Julius flung his body in front of Tom’s as Helena’s husband plummeted to the floor, blood pouring from his head.
Bewildered, confused, she followed him down, frantically lying over him, as Julius barked instructions and people erupted from the rooms on the first floor, shouting.
Until a cry of “Tom!” had her wondering who had such a high-toned voice.
That would be her. Helena pressed her handkerchief to Tom’s head, but it was almost immediately soaked with sickening gore.
His eyes were closed, and he was breathing in stentorian gasps. Panic tightened her throat. Just last night, just yesterday they had begun. She would not lose him so soon. Oh, God in heaven, no!
Julius rolled to the still open doorway while Lamaire rushed up from below stairs in his shirtsleeves.
Her vision blurred with tears, Helena looked up. “Help him!”
Lamaire dropped to the floor by the side of his master. Blood poured from Tom’s head, and Helena felt sick. Her shocked mind stilled, unable to process the events.
Unlike the valet, who immediately set to work. “Cloths!” he snapped. “And hot water. Now!”
A footman scurried away to do his bidding, his feet clattering on the stairs.
Helena moved back to allow Lamaire to do whatever he had to, her new position giving her a better view of the street outside. A few people stood and gaped, but Julius got to his feet and raced outside.
After five minutes he returned, disconsolate. “He’s gone.”
The duke was standing next to Helena, his hand on her shoulder. “Pray,” he said softly. Tears stood in his eyes.
Tom’s hand moved. Thank God, he was alive, but for how long she had no clue. Forcing her mind back into action, she watched and waited to help. Lamaire knew what he was about. He’d taken a knife and cut Tom’s coat away, baring his shoulder, and now held a cloth to his neck and ear.
Who would do such a thing?
Lamaire glanced up. “I want two footmen, if you please. Carry him to his bedroom and lay him there.”
“But the jolting…” The duke seemed as bemused as Helena.
“It matters not. Carry him up. He’ll be better in bed.”
Why? Was he about to die? Did the loss of blood not matter because she was about to become a widow?
Before the men took him upstairs, Lamaire bound a cloth around Tom’s throat. The seepage had lessened now, but a puddle of bright blood on the black-and-white tiled floor left the evidence of his injury. Lifting her skirts, Helena trailed after the cortege.
The duchess joined them on the first floor and gripped her hand tightly. The older lady’s face was stern, but not for Helena. Now Helena’s mind had begun to work again, it raced. She could be a pregnant widow. That would perpetuate the line that the duke would probably rather died with his son, since Tom was not his. William could become duke in his turn. Nice and tidy, eliminating the late duchess’s error. Unless she was pregnant. Perhaps she should go home, back to the Abbey, or ask Julius to give her the annuity and go to live quietly somewhere, where she could mourn in peace.
To live without Tom? To know he was not in the world anymore? Impossible.
As the footmen gently turned their burden, Tom’s chest moved in a convulsive gasp for breath. He wasn’t dead yet. She wouldn’t wear black until she absolutely had to.
She’d worn a lavender gown the first night they’d met, a small rebellion against her mother, since lavender was a color of half mourning. She might have to wear that color in earnest now. If he died, she would wear that color for the rest of her life. She swore it, made an oath that was as sacred as any she had ever committed to. She’d be that odd lady in lavender, the one sitting in the corner, waiting for death.
How could she do anything else?
Her mind would not accept what had just happened. It was as if she’d dreamed it all, and the next moment Tom would wake her, laughing at the fine joke.
The room she had shared with him last night was now neat and tidy, as if nobody had ever slept in the bed or scattered their clothes all over the floor. Her maid stood in one corner, hands folded demurely before her. She had several clean cloths draped over her arm. For laying out? How often did a man shot in the head survive?
Lamaire followed the footmen as they laid Tom on the bed. Without compunction, he climbed on to the covers and tucked a wadded cloth under his head.
Then a miracle happened. Tom opened his eyes.
* * * *
Helena rushed to the bed, and climbed up on the other side, leaning over him. Lamaire tutted, but she took no notice. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she forced a smile to her face. “My love, I’m here.”
He lifted his hand and gripped hers firmly. “So am I.”
