Chapter Twenty-Five
A nerve ticked in Hayden’s jaw. He glanced at the mantel clock. Dash it all, Reverend Moseley had talked nonstop for over an hour.
Impatient to return to Sophia, Hayden pushed himself out of his chair. “Sounds feasible, Mosely. I’m more than willing to help fund the restoration of the bell tower.”
The clergyman blinked. “But I haven’t given you all the specifics.”
If he let the man continue rambling they might be here until midnight. “No need, sir. You’ve convinced me already. I’ll send a check tomorrow.”
Mosely stood. “Will I see you and your lovely wife at Sunday services this week?”
At this point, he’d promise the man anything to get him to leave. “Indeed.”
The reverend smiled.
In the entry hall, Hayden jerked the front door open.
Setting his bowler hat on his head, the clergyman stepped out and into his carriage. As Hayden closed the door, he noticed the man tasked with guarding the front of the town house running up the pavement, huffing and puffing. Dillard braced his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.
Good Lord, had the man seen Adele? The muscles in Hayden’s back knotted. “Did you see her?”
Dillard’s mottled face paled. “You mean she hasn’t returned?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded, talking above the sudden hammering in his chest.
“Your wife, my lord. Lady Westfield . . .”
As Dillard spoke, the pounding in Hayden’s chest grew, resonating until it filled his ears, obliterating bits and pieces of the man’s words. But he heard: “Upper Brook Street,” “carriage,” “hard to see, but the woman looked like the picture of Mrs. Fontaine.”
Christ! Adele has Sophia.
With no time to wait for his carriage to be harnessed, Hayden ran down the street, searching for a hackney. Finding one, he leapt into it. “Curzon Street,” Hayden shouted. “Fast!”
He closed his eyes and prayed that when he opened them, he would find himself in bed, Sophia beside him. But the carriage’s swaying obliterated hope that this was a dream. No, he’d stepped into a nightmare of his own making. He should have stayed with Sophia. Never left her side. Leaning forward, he braced his face in his hands, and listened to the sound of thundering hooves, the jangling of the harnesses, and the cabby’s voice urging the horses to a faster pace. He needed something to focus upon, something to stop the fear within him from festering—rendering him useless.
“Stop here!” he shouted as the carriage neared Lord Kent’s residence. Hayden jumped out. “Wait,” he said to the driver.
Hayden pounded on the front door. As it opened, he pushed it inward. Caught off balance, the butler stumbled backward. Hayden stormed down the hall and into Kent’s study.
Adele’s brother, seated behind his desk, jumped to his feet.
“I must warn you, Kent, I’m a hair’s breadth away from madness. Have you seen your sister?”
“No.” Kent gave a nervous shake of his head.
Hayden grabbed a piece of paper off the man’s desk and slammed it in front of him. “I want a list of every bloody piece of property you own. Start with London first, work your way outward.”
“Westfield, I tell you m-my sister wouldn’t take lodging at any of them.”
He stepped forward and slammed his fisted hand on the man’s desk.
Swallowing, Kent grabbed his pen and frantically jotted addresses down. When done, he handed Hayden the paper.
Damnation, the man was a bloody slumlord, no better than Crossingham or any of the other men who housed the poor in substandard ratholes.
He noted the Little Marlie Row address halfway down the list, the same address where he and Trimble had found Sophia, where that monster Beckett had taken her. His breath seized in his lungs.
He jabbed his finger at the paper. “This is yours?” he asked, his voice raw, incredulous.
Kent stared at where he pointed, and then shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t have written that one. Sold it a couple of months ago to a chap called—”
“Beckett?”
Kent’s eyes grew wide. “Y-yes. How’d you know?”
“Does Adele know him?”
“I don’t believe so. The man’s a c-common thug. Deals in opium down in Spitalfields and Whitechapel.”
Uttering a curse, Hayden raced from the room.
As the hackney made its way to the East End, dread filled Hayden’s mind drawing him near the edge of hopelessness.
Please, God, let Sophia be safe.
* * *
As soon as Adele Fontaine’s carriage turned away from Brook Street, Sophia realized something was amiss. “Madam, I . . .”
Grinning, Adele withdrew a pistol from beneath her skirts.
Sophia’s heart pounded in her chest. “I don’t understand.”
“No?” Adele’s green eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t love you.”
Suddenly, Sophia recalled where she’d seen Adele. Edith’s fundraiser. The woman Hayden had appeared displeased to see.
Adele smiled. Then, as though delighted with some humorous joke, she giggled and burst into euphoric laughter. “I know why Hayden didn’t tell the police I shot him. My buffoon of a brother said it was because Hayden didn’t want the incident played out in the newspapers, but the truth is Hayden loves me. I’m sure he didn’t want me sent away.”
A chill ran up Sophia’s spine. This woman had shot Hayden. Adele Fontaine was mad. Sophia peered out the side window. They were in the East End, traveling on Whitechapel High Street.
The woman’s laughter ceased. The carriage interior grew quiet. A fine sheen of perspiration grew on Adele’s creamy skin and the pistol began to tremble. Adele made a noise like a wounded animal and pressed a palm to her stomach while beads of sweat trickled down the side of the woman’s pale face.
“Mrs. Fontaine, you are not well. Will you allow my employer, Dr. Trimble, to examine you? He could give you something to alleviate your obvious distress.”
