Miranda

He had tried to explain it to her the previous night, just before their row. Addingham’s money would enable Lucas to marry Miranda at last. To bring their relationship out in the open instead of sneaking around, hoping they wouldn’t get caught.

Eager to patch things up after their quarrel, he did something he had never done before. He went to her lodgings.

Lucas stood outside Number Seven Stamford Street. He knew only that Miranda lived here with her crack-brained father and a servant called Midge.

Feeling conspicuous, he rang the bell pull, then waited on the stoop. The air was filled with the smells of cooking and rubbish, the occasional laughter of children and shouts from watermen on the river.

When no one answered, he rang again. Not being able to introduce Miranda to his family, to his friends, had always brought him a faint sense of shame. It would be a relief to be open now.

He laughed to himself, picturing the look on Lady Frances Higgenbottom’s face when he appeared in public with Miranda.

Lady Frances, as lovely as she was wealthy, had been after Lucas for years. Though her relentless pursuit flattered his manly pride, he had long since grown weary of her shallow, tiresome ways. She swore that only by marrying her could Lucas save his family’s estate from the auctioneer’s hammer. But he had found another way. He had found Silas Addingham.

There was no response to his second ring. Lucas pushed open the door.

“Hello!” he called out. The smell of sulfur hung in the air. Miranda and her infernal experiments. She was always dabbling in some chemical reaction or other, trying to generate nitrous gases or hydrogen. Once they were wed he would delight in giving her a new outlet for her inventiveness—their marriage bed.

As he mounted a flight of creaky, uncarpeted stairs, he became aware of a subtler scent—acrid, hot and rusty.

Blood.

Lucas took the stairs two at a time, calling Miranda’s name. He emerged into a dim sitting room that reeked like an abattoir. The last time he had smelled death this sharply had been in a field hospital in Spain.

He forced away the nightmare memory of his soldiering days and went searching through the flat. It was a ghastly quest marked by a thickening trail of blood, overturned furniture, broken lamp chimneys, scattered papers.

He came to a tiny room with a single bedstead, the coverlet trailing along the floor.

A muffled moan issued from beneath the frayed cloth.

Lucas plunged to his knees. “Miranda!” With a shaking hand, he moved the blanket aside. A death-pale face stared up at him. The odor of fresh blood slammed through him.

And Lucas felt a shameful flood of relief, for the face of the dying woman was not Miranda’s.

“You must be Midge,” he said gently. “I am Lucas, a special friend of Miranda.”

The woman’s crusted lips moved. He bent forward to hear.

“’Randa...has no friends,” the servant whispered.

Lucas’s heart constricted. “She has one,” he said. “She has me.”

A bloodied hand clutched his sleeve. “They took her. And...Gideon.”

Lucas squeezed his eyes shut. Somehow he had known from the moment he’d set foot in this house. Damn! He should never have let her storm off in anger last night.

“Who?” he forced out as grief and rage and panic tore into him. “Please. For Miranda’s sake, you must tell me. Who did this?”

She spoke again, her voice fainter than ever. “Vi... Violet.” The word was more sigh than speech.

Despite a pounding sense of urgency, Lucas could not leave her. He held her for what seemed a long time. Her hand, icy cold on his sleeve, went slack and dropped. A rattling sound he remembered from the field hospital filled the silence.

He felt strangely calm as he relinquished his hold on Midge, poor Midge, whom he had never known. He put her head on a pillow and settled the coverlet around her as if she were a child being tucked in for the night. For eternity.

Then, still seized by an eerie serenity, he went through the apartment, seeking clues.

The problem was, someone had been here before him. Someone had ripped out desk drawers and rifled through papers and books. Someone had taken three innocent lives and cut them short.

He must contact the authorities. He would do so anonymously, of course, taking care that his name not be connected with this whole unsavory affair.

As he left, he passed through the vestibule. On a peg behind the door hung Miranda’s plain blue wool shawl. He pictured her in it, strolling along with him, gesturing as she spoke, her eyes brighter than stars as she gazed up at him.

He snatched up the shawl and buried his face in the soft wool. It smelled of Miranda and memories.

He had been too damned late to save her.

Ah, God, Miranda. I’m so sorry.

The dam broke. Lucas Chesney, Viscount Lisle, hero of the Peninsular Wars, sank to the floor and sobbed.

* * *

Miranda forced herself to stop screaming as Larkin yanked her to her feet and dragged her back to Bedlam. “I have a wealthy family,” she said. Her voice had taken on a surprisingly cultivated tone.

“Have you, then?” Larkin asked cynically. “I thought you didn’t remember.”

“Perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t,” she said in a singsong voice. “The question is, will you risk it?”

Larkin paused at the entranceway to the hospital. “Risk—”

She barked out a laugh. “Your decision, Mr. Larkin. Are a few moments of fleeting lust worth losing a handsome reward?”

He studied her for a long moment, his mustache twitching. “You’re a skinny, filthy wretch anyway,” he muttered. Then he hauled her through a corridor with cracked plaster walls, stopping at a wide, barred door. “Your home away from home, milady,” he spat.

He shoved her into the women’s gallery. She pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle another scream. A high fanlight let in streams of the afternoon sun. Dirty straw covered the floor. The plaster walls were crumbling and weeping with moisture. And everywhere, in every nook and cranny, on each rickety bench or moldering pallet, some dangling from manacles and leg irons, were the insane.

A few of them looked up when she entered. Most continued their mindless rocking and moaning, some screeching or muttering to themselves. One had plucked out the hair on the left side of her head. Another sang a tuneless, repetitive melody. But for the most part, the women lay as unresponsive as corpses.

“Hey, warden!” A buxom woman with bad teeth and jet black hair sidled toward them. “What have you there? A new jade ornament?”

“Stand aside, Gwen, she’s none of your affair.”

Ignoring him, Gwen put her face very close to Miranda’s. “’Neath all that dirt and soot, she looks a bit too fine for the likes of you, Larkin.” Gwen lifted an eyebrow. “What say you to that, mistress?”

A spark of outrage flared to life inside Miranda. She jerked her arm from Larkin’s grasp. “What I say, Mistress Gwen, is that any woman in this room is too fine for the likes of Warden Larkin.”

In the stunned silence that ensued, more women lifted their faces toward Miranda, like broken blossoms seeking the sun. Gwen let out a laugh of delight, braying loudly until the warden backhanded her across the mouth.

She barely flinched. A group of women ambled closer, baring their teeth. Sweat broke out on Larkin’s brow. He took a coiled leather lash from his belt. A few inmates shrank back, but still more advanced.