“Tom?” He sounded lucid, even amused.
Lamaire glanced at her. “If you could bid him remain still for a moment, I will patch him up. My lord, you will have a magnificent scar, and I fear you may lose the extreme top part of your ear.” He had piled some fresh towels under Tom’s injury.
“Pray that I never need spectacles, then.”
God help her, he smiled.
“What, love, did a little blood disconcert you?”
Had he seen how much she was worried? Blood had always sent her into a spin of panic. Was that all?
“A lot of blood,” she managed to reply.
His smile faded, and he reached for her hand. “You’re not fond of blood,” he said.
“Not when it’s yours.”
“Who would have known that someone would try to shoot my ear off?”
“My lord, hold still,” the valet muttered.
Tom sucked in a breath as the valet applied something to the wound. “That will staunch the blood. Lie still for ten minutes and you may move. My lord, look at me.”
Lamaire straddled his master, sitting astride his thighs.
Blinking, Tom looked up. “I don’t allow many people to take that position.”
Lamaire gave an essentially Gallic shrug. “I am aware of that, my lord. But I need to test you. You fainted.”
“Was knocked sideways. Fainting is not something that I do.”
Another shrug. “As you will have it, my lord.”
The duchess’s voice rang around the room. “So he will recover?”
“Undoubtedly, your grace.” Lamaire did not look around. “He will be sore for a time. My lord, if you will keep your head still and follow my finger with your eyes only.”
Lifting one finger, he trailed it to the right, up and swiftly down, before moving it to the left. Helena found herself watching, as if the valet were about to reveal a profound truth.
Lamaire put Tom through a series of interesting visual tests. By the time he’d done, Julius had come in, but he held up his hand, preventing speech until Lamaire had finished. “You doubtless have a sore head, my lord.” He climbed off Tom and then the bed.
When Helena tried to do the same, Tom gripped her hand, forcing her to remain where she was. Her head still spinning with the turn of events and her giddiness at the sight of so much blood, she straightened her skirts as best she could and sat back against the bed head.
Taking the soiled towels with him, Lamaire left the room, returning in a few moments with a great pile of pillows which he must have collected from the next room. He laid them at the top of the bed and helped Tom sit up.
Tom closed his eyes briefly. He was pale but composed, and Helena wanted nothing so much as to fling her arms around him and hold him tightly.
Julius gave her a perceptive look. “Are you feeling ill, Helena?”
“I’m fine, Julius. I will, I promise you, not faint.”
Julius spared Tom a grimace. “She always used to faint at the sight of blood. My sister is an intrepid woman, but for some reason gore sends her into a spin.”
“I was not aware.” Tom winced as he turned his head, but what pain he was feeling did not prevent him from touching the pulse in her neck and narrowing his eyes. “You should rest.”
“That is what you should be doing.”
“Then we both will.” Before his father, his grandmother, and her brother, he kissed her.
Although heat rose to her skin, Helena did not do him the disservice of rejecting him. Not when she had feared she would never feel his lips on hers again. Acknowledging that much of her terror had been engendered by the blood and her deepest fears, she let his warmth flow through her. She would not lose him just yet.
He studied her. “I should stay away, perhaps, since this will not heal for a while yet. The man creased me. I take it the perpetrator of this outrage was a man?” He turned his head to meet Julius’s gaze.
In the process of shaking his coat into some semblance of order, Julius nodded. Lamaire appeared with a clothes brush and began to attend to Julius’s magnificence.
“Four times your salary,” Julius murmured.
“Non, m’sieur.”
Julius gave a crack of laughter, although Helena had not the least idea why Lamaire’s reply would amuse him so much.
He spoke to the valet in French. “Since you are fluent in English, unlike the image you preferred to present to me when we first met, your price has gone up.”
“I am flattered, monseigneur,” Lamaire replied in the same language, “but I have sufficient where I am.”
Julius allowed Lamaire to continue to work his magic but spoke to the company. “I did not catch him, but the man who attacked Alconbury was undoubtedly the man known to us until recently as Lord Everslade. I saw him clearly.”
