If he had continued the practice of sharing secrets with his mistress, then the lady was likely in possession of many unpleasant facts.
Facts Mr. Dawson could use against me.
But how were Mr. Dawson and her husband’s mistress connected? Her first thought was they were lovers, although she had to admit her own history guided her in that direction. It was equally possible that they were related or were strangers who had formed a partnership to enact revenge against her. She still didn’t know what she had done to elicit Mr. Dawson’s anger, but she could easily imagine the earl’s mistress resenting the wife of her deceased lover. “Are you certain you wish to do this?” Thel asked. “You might find the past holds answers to questions you did not ask.”
“I have to know,” she said. “It’s the only way we’ll get to the truth.”
He released her. “If that is what you want. How do we find this woman?”
Olivia chewed on her thumbnail through her glove. “The earl was careful with the staff. He wouldn’t have allowed any of them to overhear the manner of things that have come to light in the articles. Except…” There was only one person the earl had consistently treated with respect. The oldest servant in their employ. “Boris.”
Thel frowned. “That old man?”
“He’s worked for my late husband’s family for decades. He often said he helped raise the previous earl.”
“You think he might have seen something?”
Before he had finished his sentence, she was flying down the steps, her heart thudding in her chest. “Boris!”
He was back in his chair, although there was a new black cane clenched in his hands. “Yes, my lady?”
She knelt before him. “Do you remember how you would bring food to my room?”
He tapped his cane on the tile. “My memory is not that bad, my lady. You were a wee thing, barely more than skin and bones. The previous earl did wrong by you.”
“Yes, of course, but on those nights, did a woman come to the house?”
Boris’s expression glazed over. “A woman… Yes, there was a woman. I told the daft boy he was getting himself into trouble, having an affair with a married lady, but he was never one to listen to sense. The same as his father, that boy.”
Olivia felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. It was bad enough that her husband had sought the company of another, but she had assumed his liaisons had been with actresses or ballerinas or maybe even ladies of the night, not a woman of her own class.
“You are certain she was a lady?” Thel asked.
Boris’s eyebrows drew together. “I only saw her once in passing, my lord, but she must have been a lady, because she was with Miss Trenton. That viper of a woman would not have associated with anyone of lower class.”
“Trenton,” Olivia said, drawing out the word. “I know that name.” Then it came to her, and she groaned. “Mrs. Zephyr was Miss Trenton before she married.”
She would have more luck getting a tiger to come placidly to her hand than convincing that woman to help her identify the former earl’s mistress. She had come so far, torn open long-healed wounds, all for nothing.
It was too much. She wanted out of the house, away from the memories that choked her on every corner. The earl had never truly left, only hid in the recesses of her mind. She couldhear his distant shouting, feel his lips upon her breast, taste the alcohol on his breath when he’d forced his tongue into her mouth.
She balled her hands into fists. The earl would not win.
She dragged Thel back upstairs and into the bedroom that had been her prison during her marriage, then slammed and locked the door behind them.
“What are you doing?” Thel asked.
She knelt over to unlace her boot. “Facing my demons.”
She removed her other boot, then walked to the bed and flipped up the velvet-lined loops the earl had once used to make her debase herself, furthering his pleasure from her humiliation.
“Are those…?” Thel trailed off. “They are. My God.”
She still had nightmares about using the loops. It infuriated her that the earl continued to affect her after his death. If she was ever to be free of him, she had to confront her memories head-on and reclaim what he had taken from her.
She stuck her wrists in the loops and tightened them as best she could. There was enough slack that her arms were not stretched taut. If she scooted down on the bed, she could lie with her arms slightly above her head.
“Lash my ankles,” she said.
