A Daring Liaison

Chapter Nineteen

Georgiana had pushed the unwelcome thoughts of her origins out of her head until she arrived home and closed the library door

behind her. Alone, unwatched, she could finally surrender to her deepest fears. She gripped the back of a chair and held on for dear

life as pain so intense she could not credit it shot through her. She doubled over with it and clung to a side table to keep from

crumbling to the floor.

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t! Please, God, it couldn’t.

If it’s birthed a Gibbons, you’d do the world a favor to exterminate it before it can spread.

How could Charles ever forgive such a thing? How could he ever look at her and not think of who she was? Gibbons blood flowed

through her veins—would flow through his children’s veins! How could he ever accept that? How could she? But it had to be true. All

the pieces fit, including that horrid man’s interest in her. He’d told her the truth in the garden, and yet she’d hoped he was lying or

deluded. Hoped that Lord Carlington had sired her.

It was a full five minutes before she could stand erect again. On shaky knees, she went to the sideboard where the decanters were

all lined up in a civilized row. Her hands trembled as she removed one stopper after another, trying to find the most potent brew. She

settled on a rich amber whiskey and poured a full glass, ignoring the way the lip of the decanter rattled against the crystal rim.

The first swallow burned its way down her throat and threatened to come up again. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply,

steadying her nerves as well as her stomach. The second swallow was easier and spread a calming warmth outward. Another deep

breath. Another swallow.

Why, I’m yer pa.

Despite the fading of day, she did not stop to light a lamp on her way to the fireplace. There, she sank to the hearth, glass in one

hand and decanter in the other, needing the heat of the fire to bring feeling back to her numbed limbs and needing the courage of

the liquor to face the truth. Dear God! What was she going to do? What could she do?

I’ve been watchin’ you yer whole life, Georgie gal. Ever since you was brought back to Kent. Finest thing I ever done. Think it was

me, but coulda been Artie. An’ everything we done after was fer you.

When the contents of her glass were gone, she poured more and drew her knees up to rest her forehead on them, then circled them

with her arms. She rocked as if she could comfort herself, but there was no comfort in who and what she was. A Gibbons. Her

husband’s enemy.

A gal’s bound to do what her pa says. Now that yer ma’s gone, I’m yer boss. D’you understand?

After a time—she did not know how long—she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. She had survived the deaths of

everyone she’d ever loved, and she would find a way to survive the loss of Charles for the second time. But how could she face him?

Confess her heritage? Watch his dawning horror, loathing and disgust? Oh, Lord. Anything but that. The gallows first!

What a wretched coward she was! She could not tell him. Now or ever. She would have to find another way to give him his freedom.

* * *

Informed by Clara that Georgiana had arrived home and gone to the library with instructions that she not be disturbed, Charles

knocked at the door. When there was no answer, he turned the latch. The room was in shadows but he could see Georgiana by the

fireplace. She was sitting on the hearth, hugging her knees—the very picture of contemplation. He stepped in and closed the door

behind him. He did not want the servants overhearing the conversation they were going to have.

“Georgiana?”

She shuddered and turned to look at him. Her face was streaked with tears and her eyes were reddened.

A sudden and unfamiliar mix of anger and concern struck him in the chest. “Good Lord! What has happened? Did someone hurt

you?”

She gulped, and he realized it was a sob. Whoever—whatever—had hurt her would pay for that.

He knelt beside her and recognized the whiskey in the bottom of her glass. And in the decanter beside it. What had sent her to the

bottle? Whatever it was, it had torn her apart. He’d never seen her so distraught. He took the glass from her hand and put it on the

hearth next to the decanter.

“Georgie, tell me what happened.”

She sniffed and he handed her his handkerchief. “I cannot talk about it, Charles. ’Tis still so...so fresh.”

“Then have another glass of whiskey, m’dear, because we are not leaving this room until I have the whole of it.”

Taking him at his word, she reached for the whiskey.