* * * *
Tom closed his eyes and groaned. Not only did his head hurt like the devil, now he had more problems to cope with. He could hardly laze his time away in bed while his wife was in danger. “Everslade wants Helena so badly he would kill me to get to her.” He tightened his grip on her hand when she flinched.
Winterton frowned. “I’m not sure about that. However, I did get a runner to follow the man.” He twitched his coat. “I could hardly chase him inconspicuously dressed like this, so I gave a boy half a guinea and told him if he could bring back the address of Everslade, I would give him double that amount.”
“The boy is likely to abscond, and you’ll be half a guinea worse off,” the duchess said. She crossed to the window and glanced out. “You’ve caused quite a stir, Alconbury.”
Julius nodded. “I saw that. We could turn that to our advantage, if we wished.”
His grace of Northwich grunted. “Now we know who, we have to discover his identity.”
Winterton studied the duke, as if trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle. “I will not have my sister put in danger. If Everslade is mad enough to believe he loves her, and wishes to abduct her, he must be stopped.”
“I feel the same way about my wife,” Tom said calmly. Releasing Helena’s hand with reluctance, he swung his legs down so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Another wave of nausea overtook him, but he fought it down. He’d known worse. Resting his hands on the coverlet either side of him, he allowed himself a moment to accustom himself to the new position. “I want this matter settled. Today, if possible.”
A maid carrying a full tray knocked and entered. “Downstairs,” the duchess said. “The drawing room. And if anyone should call, we are not at home. Do not give out my grandson’s condition to anyone who might ask.” When the maid left, she dusted her hands, as if getting down to work. “We will decide how to manage this situation. I detest vulgar gossip.”
“Sometimes it can work to our advantage.” Winterton touched his chin, his habit when working out a problem. “We could always put out that Alconbury is at death’s door. That would flush Everslade out. He’d come to collect his prize.”
“That will not happen today,” Tom said stubbornly. He was tired of the subtle subterfuges and elaborate games his father played. He would not start a long game now. “I said I wanted the matter cleared up today, and I meant it. If that boy comes back with an address, we will use it.”
A plan began to form in his mind. Simple, true, but he would carry it out properly. “I have a house, a private house I bought years ago.” The small intake of breath told him Helena knew which house he meant. “If we can capture Everslade, or whatever his name is, we may take him there. The house is maintained, but empty.”
Julius grunted. “I have one or two such places myself, but I rarely keep them empty. What if the boy does not return?”
“Then we’ll think of something else. Everslade has been preening around society. Somebody must know more than they think.”
“If you’re in any state to do so,” the duchess said, “come downstairs and drink some tea. I’ll have refreshments served.”
Only when she said that did Tom realize how thirsty he was.
* * * *
Helena protested, Winterton declared he could find out more if he was given the chance, but Tom remained firm, especially when the boy returned with an address. Tom added his fee to the one Winterton gave the lad, so he was four times better off when he left the house.
Everslade had run to a room in a lodging house, close to Red Lion Square. No wonder he had taken nobody home. He must have worked hard to conceal that address from the people he mixed with.
After drinking a gallon of tea and allowing Helena to ply him with patties and soothe him with kisses, Tom declared his intention of, as he put it, being in for the kill. Not that, he added, he intended to kill Everslade.
Although he added a silent promise that if he found Helena was not safe with the scoundrel in the world, he would certainly attend to that small matter. Winterton did not even try to deter him, but he did send to two of his cousins who happened to be in town.
Tom remembered the twins Valentinian and Darius Shaw, sons of the Marquess of Strenshall, from an incident on the Heath. They were likely men in a fight, and he was glad to have them with him. When they arrived at the house, brows raised only slightly from the fact that their cousin had invited them here, they were dressed plainly and bristling with weaponry.
“Father wants us back in the country,” Darius explained. “He wants to bring me up to scratch with Charlotte, and he has determined I should be married by Christmas. I had thought of joining your brother abroad. Do you think he has room?”
“I doubt it, with the number of books he has and the size of his lodging,” Winterton said dryly. “Moreover, he does not live as if each day was his last.”
Darius, a big dark-haired bruiser, snorted. “Neither do we.”
Valentinian, just as big as his brother, but with a more sardonic air about him and certainly a greater refinement of dress, grinned. “Papa usually has his way.”
