hand, a round-eyed Mary next to her holding a red velvet bolster.
Mr. Mackenzie, blood on his face, stared at Violet with a stunned expression. He said, “Lass,” one more time.
Then he fell over like a tree in a high wind, crashing headlong onto the dining room floor. The vase slipped from Violet’s numb fingers and shattered next to him.
Mary dropped to her knees, the bolster rolling away, her hands going to Daniel’s cold face and closed eyes.
“He ain’t breathing,” Mary said frantically. She patted his cheeks.
Violet sank next to Mary, her movements wooden. She stared down at the handsome face of Mr. Mackenzie, his lips pale now, his chest not rising.
Mary hastily unbuttoned his coat then tore open his waistcoat and shirt, pushing aside his undershirt to jam her hands to the space over his heart. Dark hair curled over his chest, his pectorals well defined. “I can’t find his heartbeat,” Mary said.
Violet’s numbness left her with a jolt. She brushed Mary aside, and leaned down to put her ear to Daniel’s bare chest, trying to hold her breath and listen.
She heard nothing but the pounding of her own heart. The room whirled around her, undulating as though the machines were running again, the spirits rampaging.
Violet lifted her head. “Mary,” she said, barely able to squeeze out the words. “Oh God, I think I’ve killed him.”
Chapter 5
Mary got to her feet in panic. Violet shook Daniel, patted his cheeks, pried open one eye. He never responded, and his skin was growing clammy and cold.
“Mary, quickly, go for the doctor.”
“It’s too late for that,” Mary said, voice filled with fear. “Miss, if you’ve killed him . . . Oh Lord, he’s a rich man, and we’re nothing. We’ll go to prison. We’ll be hanged.” Mary’s hands fluttered. “What about your poor mum?”
“Stop! Stop, let me think.”
But Violet couldn’t think. She sat back on her knees, the room still darting and spinning. Mary waited to be commanded, because Violet always knew what to do.
But this was different from deciding how much to charge for the performances or from Violet telling her mother what to wear every day, and where to go and what to do. Violet had done all this since the age of seven, when she’d realized her mother had no idea how to take care of a daughter. Or herself, for that matter.
Violet pressed her fingers to her temples. If she’d killed Daniel Mackenzie, even accidentally—a man from one of the wealthiest families in Britain and nephew to a powerful duke—Violet would be made to pay.
If she claimed she’d struck out in fear, that Daniel had attacked her, Violet would be blamed for putting herself into his power in the first place. If she argued that Mortimer had brought Daniel here, and Daniel had lingered inappropriately, she’d be blamed for taking up such an unladylike profession. After all, she’d allowed gentlemen to enter her house, unchaperoned, at such an hour.
Even if the jury were sympathetic to her, Violet still would be punished for killing him or hurting him, if he recovered. She’d be sent to prison or transported, Mary along with her, and possibly her mother too. Violet had seen firsthand the unevenness of the law and its prejudice against women. A jury of men would look upon Violet and happily condemn her before leaving the courtroom to visit their mistresses on their way home to their wives.
“Help me get him into the cart,” Violet said quickly. “And go wake up Mama and pack what you can. We are going.”
“Going? But miss—”
“We can’t risk staying. Mortimer and his friends will know Mr. Mackenzie came here tonight. Even if we’ve only hurt him, we can’t count on the Mackenzies not bringing the law down on us. No matter what, if we are far away when he’s discovered, the better for us.”
Far away, in another country, with different names and different personas. If no one connected Daniel and his visit to this house tonight, well and good. If they did connect it, then Violet, her mother, and Mary wouldn’t be here to answer awkward questions. Not being here when the investigation was conducted would be best. At least Violet’s mother, upstairs in her laudanum slumber, was truly innocent of everything.
Pieces of the vase had blood on them. Violet instructed Mary to put the broken vase into a box, which she would drop over the railing of the boat on the way to France. Mr. Mortimer might rage over the price of it, but that was the least of her worries.
The next hour was one of the most harried of Violet’s life. Time seemed first to crawl and then to fly past.
She and Mary arranged Mr. Mackenzie’s body on the handcart on which they carried groceries home from the markets. As they buttoned up his clothes again, they discovered a fat wad of money stuffed into his coat pocket.
Mary and Violet looked at each other over it. So much cash, right in their hands.
“Some thief will just take it if we leave it on him,” Mary pointed out.
But if constables caught up to them, and Violet had all Mr. Mackenzie’s money, her claim of hitting him in her own defense went out the window.
Violet compromised. She peeled several large notes away from the others, and put all the rest back into his pocket. A small amount from such a large stash wouldn’t be missed, would it? And Violet would need the money to buy tickets.
Violet changed out of what she called her parlor clothes to an old pair of breeches, over which she put a wide skirt and linen shirt. To finish, she tied a scarf over her hair. Any person who spied her in the dark would see an elderly immigrant woman, perhaps taking foodstuffs home or getting ready to go clean for the day at a middle-class woman’s home.
Mr. Mackenzie still lay motionlessly on the cart when Violet went out into the tiny yard behind the house to wheel him away. No moon shone tonight, London so thick with coal smoke in January that no moonlight or starlight could penetrate the gloom. Better for her errand.
She and Mary covered Mr. Mackenzie with sackcloth and then stacked a few bags of coal on top of him. The shapes in the cart Violet pushed would be several small upright lumps, not the horizontal form of a man.
Violet went alone, guiding the cart through the passages to the main street and quickly across to the warren on the other side. She saw a constable down the block of one street, but he was walking the other way and never saw her.
She was thoroughly sick to her stomach by the time she decided she’d laid a false enough trail. Violet doubled back with the cart until she reached a quiet, narrow street east of Portman Square, and the house where she knew a doctor lived. He was a kindhearted man, Violet had come to know, often looking after people in the neighborhood for no charge. If Mr. Mackenzie wasn’t truly dead, the doctor would help him. And if Mr. Mackenzie
Violet waited until the street was free of constables or any late-night strollers. This was a poorer neighborhood, with gaslights fewer and farther between. She crept forward, happy she’d kept the handcart well oiled. In the shadows of the silent house, Violet pulled back the sacks and rolled Mr. Mackenzie from the cart.
As his body landed on the cobblestones, Violet choked back a sob. Daniel had been so warm when he’d kissed her in her upstairs room, so vibrant. He’d looked into her eyes and known her for the fraud she was—a fraud in every way.
He’d seen to the heart of her as no one had before. He’d kissed her, because he’d known Violet wasn’t a respectable lady, but at the same time he’d been tender, not demanding.