He smiled and took it from her and set it back on the hearth. If he was any judge, she had yet to feel the full effects of what she’d

already consumed. Even without more, she’d be drunker in ten minutes than she was now. “Just tell me, Georgiana. Whatever it is

cannot be all that bad.”

She laughed and the sound bordered on hysteria. “You would think not, wouldn’t you? But I cannot imagine worse.”

“Say it, Georgiana. Whatever it is, we will sort it out.”

“It cannot be undone, Charles. It is far too late for that.”

“I warn you. I will not rest until I know.”

She sighed and rested her forehead on her knees. When she spoke at last, her voice was so soft he barely heard her. “I am not

what you think I am.”

Ah, so she knew. The question was, when had she learned the truth. “I do know what you are.”

“You couldn’t. Caroline Betman was...was my mother, and—”

“I know.”

She looked up at him and blinked. “How?”

“I sent an investigator to Cornwall. I had Carlington make inquiries in the Royal Navy. There were no Carsons who had a baby girl.

But you were born nine months after Lady Caroline’s departure from London. And she came back for you once her father was gone.

”

“I see.”

“And you look a bit like her, Georgiana.” But he had to know the rest. Had she deceived him? “When did you find out?”

“The day I went to see Lady Aston. My...mother set the facts out quite plainly to her, with instructions to tell me only after she was

gone.”

“That was the day before we married, was it not?”

She nodded and looked down at her knees again.

The first stirring of anger twitched in his stomach. “Did you not think this was a fact I should know concerning the woman I was about

to marry?”

She frowned as if she was trying to remember something. “I did not have time. When Sarah and I arrived at the chapel, you were all

waiting. I started to say something...but you shook your head.”

Charles remembered that incident. He’d been impatient to have the nuptials said. He’d thought she was having doubts and was

going to beg off and hadn’t wanted to give her the chance. “You should have insisted,” he said, knowing that was unfair.

“I wish I had. Oh, if only I had.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes again and he was afraid she’d begin crying at any moment. He took a tight rein on his rising anger. “That

is your only excuse? That people were waiting and I shook my head?”

She looked up at him again and he was surprised at the depth of despair in her eyes. “And...and that I thought I’d be safe with you.

You made me feel...less alone.”

He’d hoped to hear those words again—that she loved him and always had. He could forgive her anything for the sake of that. “But if

you knew then, Georgiana, why are you crying only now?”

“Shame, Charles, for what I’ve brought to your door. I am suspected of murder and will be arrested soon. Hathaway went to the

Home Office and accused me. And, somehow, I’ve... I am connected to the man who is trying to kill you. Oh!” Fresh tears rolled

down her cheeks, ravaging her face with grief or guilt, he couldn’t tell which.

A cold feeling settled in his heart. He had been shunning the thought from the moment it had entered his mind this morning. Between

Gibbons’s mysterious accusations and Clark’s revelations, he’d been fighting the suspicion. He’d denied it in his mind, refused to

believe it, sought for other answers.

And still, he had to ask. “Connected how, Georgiana?”

“No, Charles. No...”

“Tell me.”

“I cannot say the words.”

Then he would say them for her. “He is your father.”

She gagged and he feared for a moment that she would vomit.

And still he could not relent. He stood, needing to put distance between them. Needing to harden himself against her pain. “Admit it.”

She gasped for air, clearly fighting her hysteria. “Charles...”

“Damn it, Georgiana!”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, he says he is my father.”

He took two more steps away from her. “When did you know?”

“I wonder if I always knew. When I think back, I remember his face in my village, or on the street when I came to London. There was

always a shadow behind me. A feeling I could not dispel.”

Charles could scarcely comprehend her admission. Had she married him knowing who she was? Had she deceived him

deliberately? “When did you know?” he asked again.

“He told me yesterday.”

After the wedding. Thank God for that much. “You met with him?”

“He waited in the garden.”

He recalled Finn’s remark that he’d found her crying in the garden. And then he’d gone upstairs and made love to her. He’d lain with

her, touching her, knowing her, loving her in ways too intimate to speak of. And all the while, she’d known she was Gibbons’s

daughter.

