A Lady in Danger: A Suspenseful Regency Romance

by Eliza McGrey

  I was able to slip out easily into the night, taking a lit lantern with me from a table in the hallway. I did my best to not rush as I made my way up the street. There was hardly anyone out at this hour. A man stumbled along the sidewalk across the street, letting out a barking laugh in his drunken state. A handsomely decorated carriage rolled by, the horses hooves clopping on the cobble.

  The address was one that I’d passed many times since moving to London. I had always assumed it was the storefront where a sweet couple worked and sold flowers from the countryside, but in fact, it was a building that butted up right against it along the back, a building that could only be reached by treading down a dark alleyway. And in the dark of night, it made my skin crawl and my breath come in ragged gasps.

  I made as much noise as I could walking through there, kicking at loose rocks and humming to myself, my eyes fixated on the far end of the alleyway. It smelled of rust and rotting leaves. I wrinkled my nose and kept to the shadows, hoping I wouldn’t tread on a rat or a cat in the darkness. I couldn’t see much outside the little pool of light around my feet, but I pressed on.

  I turned around the corner of the alley and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that some of the moonlight overhead had spilled into the narrow space between the towering buildings. There were some men at the far end lingering outside the door to another building, a woman dressed in a revealing dress standing in front of them, inviting them in. Somewhere a street or two over I heard some cat calls.

  Wonderful. This place was in the middle of the brothel district.

  The address appeared correct, with the painted old numbers chipping, and one was missing entirely, the ghostly impression left behind on the bricks from years of sunlight beating down on it.

  The windows along the front were boarded up. It appeared to be an old townhome of some sort that had been lost to a fire or some other such tragedy.

  I swallowed nervously. Was I an utter fool for coming out here like this? Yes, I was, but it wasn’t as if my own home was any safer at this point. Taking a deep breath, I stepped up to the old, splintered door and grabbed onto the door handle.

  I wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. Who would come back to this place, anyway?

  The door creaked as I pushed it open, peering into the darkness. An awful stench greeted me, something putrid and lingering. I clasped my hands over my mouth and nose, my eyes watering as I coughed and doubled over, the contents of my stomach coming up.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my trembling hand. What was Richard hiding inside here?

  I didn’t dare close the door behind me. Maybe leaving it open would allow some of the terrible smell to filter out.

  The house itself was completely wrecked. Furniture was rotting and looked as if they had indeed been burned. The floor was hazardous as well. There was a hole so large in the dining area that I didn’t dare attempt to cross it without fear of falling through to the basement below.

  The stairs leading upstairs, too, had been destroyed in the fire.

  I kept a gloved hand over my mouth as I stopped and considered what next to do. There weren’t very many places for me to look. I couldn’t leave, not until I’d figured out why Richard had hidden this address away. Something was here, and I wasn’t going to let the horrible smell put me off.

  I noticed a door alongside the wall behind the staircase. It appeared entirely untouched…almost as if it were newer than the house itself. That was strange.

  Slowly, I made my way over to it and tried it. This time, it was locked.

  I sighed, shaking my head, until I realized that the lock was on this side of the door…almost as if whatever was down there was meant to stay down there, and not keep people out, necessarily.

  Nervously, I undid the latch and gagged as the smell that wafted up from the basement was a far more potent than the stench I’d been greeted with at the front door.

  I knew that whatever it was I was going to find down there was not going to be pleasant.

  It was a great deal darker down the stairs as well, and I was grateful I’d brought the lantern with me. Holding it high with one hand and keeping my gloved hand clasped over my mouth with the other, I descended into the cold, damp basement.

  It was made of stone, unfinished with a dirt floor. A furnace stood along one wall, and a stack of rotted shelves along the other. Oak barrels stood in a neat row, and I wondered if this had been a brewery of some sort at one point. It certainly might explain the smell.

  I set the lantern down on top of one of the barrels that still appeared intact. It was still dim and there were shadows all along the floor and in every corner. But I saw a metal chest and knew that must have been where Richard was keeping this items. What sort of sensible person would have wandered this far into this rundown place? None. I’d lost all my sense, clearly.

  I took a hesitant step further into the room and stumbled, my feet catching on something rather large beneath me.

  I landed on my hands and knees and rolled over, staring at whatever it was that tripped me…and let out a shriek.

  Lying there on the floor was the partially decomposed body of a woman, the remains of her pretty blue dress nothing more than a ragged mess.

  Chapter 14

  I shrieked until I went hoarse. I’d backed myself up against the wall of the basement, unable to tear my eyes away from the body that was lying there in the middle of the room. The room was so cold, yet my skin was covered in a slick sheen of sweat. The desiccated face was sunken in, and it was clear that some sort of vermin had feasted upon her postmortem. Her hair, a fair blonde, was all but gone.

  I covered my face, trembling as I tried to pull myself together.

  Richard had been hiding a body here.

  The realization caused me to be sick again.

