In the Dark with the Duke by Christi Caldwell Page 0,126

nameless victims who were mentioned. For Hugh. Lila stroked her fingers over the faded black ink. Hugh had been one of those children used to fight for the marquess’s pleasures. And then the implications set in . . . for her sister. “Oh, Sylvia,” she whispered, woefully inadequate with a response. But then even the young woman she’d been before Peterloo would have never had anything for this. “The marquess ran the Fight Society.”

“You know of it because of your Hugh.”

Lila nodded.

“The moment he came here, I knew who he was. I knew what he was likely asking you, and I wanted you to give him what he needed; and yet, selfishly, I couldn’t make myself do it.”

Surprise brought Lila’s lips into a silent circle. “You knew.”

“Selfishly, I’ve held on to this because . . .” This time, the tears fell freely, and Sylvia let them go unchecked. She shook her head, unable to get the words out. Her sister struggled, and then finally managed to speak. “Then the whole world would know, and I didn’t hate it for me as much as I hated it for Vallen.” A little sob burst from her sister that Sylvia caught and buried in a fist. “Keep reading. I can’t do this unless you don’t talk . . .”

Loath to read the remainder of the words there but owing her sister a strength to do so, Lila looked back to her late brother-in-law’s diary . . . and she couldn’t move.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“He met her at one of the fights. He saved her. H-he . . . H-he . . .” Sylvia covered her face with her hands and then, after five long seconds, let them fall to her knees. “He loved her,” she said quietly, her voice steady. “Her name was . . . is Valerie. She was the one following me and Vallen and Mother that morn. She recently found me and . . . shared about her past with Norman.” Grief seized her features. “She apologized and explained that she didn’t know about me.”

The great love of Sylvia’s life, the devoted husband her sister had mourned, all along had loved another. Closing her eyes, Lila wrapped an arm about her elder sister’s shoulders and simply held her.

Sylvia rested her head atop Lila’s, and for a long while, she said nothing. She simply took the only thing Lila knew to offer—her silent support. “All our money went to her. It went to seeing her cared for and safely hidden so that Norman’s father could not bring her back and hurt her. And I want to hate her. I want that desperately.” Sylvia sucked in a shuddery breath. “But I can’t. I hate him for making me love him on a lie. I hate myself for loving him still.”

This was the woman Hugh had spoken of. Bragger’s lost sister, Valerie, hadn’t been taken, but rather, she’d gone off and stayed hidden. She’d lived a life with Norman.

Lila resumed turning those damning pages that burnt down the illusion of love that Sylvia and Norman had known.

And then she stopped.

Lila read and reread the words there.

“He was going to reveal everything he knew about the Fight Society,” her sister murmured. “To be sure that this young woman remained safe . . . and the next day . . .”

Her sister didn’t need to finish her thought. Lila knew precisely what had happened that following morn: after an unlucky punch to the head, Norman had died, and her sister had found herself a widow.

Except . . .

“What if it wasn’t a mistake, Lila?” Sylvia asked, giving voice to Lila’s very suspicions. “What if the marquess had his son punched in such a way that killed him? Is that . . . possible?”

Lila thought of every lesson Hugh had given her, about the lethality of blows. Norman had caught one at the base of his skull: according to Hugh, the most lethal place to strike a person.

“Could the marquess be responsible for his son’s death?”

Lila looked down at the notes sprawled on her lap, the damning words recorded by her late brother-in-law. “I believe a person who could organize what the marquess did . . . using children for the perverse pleasures of society, is capable of any manner of cruelty.”

Her sister nodded. “That is also the conclusion I drew.”

Lila knew but one thing . . . tonight, Hugh would enter the marquess’s townhouse and set out in search of information that would link