“He means to kill you, Charles. ‘Put you out of the way,’ he said.”

Nothing new there, at least. There was only one last question he had to ask.

“Were you his accomplice, Georgiana? Were you helping him?”

She looked up from her knees, her eyes wide with horror, and then reached for the whiskey without saying a word. The crystal

stopper shattered on the stone hearth as she knocked it off and lifted the decanter to her lips without bothering to fill a glass.

God, how he wished he could join her. Sit with her before the fire, drinking until the memories fell away, until it no longer mattered

that she was a Gibbons by birth, but he doubted there was enough liquor in the world to accomplish that. All he knew for certain was

that he’d go mad if he stayed in this room a moment more. That he’d surely say or do something he would regret tomorrow.

He turned and walked away, closing the door softly behind him.

* * *

It was late afternoon before Charles nodded at Wycliffe’s man loitering across the street and looked at the folded paper again,

confirming the address Wycliffe had given him. The tenement looked respectable enough for all that it was in a declining

neighborhood. He opened the door and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The unwholesome stench of cabbage and spoiled

meat followed him. Halfway down the passageway he found the number he was looking for. He knocked and waited a moment.

A door opened across the way and a man peeked out. “Real popular man, that Hathaway. Keep tellin’ folks he ain’t in.”

The door closed again and Charles turned back to Hathaway’s room. He tried the lock with no luck. Odd, how no one had seen

Hathaway for several days. If Wycliffe’s men hadn’t found him, no one could.

He was halfway down the stairs when he realized the odor was stronger upstairs. He spun around and went back, removing a pick

from his pocket. The lock was easily forced and Charles stepped through with a glance over his shoulder to be certain he hadn’t

been seen.

The smell was overwhelming now and recognizable. Decaying flesh. He threw the only window open and breathed deeply before

turning back to the inside.

In a darkened corner, he saw the crumpled form. Hathaway by the length and breadth of him and by his fastidiously polished shoes.

No wonder no one had seen him. Charles held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he inspected the bloated body. He’d

been dead for several days judging by the number of flies, the state of the body and the fact that death rigor had come and gone.

Probably killed after his visit to the Home Office.

A knife had made a single slice across his throat. Dried blood had stiffened the man’s dark coat. A knife. Altogether too many

coincidences. Dick Gibbons, then. But why? For Georgiana’s sake? In retaliation for reporting her to the Home Office? Just

because he felt like it? Or had they been in collusion and argued?

He searched Hathaway and found only a crumpled scrap of paper in one corner of his waistcoat pocket. No coins, no banknotes,

nothing of value whatsoever. Gibbons, if it had been Gibbons, had taken everything. He smoothed the wad of paper and read an

address in Whitechapel. An address within the area Wycliffe’s men had narrowed to Gibbons’s crib.

He quickly searched the rest of the room, but found nothing useful. It appeared that Gibbons had come to see Hathaway, killed him

for some as yet unknown reason, had taken anything of value, and left him to rot. He must have missed the little slip of paper with

directions to his room.

A grim smile found its way to his lips. No time to waste if he was to catch Gibbons this time.

He closed Hathaway’s door behind him and hurried back down the stairs and across the street. He handed the man the paper he’d

taken from Hathaway’s pocket and turned toward Whitechapel. “Hathaway is dead. Give that to Wycliffe at once. Tell him to meet

me there.”

* * *

Charles knew it had been too much to hope for to find Dick Gibbons at home. He kept his disappointment in check and decided that

this could be his only opportunity to search for any proof of the Gibbons brothers’ complicity in a myriad of crimes. He stepped

inside.

Whether it was the oppressive atmosphere of the room or something more, a warning tingle spiraled up his spine. Something felt

wrong. Something that nagged at the back of his mind. He would wait for Wycliffe, but there was no time to waste. A candle stub

waited on a shelf just inside the door and he found the tinderbox to light it.

