to dedicate her life to journalism.

She opened the leather-bound notebook she had brought downstairs. In her short career as a reporter she had learned the value of keeping good notes. For the sake of speed and out of concern that her notebook might be found and read by one of the servants or some other prying eye, she used a private code. She was always careful to spell out proper names, however. It would not do to get those wrong.

She picked up a pen and went to work, reviewing and elaborating on the brief, cryptic notes she had made.

There seemed to be little doubt that Hastings was engaged in blackmail, a criminal enterprise that meant he was even more vile than she had first thought. Unfortunately, she could see no way to expose him without also exposing the identities of his victims, which would not be right.

Of course, there was still the evidence linking him to Phoenix House, she reminded herself. The papers Anthony had retrieved from the safe confirmed Hastings’s involvement as an investor in the brothel. That news alone would be sensational enough to satisfy Mr. Spraggett, the publisher of the Flying Intelligencer . Spraggett prided himself on presenting only the most lurid and riveting news to the reading public. The announcement that a high-flying gentleman in Society was part owner of a whorehouse would sell a lot of newspapers.

But what if Anthony was right about Hastings also being a murderer? Now there was a piece of journalism that would send shock waves through the Polite World, not to mention the rest of the country. Her pulse kicked up at the prospect of bringing a killer to justice.

AN HOUR LATER FAMILIAR, brisk footsteps sounded in the hall, then a short, forceful knock on the library door.

“Come in, Emma,” she called.

The door opened. Emma, Lady Ashton, strode into the room. Emma never simply walked or strolled; she was a strider. A large, no-nonsense woman fashioned like a Grecian statue, she possessed a unique view of the world.

Today she wore a comfortably styled bronze gown. Her silver-gray hair was knotted in a tight twist at the back of her head. At sixty-three she was still a handsome woman. She was also an extremely formidable one. After losing her husband at an early age, Emma had defied convention and set out to see the world. When she eventually returned to England, her wealth, combined with her breeding and social connections, had enabled her to resume her natural place in the Polite World.

A little over a year ago she had consulted with an agency that supplied paid companions and governesses. Emma planned to write her memoirs. She wanted to employ a lady of good character and sound education who possessed modern opinions to assist her in the project.

She had gone through half a dozen ladies of good character and sound education who claimed to possess modern opinions before, in absolute desperation, the agency had sent over their newest applicant. Louisa and Emma had hit it off from their very first meeting.

“We shall put it about that you are a distant relative,” Emma decreed over tea. “That way you will be treated with more respect than if it were known that you were my paid companion and secretary.”

By the time Emma discovered that Louisa met only two of the three requirements that had been stipulated to the agency she was quite prepared to overlook the missing qualifications.

Louisa would never forget Emma’s verdict. It had come in the wake of a particularly bad nightmare, one that had left Louisa shattered and vulnerable. When Emma had offered comfort, Louisa had broken down, weeping, and related what happened the night she brained Lord Gavin with a poker.

The need to confide her dreadful secret to her friend had been overwhelming. She knew Emma well enough by then to be aware that her benefactress was unlikely to call the police. Emma did hold extremely modern opinions, after all. She had believed Louisa’s version of events. Nevertheless, who wanted a murderess living in their household?

After Louisa poured out her secret and apologized for the deception, she braced herself for dismissal. Instead, Emma had patted her on the shoulder and said, “Never mind, dear. The value of a good character is vastly overrated in my opinion.”

“GOOD MORNING, LOUISA.” Emma crossed the study to warm herself in front of the fire. “You’re up rather early, considering that you did not get home until quite late last night. I didn’t even hear you come in.”

Louisa put down her pen. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

Emma moved to stand in front of the desk. Her blue eyes sparkled with curiosity. “My, my. Anthony Stalbridge. When I got your message from the footman, you could have toppled me with a feather.”