The Shaw family obviously did not have the same kind of problems offered by the Kirkburton family. Notoriously close and welded together as only a loving family could be, they were a force to be reckoned with in their own right. Being Emperors of London merely made them a bit more formidable. Not that Tom would hesitate to take them all on should there prove a need.
The twins were in charity with Tom, after he had offered them aid before, and spoiling for a fight, so they readily agreed to join in the raid on the house.
“But in my opinion,” Darius said, snagging a lone slice of bread and butter from the porcelain plate on the butler’s tray, “we should do it soon, before the man makes a bolt for the continent.”
“My opinion exactly,” Tom said. He glanced at Helena, who was sitting bolt upright on a sofa. She looked adorable, and he would have liked nothing better than to plead a headache and retire to bed with her. The headache would not have been a lie. He glanced out of the window at the street outside, where several people stood in a bunch, staring up at the house. “Don’t they ever grow tired of stretching their necks?”
“They’re ghouls,” Valentinian remarked. “They’re waiting for you to die.” He joined Tom at the side of the window. “Nothing they like better than a good funeral.”
“Unless it’s a good funeral and a scandal,” Darius said sagely. He looked around the drawing room, as if expecting more bread and butter to appear from midair.
Tom returned his attention to the people outside. They were dressed in nondescript but respectable clothes, the kind of people he would pass in the street without a second glance. “Lamaire, bring me a plain town coat and waistcoat. And my pistols. A decent sword, too. Not a town short sword.”
“Monseigneur.”
He touched his ear and winced. At least the bleeding had stopped. “And a large hat.”
When the valet returned with the necessary items, Tom lost no time getting into them. By that time, William had arrived, similarly attired and armed. William tended to the dandy, but today he had stripped the fancy trappings of society off and looked like the soldier he had always wanted to be. Tom felt for his dilemma, but little could be done about it. Either he joined the army and swore an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarch, or he joined the rebels in what was increasingly a hopeless cause.
Events like this one gave his brother a chance to use some of the skills he’d practiced relentlessly but had little use for in everyday life. William nodded to the others, but kept his distance.
Darius eyed him doubtfully. “Do you wish to help your brother?”
William raised a brow. “Why would I not?”
The question was a challenge, a dare to anyone who would say, “Because if he were dead, you’d be the heir.”
Tom had no idea if William knew of his dubious parentage, but he might see this as a way to even the score. But he trusted William. Whether he trusted him with his life was another matter, but he was about to find out. “We’re rooting out the man who shot at me and abducted my wife. I want him alive if possible. For now.”
Finally in control of his pain and his headache, he strolled across the room to take Helena’s hand and kiss it. “Do me the honor, my lady, of remaining here. On this floor or the one below, out of sight of the windows. I will send a footman to guard you.”
She met his eyes. “I nearly lost you today. Don’t make the possibility a reality.”
He was probably the only person who would see the fear lurking deep in her. Not with a twitch or a telltale movement did she betray her anxiety. Her lovely face remained clear of frowns or tightened muscles, and her hand lay quietly in his. But he knew. He needed no outward signs to tell him. “I swear I’ll come back to you.” He could do nothing else.
Turning, he surveyed his troops. Like him, all were dressed plainly, and also like him, wore substantial swords, not the fine jeweled dress swords most men his kind wore in town, more fancy hilt than blade. The bulges in their pockets suggested other weapons, too. All to take one man. No, to be certain of taking him.
“Come, then. We should travel separately, otherwise we will draw a crowd all by ourselves.” Five heavily armed men marching through London? Oh, yes, they’d be followed well enough. He gave them all the address and outlined a brutal, effective plan. Two at the back of the house, three at the front.
Half an hour later they were all at the end of the street. Lace Street was a small thoroughfare at the edge of fashionable London. The house was like a miniature version of the ones many of them used in town, with shallow steps and a portico leading to the front door, but the portico would barely allow one person at a time, and the steps were token rather than a real distinction. The black-painted door was scuffed and muddied. This October had been a wet one, and the building showed every mark of it. No maid cleaned it down every day, as they would even in modest households. This was a lodging-house.