The morose expression on Adele’s face cleared, and she gave another discordant laugh. “You’d favor that, wouldn’t you? If you think I’ll be locked away in some asylum run by religious zealots and moral reformers, it is you who is insane. Bad enough my brother hired that Mr. Finnegan to watch me. I don’t need a caretaker, and Finnegan learned that the hard way. He won’t be bothering anyone else. Ever.”
My God . . . “Did you—”
“Be quiet!” Adele rubbed her temple. “My head is pounding and your voice nauseates me. How poor Hayden tolerates it is beyond me.”
“I—”
Adele leaned forward and pressed the pistol to Sophia’s chest. “One more word from you and I shall immediately do Hayden the favor of disposing of you.”
The carriage rocked to a stop and swayed as the driver jumped down from his perch. The door opened, and Sophia recognized the archway that led to Little Marlie Row. She swallowed the thickness in her throat. So her abduction had not been some random twist of fate. Adele had orchestrated it.
“Out,” the woman snapped.
After descending the carriage, Adele jabbed the muzzle into Sophia’s back, and they moved toward the entrance.
When Beckett had forced her in there, the gloom of evening had marred the complete bleakness and dissolution of the narrow street. But she recalled the unworldly stench oozing from the brick arch, proclaiming it one of London’s portals to hell, if not hell itself.
A young boy, in tattered clothing, ran up to them and held out his dirty palm. “Penny, mum?”
Adele’s wet breath puffed against Sophia’s neck. “I’d shoot the child just as easily as spit on him, so I advise you not to say a word to anyone.”
Even though the air was cold and damp, sweat trickled down Sophia’s spine. She shook her head at the child and continued walking.
“You know where we are going, don’t you?”
Sophia nodded and walked toward the green blistered door of Number Five.
Once inside, they moved into a room on the second floor. Sophia cast a quick look at the lone window in the bleak space. Fighting the nausea threatening to overwhelm her, she strode to the windowed wall.
The unhinged woman’s bizarre behavior suddenly intensified. She ranted unintelligibly and paced. With her back pressed against the wall, Sophia slid closer to the window. She froze as Adele ceased her manic movements to cast a contemptuous look at her.
Sophia tried to hold her expression unfathomable. The woman appeared to garner a great deal of malicious pleasure whenever Sophia showed fear. Adele moved to the only table in the sparsely furnished room and lifted one of the amber bottles marked CHLORODYNE. The vessels of opium elixir appeared empty. Nevertheless, every few minutes Adele picked one up, brought it to her lips, and then slammed it down. Without warning, Adele hurled a bottle. It ricocheted off the wall, nearly hitting Sophia before it skittered across the floor.
Don’t react. Don’t react. She prayed the woman wouldn’t notice her knees shook or that she used the wall for support.
Bang. A noise like the front door crashing inward echoed from downstairs.
Adele spun toward the sound.
“Adele, are you here?” Hayden called out, a frantic tone in his voice.
“Yes, I’m here!” Adele rushed to the room’s threshold. “Hayden, you aren’t angry, are you? Of course not. I know you don’t love her!” She turned to Sophia, triumph burning in her eyes.
Fast footfalls raced up the stairs. Hayden came into view at the end of the long corridor. Her husband, usually so in control, looked as pale as a marble statue.
“Let her go, Adele. Then you and I can go to France together. Wouldn’t you like that?” With a discreet tip of his hand, he motioned Sophia to the window.
Sophia nodded and inched closer to the glass panes. A lean-to abutted the back of the building, its roof no more than three feet below the sill.
“Paris?” Adele stared at him.
“Yes.” He took a single step forward.
“If she’s dead, you can marry me.” Adele turned and aimed the gun at Sophia.
“Adele!” Hayden screamed, drawing her attention back to him. “You are angry at me, not her. If you wish to shoot someone, shoot me.”
Shoot him? Sophia’s heart raced. “No,” she cried out.
“Shut up.” Adele lifted the gun and pointed it at Hayden. “You love her?”
“No, never.” Hayden crept closer to Adele with each syllable he spoke. “Just you. Come to me.”
The gun in Adele’s hand wavered.
Quietly Sophia opened the sash and flung first one leg, then the other out the window. Hands gripping the sill, she lowered herself onto the structure below. She couldn’t leave Hayden with Adele. The lunatic had shot him once, she would do it again. If she called to Adele—got her to come to the window, Hayden could seize the madwoman from behind.
With her body pressed flat against the building, Sophia stepped down the incline. “Adele,” she screamed.
“You bitch, get back here!” Footfalls moved toward the window. Adele leaned out, her pale face crimson with rage as she shook the gun wildly in the air. Grabbing the casing with her free hand, the madwoman knelt on the sill and leveled the pistol at Sophia.
“No!” Hayden’s frantic voice and hurried footsteps boomed from inside the room.
As though unaware of her precarious position, Adele released the casing to glance over her own shoulder. She pitched forward, headfirst. A shrill cry rent the air, silenced when the woman’s head hit the roof with a sickening thud.
With the gun still clasped in her hand, Adele’s body slid down the roof, stopping mere inches from Sophia’s feet. Sophia knew the vacant look of death, but somehow Adele’s lifeless green eyes accused as they stared up at her. With a sob, Sophia pressed her face against the rough brick of the building.
“Sophia!”
Through her tears, she peered at Hayden crawling out the window.
“Don’t move!” he said.
“I couldn’t even if I wished to.”
With a hand on the tenement, Hayden made his way down the slope toward her. As soon as he reached her, he pulled her to him, and pressed his lips to hers.