Page 62 of Atone, Adonis

“I asked the Inspector to find out who is spilling the details of our lives to this scandal rag,” he said.

“Why now, Fred?”

“Shall I give you a moment?” Hughes asked.

“No,” Julianna said to him. “You may as well stay.” To Fred she asked again, “Why now?”

“Because I won’t have them attacking you, Jules! They may say whatever they like about me but not you. You are…sacrosanct.”

Her face did something then—it gave a little twitch of pleasure and relaxed in a way that made him think that perhaps all was not lost between them. That maybe—if he reached for her hand—

He did and she took it. He heard himself exhale.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now go on, Inspector.”

“Actually, my lady.” Hughes turned a smile toward his wife that Fred didn’t particularly appreciate. “I’d like you both to give me the outline of your marriage. Begin your story if you would when the coverage of you picked up in earnest. And we’ll line up who may reasonably have known what and when.”

Fred forced himself to say it all plainly—the accident, the lie, Thomas’s letter and his return to Dorset. He left out certain details of course: that he’d never intended to marry Julianna. That he thought Thomas had been joking or lying or exaggerating from the start. That he’d vowed never to touch her. But everything else was laid out on the table while the Inspector took notes.

Hughes’s face remained unreadable as Fred spoke, but Fred saw his hand pause every now and again as he scratched away in his notebook. His eyes occasionally traveled to some line or other in the paper as if to double check its version against Fred’s.

“You moved the entire staff down from London?” Hughes asked.

“Yes,” Fred said. “There weren’t so many. I do not need an entire retinue of servants. Gilbert preceded us, along with a few others.”

“I’ll need the names and histories of every person currently employed by you, starting with those you moved to Dorset. I’d like to interview each of them.”

“Certainly,” Fred agreed and Julianna nodded her assent.

“And you, my lady—if you don’t mind my asking—is there anyone who might wish to do you harm in Dorsetshire?”

Julianna glanced at Fred and then back again. “No,” she said. “When my brother Tom and I were younger we knew a great many people but since he returned from the war we’ve been isolated. I have few relationships with anyone in Dorset.”

“Good, thank you,” Hughes said before returning his attention to Fred. He handed over one of The Poisoned Quill editions that had been so cruel to Julianna. “This entry was the one that was the tipping point for you, my Lord?”

“Yes.”

“Inspector, can you help us?” Julianna asked.

“I do believe that I can. I’ll begin with the staff here and then travel on with you to Dorset if needed.” Hughes picked up the papers and scanned through them again. He did the same with his notes and then he nodded briskly. “Yes. It won’t take long.”

“There is something you see that we don’t, isn’t there?” Fred asked.

Hughes placed several of the earlier Poisoned Quill editions in a pile and held one up. “Take a look at this one, called Wedding Night Divided.” He tapped another. “And this earlier one from before your marriage. Do you notice the difference?”

Julianna leaned in. “No. What difference?”

“The earlier pieces are general cruelty,” Hughes said. “They could have been written by any viper with a pen and an imagination. The later ones know a great deal more. They know when you travel, where you dine, which rooms you occupy, what you say in private. What your brother has eaten for dinner.”

“He eats broth,” Fred said. “As does every ill person in Dorsetshire.”

“Perhaps,” Hughes replied, mild as ever. “But there are many kinds of broths in the world and this one specifies bone broth. Which is, I imagine, true?”

“It is,” Julianna confirmed, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s what Thomas ate before he left for the sanatorium.”

“This is all evidence of an informant’s access to your daily lives. All we must do now is ascertain how the information is traveling from the corridors of Sedgewick Manor to the printing press of The Poisoned Quill and we’ll have your man.”

Fred exhaled slowly. “Alright, Inspector. What more might you need from us to accomplish your task?”