As he came to that conclusion, the door opened and a well-dressed man stepped out. “Oh, I say! Are you new residents?”
Tom glanced at Darius and Winterton, who had ordered him to call him Julius.
“We’re thinking about it. Is it a pleasant house?” Darius spoke for them, since if they were within hearing distance, Everslade would recognize the other two.
The man shrugged. “The rooms are small, but they are in the right part of town, if you know what I mean.” He winked.
Oh, yes, Tom knew. A card sharp, fortune hunter or some kind of trickster, he’d be bound. He grinned and nodded, since they were declining into male sign language.
“Wouldn’t mind a look inside,” Darius said in a casual tone. “I’m always looking for a reasonable place to stay.”
“The landlord doesn’t live here. If you come back at six, I daresay he’ll be at home.”
“Thanks.”
Tom growled. “Enough.” Pushing forward, he bundled the hapless tenant inside, blocking his cries by the effective if distressingly blunt method of putting his hand over the youth’s mouth.
“Oh, wonderful,” Julius rolled his eyes. “Now one of us has to look after him.”
“No, we don’t.” Now they were inside, Tom clipped the man under the chin. Darius caught him and laid him gently aside, propping him against the wall. “Though we don’t know which room he occupies.” He kept his voice low.
“Could we set fire to the place?” Valentinian enquired.
Julius sent his cousin a disgusted glare.
The stink of old food and damp made Tom swallow the bile that rose to his throat. His head throbbed, but he pushed those concerns aside. “Tempting, but no.” He frowned, and opened the door as shadows skimmed the glass in the door. As he’d expected, the others came in. He nodded to Val and William.
Val glanced at the man on the floor and grinned. “What now?”
Tom’s knowledge of the layout of these houses helped. “One man each room, starting with this floor. If they don’t answer, break it down. Let them shout, we’ll stop them.”
“How many rooms?”
“If they have not sublet, two on each floor and one below. Three or more in the attics. Ten minutes each floor.”
Julius grunted, turned, and rapped on a door on the first floor. Leaving Julius and William downstairs, the others hurtled up the stairs to the first floor. They were fortunate, as someone opened the door at the front and cursed. Not their man.
Neither was the man in the back room. This appeared to be a gentleman’s residence, but the heavy smell of coupling came from the room. Not the aroma that quickly dissipated but a full stink, as if the room were used for nothing else and nobody changed the sheets or opened the windows. The man was dressed in breeches that he’d obviously donned in a hurry. He was primped to the point of tipping over the edge into pure artistry.
At least Everslade could simulate respectability. Tom shook his head and moved on. The man shrugged and closed the door. Everyone had to make a living, but doing it by selling one’s body, male or female, repulsed Tom. Not that he had ever admitted to that, but remaining celibate struck him as preferable to paying for the privilege.
Upstairs the rooms would be at the bedroom level if this was a private residence. He nodded to the back room.
Nobody answered either knock. Gently, Tom tried the door of the room at the front. It did not open, but he had the cure for that. The door showed a gap when he tried it, the lock a simple one and the door showing signs of rotting at the base.
He took a pace back, lifted his foot, and kicked. The door burst open and bounced off the wall. Expecting the rebound, Tom caught it with his hand as he strode in, taking a quick step to one side in case the occupant had a weapon.
The coat on the rickety chair by the tiny dressing table was one he recognized. Everslade had worn it at a ball earlier this season. That pattern of pansies was hard to forget.
The bed was rumpled, evidently used, but empty. Nobody was home. Tom strode to the table tucked under the window and rifled through the pile of papers that lay on it.
Downstairs a triumphant cry erupted. “We have him!”
Darius made a shooing motion with one hand. “I’ll search this place. If there is anything to be found, I will find it.”
Tom left the room long enough to call out, “Bring him up!”
He had thought of taking the villain to the house of Folgate Street, but this place was secure enough. Julius came up with Everslade slung over his shoulder. After glancing around, he dumped the man in a chair that William dragged to the middle of the floor.
Darius made himself busy up-ending every drawer, tearing the sheets off the bed, and wreaking general destruction. Julus took a position near the door, and Val stood by the window. Their prisoner might consider risking leaping out, if he could squeeze his way through the narrow casement. At the moment, he was blissfully unconscious. A reddened, swollen lump under his chin demonstrated the cause of his slumbers.