The single room in the back stables of a squalid public house gave testament to the Gibbons tolerance for filth. Despite the lock he’

d had to pick to gain entrance, there looked to be nothing worth stealing. As he stood in the open doorway, Charles wished he had a

shovel. Still, knowing that Gibbons could come back at any minute, he decided not to wait for Wycliffe’s arrival.

The room was small and airless. No windows offered light or ventilation. Cobwebs and rat droppings were everywhere. He’d have

likened it to a fortress, but there was no watchtower. Not even a peephole. A searching glance around the room gave him no clue

where he might start his hunt.

He moved the torn blankets covering a single pallet and found only more blankets. He lifted the lot with the toe of his boot to find that

there was no bed beneath, just a pile of discarded blankets too worn to be mended. He’d have felt sorry for anyone else, but he

knew full well that the Gibbons brothers had extorted fortunes and charged exorbitant rates for their services, be they assassinations

or pickpocketing. Where that money had gone was a subject of endless speculation by the Home Office.

A pile of objects in one corner offered a place to start his search. Old playbills and torn posters had been smoothed and stacked,

but for what purpose? Charles could not imagine. Buttons of the sort that might have been lost on the cobbles filled an old glass jar.

Scraps of ribbon, empty bobbins and brushes missing half their bristles were in a single pile, as if kicked aside.

He continued around the perimeter, reasoning that not even Dick Gibbons would leave anything incriminating or that could be of

value in the open center of a room. He touched as little as possible, moving things aside with his boot.

A few moments later, Wycliffe appeared in the doorway, his tall frame nearly blocking any light. “What a bloody mess,” he said.

“Shall I call in help?”

Charles shook his head. “I am beginning to wonder if we will find anything here.”

Wycliffe tilted his head toward a tin plate of stale bread and overripe fruit. “Looks like supper. Think he’s coming back?”

“Not if he sees us here.”

“A search of this place will take us hours. Richardson is outside, keeping watch. He will stay and send word when Gibbons returns.”

A sensible plan. Charles nodded and slid his boot under another rag pile. The scrape of his sole against a wooden plank invited

closer inspection. He knelt and moved the rags, Wycliffe peering over his shoulder. The board was level with the dirt floor, as if it had

been set in a hole. He removed the pick from his pocket and pried one edge up. Yes, there was a hole beneath.

He flipped the board over and peered into the hole. A metal box with a hinged lid appeared. Rather than open the lid, he lifted the

entire box out and placed it on the floor. Wycliffe knelt beside him and flipped the lid back.

The glitter of gold flashed in the candlelight. So this was the Gibbons treasure trove. There were not many pieces, but why had they

kept these when they were wont to sell everything they stole within a day of two of the theft? Were these fresh acquisitions? Had

Dick not had time to dispose of them?

Wycliffe pulled out a chain, from which a dainty oval amethyst dangled, and held it to the light. This was no tawdry imitation, but the

living model of Clark’s sketch of Lady Caroline’s stolen necklace. There, too, was the Scottish thistle brooch and pearl earrings. If he

had needed confirmation that the Gibbons brothers had been the thieves who robbed Lady Caroline’s coach, he had it now. There

were other items, too. A tiny ring meant for a child, a dainty garnet necklace, an opal ring and a bracelet of wrought gold. And, most

damning of all, a locket with a miniature portrait of a younger Georgiana.

“These were Lady Caroline’s,” he said, pointing to the first items. “The jewels she wore the night she was robbed.”

Another warning chill invaded Charles’s vitals as he stood. After all the time he’d spent chasing Gibbons, this was too easy. Too

convenient. How had Gibbons missed the paper with his address when he’d stolen everything else of value from Hathaway’s room?

Unless he’d left it there? He stepped outside and glanced around. Was it a trap?

Wycliffe gave him a questioning look, as if he’d felt it, too—this nameless suspicion.

No. Not a trap. A diversion. A red herring meant to keep them occupied. The hair on the back of Charles’s neck stood on end, and a

deep dread filled him. “Georgiana,” he whispered.