  There was a creaking on the stairs, and my heart leapt into my throat. “Henry!” I cried, clambering to my feet, staggering a bit as my head spun. “Oh I’m so glad you’re here. Richard, he – ”

  But I froze as I stared up into not Henry’s face, but Richard’s.

  “Well, well…” he growled, his sneer growing as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “I wondered if this was where you were heading.”

  “You…” I said. I was lost for words. How was I supposed to challenge him? How could I stand up to him? “You followed me?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “You’ve been acting very strangely lately, but especially today. I thought it was best if I kept an eye on you, to assuage my feelings of anxiety, of course. But how do you think it made me feel when I realized that you had snuck out of the house disguised as a maid, sending letters to men I’ve never met, and sneaking into a private place of mine?”

  I could only stare at him. No matter what I did now, there was no way I was going to be able to talk myself out of this.

  “The only way you could have known about this place was if you had been going through my person things, nosing into my private affairs,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “And that means that you’ve discovered something about me that I would really rather keep hidden. I’m sure you will understand.”

  “You mean selling secrets to the French? Betraying your own countrymen?” I asked, suddenly able to find my voice. “You were honored as a hero, and yet you are nothing more than a liar.”

  He shrugged, looking somewhat pleased with himself. “Yes, well, secrets do sell quite well. The war was a pointless effort, anyways. I was just doing my best to make the most of it.”

  “You coward…” I murmured.

  “Bravo for putting it all together, though,” he said. “But I assume that this…Henry, as you called me? Yes, I suppose he has been giving you some help, hasn’t he?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll find him whether you want me to or not. You should be thankful that I won’t be punishing your friend Lord Jonathon for his involvement. If anything, I should be thanking him for his help.”

&nbs
p; My stomach twisted and my blood ran cold. “What…what do you mean?”

  Richard’s wicked smile stretched further. “He came to me after his conversation with you and told me everything that you’d told him.”

  I froze, staring at him. “But that was weeks and weeks ago…”

  Richard nodded. “Indeed. I waited to see what you might do about it. I had started to believe you had dropped the whole matter and had listened to your friend after all. Even still, I kept a close watch on you. Mrs. Brian was a great help.”

  Why was it no surprise to me to hear that Mrs. Brian had been spying on me?

  Richard started to stroll back and forth, completely ignoring the dead body in the room there with us. My heart continued to hammer against my ribs, making me woozy.

  “But then I heard you were spotted with a young man with ginger hair at the park this afternoon,” he said. “You really should have been more careful about your meeting places with new lovers, darling.”

  My breathing was coming in quick bursts now, and I clutched my chest, trying to force myself to calm down. Lord Redmire had seen Henry kiss me, then…

  “Who is this?” I asked, pointing down at the body. “Why is there a body down here?”

  “Oh, her?” he said, looking down as if he just noticed the body. “That was my fiancée before I met you.”

  “Wait…so this is Henry’s sister?” I asked, breathless, staring down at what remained of the woman.

  Richard had pulled a pocket watch from inside his jacket and was cleaning it with a handkerchief. “Indeed.”

  “But…why? They found her body, Henry told me. But he – ”

  Then it hit me. Henry told me that he never really believe it was her body, after all, because when they’d found her, she didn’t have her locket that matched his.

  I remembered the silver locket in Richard’s drawer, the one with the swooping symbol on the front. With a jolt, I realized it wasn’t a snake, but a W.

  I feared I might faint. I backed into the wall, bracing against it for support as I gaped at Richard. “You…you killed her…”

  Richard gave his pocket watch a casual look over before turning his sharp gaze to me. “I did. She, like you, became far too nosy about my personal life and decided to find out more, just like you did.”

  “Henry was right all along…” I said, my head spinning even though I was standing perfectly still, my back against the frigid stone wall. “You’re a murderer.”

  “And it was a real pity, too,” Richard said, staring down at the corpse. “Because I loved her.”

  “How could you kill her if you loved her?” I asked, tears stinging my eyes. My bottom lip trembled, and my hands were slick with sweat.

  “Because I had to protect my secrets,” Richard said as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “It wasn’t hard to lure her back in to me with some lies about how my enemies had been fabricating everything and I was doing my best to cover it up to ensure that someone didn’t find them and think they were true. She believed every word of it, lapped it up like a kitten with a bowl of fresh cream. She was positively crazy about me, a fool in love. She wanted to believe what I said, wanted the promise of a long and happy life together. That made it all that much easier.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I lured her to her death, clearly,” Richard said, gesturing down at the woman. “She willingly walked into that alley where I asked her to meet me one night, and she thought nothing of the strange location or the warning signs. She loved me so blindly that she may as well have plunged the knife into her own stomach.”

  “No!” I cried, clapping my hands over my ears, the tears coming freely now. “No, this can’t be happening. You’re a monster! Nobody deserves to die like that!”

  “You’re right, they don’t. And it never would have happened if she had just listened to me in the first place, and kept my private affairs out of her mind. Which, my darling Maryanne, brings me to your wrongdoings.”

