Chapter 5 - The Midnight Meeting
Clara walked back to the Southwark tenement in a daze, the heavy paper draft burning like a coal inside her pocket.
Bigamy.
The word echoed in her mind with the force of a falling beam. Lady Isabella wasn't just a cruel aristocrat with a taste for framing servants; she was a woman living on the edge of complete ruin, bound to a ghost from her past who held the entire Wexley dynasty in the palm of his hand.
When Clara opened the door to their room, Tommy was sleeping peacefully, his breathing deep and regular for the first time in weeks. The medicine was working.
She sat down at the small wooden table by the flickering candle and pulled out the banker's draft. Half a fortune. All she had to do was pack their bags, board a ship for France tomorrow morning, and let the great house of Wexley march blindly toward a catastrophe of historic proportions.
It’s what my mother would have wanted, a voice whispered inside her head. Take the money. Save your brother. Let the rich destroy themselves.
And yet, as she looked across the room at Tommy, she remembered the Duke’s face in the library that morning—his sharp, searching eyes, the quiet fairness in his voice when he refused to call the magistrates, and the lingering sense of betrayal he had carried when he looked at the woman he was expected to love.
He didn't know. He was walking straight into a trap that would shatter his pride, his family name, and his heart in front of all of London society.
At midnight, there was a quiet, firm knock at the door.
Clara stood up, her heart skipping a beat. She crossed the room and pulled the latch.
Julian Vance stood in the dark hallway. He didn't look like an investigator tonight; he looked tired, his cravat loosened, his coat damp from the river mist. He looked past her into the room, then back at Clara's face.
""You didn't sleep,"" he observed.
""Neither did you,"" Clara replied.
Vance stepped inside without an invitation, closing the door behind him. He reached into his coat pocket and placed a small, crumpled piece of paper on the table.
Clara looked down at it. It was a hotel bill from a dingy inn near the Southwark docks, paid in cash two nights ago, bearing the signature of a man who was supposed to be resting six feet under in an overseas grave: Lord Henry Vance—no relation.
""I didn't spend the day questioning housemaids, Clara,"" Julian said quietly, his green eyes fixed on hers. ""I spent it digging into Lady Isabella's past. And I found a ghost hiding in a dockside tavern.""
Clara looked from the hotel bill up to Julian. The room seemed to shrink around them, the shadows closing in.
""You know about the husband,"" she whispered.
May you like
Julian stopped dead. A slow, dangerous realization dawned across his sharp features.
""So you do know,"" he said, his voice dropping to a breathless register. He stepped closer, gripping the edge of the table. ""Clara... what else does she have hiding in the dark? Because whatever it is, Wexley is walking into the church in six weeks, and I need to know whether I'm going to save my master's life—or help him bury it.""
