“He says he will be up directly,” Lamaire told Helena.
“Oh, does he, now?” With a rustle of silk Helena climbed off the bed. She’d been sitting reading the journals, waiting with increasing impatience for her husband’s return. No secrets, he’d said. And where was her brother? Why had he not come back with Tom?
After shaking out her skirts briefly and glancing in the mirror to make sure her cap was on straight, she went downstairs and knocked on the study door, entering on her knock.
Tom stood before the desk, and his father was sitting behind it. Papers were scattered over the surface, grazing the crystal inkwell, some in a strange mixture of numbers and symbols that could only be code.
“He was an agent for Charles Stuart,” Tom was saying. He turned his head and met her curious gaze.
Nodding with a wry smile, he held out his arm, and without hesitation she walked under it, nestling close to him so he could close his arm around her. She only felt complete in his embrace.
He kissed her forehead. “The man’s name was McKinley. He was an agent of Prince Charles. He is currently locked up in Newgate.”
She sighed in relief. She hadn’t wanted the man she’d known as Lord Everslade to die at Tom’s hands. He should not have that stain on his soul.
The duke took up a paper and read it again. The wrinkled document trembled. What was wrong?
“Are we married in truth?” Perhaps that was it. Then her fears in those years they had spent apart were real. And they were not married now. She did not move away. Even if their marriage wasn’t real, their love was.
“We are.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “But another difficulty has emerged. Or another complication.”
“Tell me,” she demanded impatiently. “What are you talking about?”
“McKinley was a member of the court. Prince Charles’s court, one of the people who owed his loyalty to the prince rather than his father. There he discovered the quest to find the children of his father, the legitimate ones. He came to London five years ago to continue the quest and to work for the prince.”
“So he worked as an agent?”
“When he discovered that I was one of those children, he kept the information to himself. Until this year.”
“Why would he do that?” The truth hit her with the force of a hammer. Helena’s legs gave way. “What did you say?”
He turned her to face him, holding her firmly, his eyes dark and fathomless. “I am the son of the Old Pretender and Maria Rubio. As far as we know, the oldest legitimate son.”
The duke looked up at them, “And he tried to kill you. The man I have followed for all these years—the one I nearly lost my fortune and title to, the man I have supported with money and loyalty—tried to kill my son.” His mouth flattened. The lines on his face deepened. He looked less like his usual vigorous self, his strength leaving him. “Whoever fathered you, you are my son. The king made my wife, my bride, tell me that she had betrayed me, that she bore another man’s child. He cared nothing that the knowledge might make me cast her off. Instead, she gave me the child, the one he wanted hidden. The perfect disguise. He may have intended my wife to tell me, but she never did. She sacrificed herself for him.” He clamped his mouth closed, gritted his teeth before he crumpled the paper in his hand. “I will never refer to the Stuart as the king again. I owe his son nothing. He owes me. My loyalty is first to my family and then to my country, whoever represents it.”
Scraping his chair back, he got to his feet. “Never allow anything to come between you two. Family is always paramount.”
Tears misted her eyes, so Helena did not see him leave. “He’s right. I love you, Tom.”
“And I love you.”
They kissed, and as always, everything else went away.