“You did not break his jaw?” Tom moved it roughly. No, the jaw was still attached, it did not grate and more significantly, the man did not wake up screaming. “I need to know several things first.”
Julius plucked a well-worn flintlock out of his pocket and dropped it back. “That was all I found, together with a couple of blades.”
Darius lifted his attention from Everslade to the room. “This is a poor place.”
“A base for his more underhand activities,” Julius said. “Everslade lives in a respectable house farther west.”
No wonder Julius had proved a formidable opponent. His perceptiveness matched his strength. Would he prove an ally now they were in-laws? He would find out in the following years.
Tiring of waiting, and with the sounds of Darius’s joyful destruction around them, Tom backhanded Everslade, taking care to hit the sore patch.
He woke up on a scream. Small compensation, but not nearly enough for what he had done to Helena.
Tom swept an exaggerated bow. “Lord Everslade, well met.”
The man did not reply, but swallowed. Somehow, probably on the journey upstairs, he’d lost his hat and his wig.
Tom removed his hat now, bracing himself for the inevitable shot of pain when the newly formed scab on his ear tore off. “You left your mark, but I fear your pistol is an old one, and it may not have its sights properly aligned. Either that or you are a very poor shot.”
Tom drew his own pistol out of his pocket, one of a pair he’d ordered last year. He leveled it at Everslade and drew back the hammer, the deadly sound easily audible above the joyful racket Darius was making.
Everslade tipped back his head and regarded Tom steadily.
“Who are you in truth?” Tom asked.
“I’ve been Lord Everslade long enough to be known by that title.” Eyeing Tom doubtfully, he sighed. “I used to be Ian McKinley, a loyal servant of the true King. As you should be.”
“As I am,” Tom said. He tilted his head to one side, so the light from the window fell on his wound. “Who told you I was not?”
McKinley—how good to have another name for him—curled his lip. “The highest authority. The man you betrayed.”
“What did you do with Everslade? The real Lord Everslade, that is.”
“A lucky accident.” McKinley lifted his hand and cradled his jaw. “It hurts to talk.”
“Good. Then keep your answers brief.” Flicking up the skirts of his coat, Tom half sat on the edge of the table, swinging his leg. “So it was me you were aiming for?”
McKinley’s eyes widened. He shot a glance at Julius, standing with his arms folded and a gun hanging negligently from one hand. “For a loyalist, you keep very poor company.”
“He’s my brother-in-law. Why did you try to abduct Lady Helena?”
McKinley shrugged, and dared to smile. “She was not unappreciative of my attention. She’s wealthy and a known traitor, so why should I not? I would have taken care of her. Married her.”
“Under a name that is not your own?”
“By the time we reached Scotland, she’d have been ruined. She’d have married anyone.” He smirked.
Tom refrained from knocking the smile off his face. “You really don’t know my wife, do you?”
“Or my sister,” Julius murmured.
“With her a widow, I might have taken another shot at her,” McKinley said.
Tom exchanged a glance with Julius, marveling at the man’s foolishness. Except for one thing. Either the Old Pretender or his son had labeled him a traitor. Why? Because he’d married Helena? No, because McKinley had courted Helena before anyone knew they were married or that he was even interested with her. His public demeanor toward her at the time would have told most people precisely the opposite, in fact. “Tell me exactly why your masters considered me a traitor.”
“Your behavior in recent years has given his highness pause to concern himself with your loyalty.”
“Ah, so it was Charles rather than James who set you to kill me.” Together with Tom’s undoubted personal dislike of the man. His mind went back to the last time he’d seen the prince in person. They had not liked each other, and Tom had clearly seen the seeds of what the man had since become. A sulking, broken drunk, to be precise. “Why would he do that?”
Julius closed his eyes. “I think I know why.”
McKinley shrugged. “Let him tell you then.”
Tom’s mind was working now. This man was sent to kill him by the Young Pretender. He decided to abduct Helena. Was it coincidence that he chose the very woman bound to Tom for life? Tom did not believe in coincidences. “Why Helena?”