  The tears stopped as quickly as they’d started, fear gripping me around the throat and choking the life out of me. I stared at him, knowing what his next words were going to be before he even said them.

  “I thought I’d won your heart, too. I know we didn’t have very long to get to know one another, but after all this time, I thought that by now you’d at least have some affection for me,” he said.

  I glared at him. “I could never love a snake like you.”

  “A snake? My Lady, I heard worse during the war about my character. Surely you could have come up with something more fitting,” he said with a smirk.

  I had nothing to protect myself with. The lantern was on the other side of the room. The wall was bare, and I had nothing aside from my own two hands to keep Richard away from me. The worst part was he was blocking the stairs. He had no intention of me leaving.

  “Well, I think we’ve chatted long enough,” he said. “And I only felt the need to explain myself to you because I am your husband, after all. It is best that we are on the same page, right?”

  I watched him warily. “What…what are you going to do with me?” I asked.

  He sighed. “This is the part I hate, you know. Of course, I wish that we could just forget this whole thing happened and just go back home and settle back into our lives together…but that won’t work. You see, I can’t trust you anymore. Especially not since you’ve gone and told other people about this whole thing. Not to mention the fact that you’ve taken a lover, which I wouldn’t really care about under normal circumstances, but I know he is the one you’ve been talking to. So, unfortunately, you are both going to have to die.”

  The words slipped out of his mouth so easily that I couldn’t help but gawk at him. This man was a murderer. He had no remorse in killing others, even the woman he was married to.

  “But…don’t you love me, Richard?” I asked, desperate for a moment, for more time.

  I couldn’t die. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t old enough. I hadn’t lived long enough. I had family, and Henry…I couldn’t leave Henry. Not now.

  Richard produced a long knife from inside his jacket. It glinted menacingly in the light from the lanterns. He looked it over before looking up at me, twirling it between his fingers. “I wish I did, Maryanne. But you never let me in. And to be quite frank, you were never as pretty as she was,” he said, nudging the rotting corpse with the tip of his shoe. “I’m sorry. Love isn’t going to stop me from killing you. I have to protect myself. You understand…”

  “Are you just going to leave me down here to rot like her?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “And from what you’ve said in the past, your parents probably won’t care all that much that you’re gone. And I’m sure that we can create a believable enough story about you for the rest of those who might still care. Let’s see…perhaps poisoned somehow? By your lover, yes that makes sense. Jealous lover. And then he took his own life after hiding your body, which will explain why no one will be able to find it…”

  “You sick, twisted man…” I said, scowling at him. “Do you have no scruples?”

  “No, I suppose I don’t,” he said. “I worked too hard to get to this point, and I’m not going to let some meddling woman get in the way of that. Surely you understand.”

  “No, I don’t!” I cried. I cupped my hands on either side of my face and yelled as loud as I could. “Help! Please help me! He’s going to kill me! He – ”

  Richard moved so fast I barely saw him. He slammed up against me, pinning me to the wall, his hands wrapped around my wrists as if they were no bigger than twigs, yanking them away from my face. My head slammed against the wall, sending stars dancing in my vision. The tip of the knife scraped against the tender flesh of my arm, sending a piercing burn down to my fingers.

  “Now, now,” he whispered, his breathing coming in heavy gasps. There was a wildness in his eyes that terrified me as he smiled down at me. “No need for that…”

  He
kissed my face, and I flinched away from him. I couldn’t stand feeling his lips on my skin. It was like I was being burned wherever he touched.

  “Why are you shying away from me?” He asked, inhaling my scent deeply, laughing low in his chest. He grabbed my chin with his hand and forced me to look up at him. He snapped my head and the back of my head bounced off the wall once more, filling my eyes with tears. “I’m your husband, after all, and I think that I am due for all of this trouble you’ve caused me. One last payment before I end this…”

  I began to sob as his hands wrapped around my waist, drawing me closer to him.

  “Take your hands off her right now.”

  I gasped, my eyes snapping open as I stared up the stairs.

  Richard whipped around, growling like a dog.

  Standing there on the bottom step with a wooden cricket mallet in his hands was Henry, wielding it like a sword as he stared at Richard.

  “You little…” Richard said, turning around and keeping himself between Henry and I. “Well, I suppose this makes this easier. You can stand there and watch while I ravage and then kill your lover, and then I will make sure to take my time as I end your life as well…”

  “That won’t be happening,” Henry said, not voice steady, standing as still as a statue. “You are going to unhand her, and then I am going to leave you alive. Then we are going to expose all of your lies to the world and ruin you, because that would reveal you as the coward you really are instead of turning you into a war hero.”

  “It would be easy enough for me to take my own life and make it look as if you did it,” Richard said with a wicked glint. “Far too easy, in fact. And then what?”

  “You would kill yourself to protect your secret?” Henry asked.

  Richard sneered. “Of course I would.”

  He lifted his knife, but Henry moved faster, knocking the knife from his hands with the end of the bat.

  Richard let out a howl and threw himself across the room at Henry. Henry was smaller and more limber, though, and was able to leap out of the way in time.