“She’s beautiful and wealthy. And taking her would strike a blow to our enemies.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t.” Darius had been sifting through the papers he’d collected from their hiding places. “This was on the underside of the chair. I’m bracing myself to go under the bed, but I’m terrified of what I’ll find there. Whoever cleans this place is not worth the money she’s paid.” He handed Tom a piece of paper.
Tom took a moment to absorb the information. “This is a copy of my marriage certificate. So you knew she was married when you courted her?”
Darius’s chin jerked up sharply.
Julius shook his head slightly. “Later.”
Val made a sound at the back of his throat, and tension filled the air. William stepped forward, the floor beneath him creaking ominously.
Tom shrugged as if the information meant nothing. “You knew that and what we were doing about it.” He looked at nobody but McKinley, whose triumphant air revealed he’d gained a point.
Tom stilled. “How did you find out?” He got to his feet and turned around, his features working. “We were married by a man named Clegg. We had a Fleet marriage.”
“I followed the trail. Actually I followed Lady Helena when she went to the Fleet and purchased a copy of her licence. I bought one, too.” All amusement faded from McKinley’s voice, and only venom remained. “With the knowledge the prince had vouchsafed to me, I knew I had my revenge in my hands. Besides, I had a score to settle with you.”
Tom spun back, his face carefully composed. A cracked and tarnished mirror opposite told him he was not as successful as he’d wanted. “Why would you want revenge on me?”
“Why do you think?” He curled his lip. “You did not even notice me that night, did you?”
Tom shook his head. All he remembered was bliss. He hadn’t looked at anyone except Helena.
“I arrived in London with the prince, but I stayed when he left. I had orders to serve his interests. I took the identity of Everslade when I arrived.”
“Did you kill Lord Everslade?” Julius rapped out.
McKinley glanced around at the expectant faces. Everyone stilled. A corner of one of the papers Darius held flapped down, the only movement in the room until McKinley shrugged carelessly. “Yes. But you will never find him. You can’t try a man for murder without a body.”
“Oh, I think we can,” Julius said softly.
Darius waved the papers. “I have not found everything yet, but these will serve to hang him. The man is a traitor. That’s for sure. He plotted the death of a subject of his majesty, and he spied for a foreign power.”
Tom nodded. “I would rather he died for murder. There is less honor in that.”
“I believe we can discover when and where,” Julius reiterated.
“Not from me.” McKinley lifted his head, tilted his chin. “Do your worst. Kill me now, if you will.”
Tom sniggered. “So we can be hanged alongside you? I think not.” He glanced at Julius. “We should call the authorities.”
“You would do that?”
Tom kept his attention on McKinley. “For Helena, I would do anything. This man hoped to disgrace her.”
“How long could you have expected to continue your masquerade?” Julius asked, his voice tight.
“Everslade was on his way to London. He told me that his mother had died, and now he intended to live a little. She had kept him in the country for years.” McKinley clamped his mouth shut.
He didn’t need to say any more. McKinley could have murdered the garrulous Everslade on the road, dismissed the servants who knew him, never returned to that part of the country, and lived as Lord Everslade. The man was not mad, as Tom had begun to believe. He was cunning and vindictive. He thought of nobody but himself. Well, he would have nobody but himself to think of now, for the short time he had left.
“I made it my business to discover everything I could about you,” he said. “I was courting Lady Helena when you made your move. When I showed the evidence to the Prince, he agreed you had to die. So I got my dearest wish. I had the means to kill you and to make you suffer first.”
Tom had no compunction in sending this disgusting man to the gallows. “How fortunate Bow Street is so close,” he said, satisfaction filling his voice. “You won’t find it as easy to escape Newgate. You will find the vails there onerous, but you won’t have to pay them for long.” Then he struck him and gave him a matching bruise on the other side of his face. Such a pity Tom had not held back, because this time he did break McKinley’s jaw.
While the man was still squealing in pain, Darius handed him a piece of paper. Tom glanced at it.
When he was a child, he’d been given a picture of the world, but his tutor had cut it into small pieces. By putting it together again, Tom had discovered the way the world was built.
The last piece of his personal world fell neatly into place.