The Burleigh home wasn’t grand by any stretch of the imagination, nor could it be considered a cottage. It sat on a pretty little plot of land, surrounded by newer homes that had cropped up in the last decade—mostly the dwellings of wealthy merchants. It was two stories tall, the walls made of brick, the roof slate. Roses climbed up a trellis along the south side, and around the back, a garden could be seen bordering the edge of an outbuilding that might have once been used for horses. In the setting sun, it looked a little like something out of a bucolic country painting.
Angelique had only ever been here once when she was a child, and she vaguely remembered it. Most of the time her father and the late Baron Burleigh had spent together had been in one of her father’s clubs or, most often, in their own home. Lady Burleigh had joined him frequently, usually when an outing to the theater or a musicale or a ball was planned, and along with her mother, they went as a happy foursome.
Angelique couldn’t even begin to guess what had gone wrong from there to here.
At their knock, a housekeeper opened the door, suspiciously squinting at the visitors.
“Is Lord Burleigh in?” Alderidge sounded curt and businesslike. He had insisted on coming.
The housekeeper eyed both Alex and Alderidge, her eyes lingering on their blatantly expensive attire. “He is not,” she said a little uncertainly. “You just missed him. Left not even an hour ago.”
“Where did he go?”
“Don’t know, sir. Said he wouldn’t be back for a few days. Would you care to leave a message?”
Angelique felt a strange sensation of dread creep up her spine. It was if the air temperature had suddenly dropped, so palpable was her sense of foreboding. She heard Alex curse softly under his breath.
“I am the Duke of Alderidge, not a sir,” Alderidge said coldly. “And no, I would not care to leave a message. This is a matter of grave importance.”
The housekeeper’s face went pale. “Of course, Your Grace. Whatever you need.”
“Is Lady Burleigh in?”
“She’s at the church,” the housekeeper stammered. “There was a tea. For the orphans.”
“Fetch her. Immediately.” The duke sounded like a proper ass, but it had the desired effect. The housekeeper’s eyes went round.
“Is she in some sort of danger?” she gasped.
“Quite possibly,” he replied tonelessly.
“Oh, dear heavens. Yes, of course, Your Grace. Right away.” She stepped past them, hurrying in the direction of the spire just visible beyond the neighboring rooftops.
“This is why one brings a duke along,” Alex muttered, jamming his foot in the door before it swung closed.
Alderidge made a derisive sound. “I think I terrified her.”
“You do have a way with words.” Alex waited until the housekeeper was out of sight before pushing through the door. Angelique and Alderidge followed him in, stopping just inside the small but well-appointed hall. Angelique strained for any other sounds that would indicate the house wasn’t empty, but there was only silence.
“The study?” Alex suggested.
“The most likely place for a calendar that may indicate where Burleigh went,” the duke agreed. He jerked his chin in the direction of a wide door, just off the hall, tightly shut.
Angelique stared at Alex. “Shouldn’t we wait for Lady Burleigh? We need to hear what she has to say.”
“I want to know what she isn’t going to say,” Alex said, already moving in the direction of the door. “People are just so secretive when it comes to admitting things like extortion.” He tried the knob, but it was locked tight.
Alex pulled a tiny leather bag from the inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a series of what looked like hairpins. Very gently, he inserted them into the lock. In less than a minute, he had the door open.
“And this is why one brings a spy along,” Alderidge commented succinctly.
Alex made a face and shoved the door wide. The room was dim, the scent of musty paper and books filling the air. Angelique hurried over to the window and yanked open the curtains, letting the late afternoon light flood in.
And stared.
Save for the wall in which the door was located, the entire room was lined with bookshelves. The shelves were filled, not with tomes or reference books or novels, but with what appeared to be journals of some sort. The empty wall had a collection of paintings, various compositions of flowers and fruit, and a large portrait of a ship of some sort in the middle. In the center of the room sat a large, masculine-looking desk, and Alex was already shuffling through the papers that sat on top of it.
“Do you suppose Burleigh fled?” Angelique asked.
“No. If he had become suspicious or paranoid enough to run, I don’t think he would have left his mother here. She is just as involved in whatever this is as he. More, possibly.” Alex was opening desk drawers and examining their contents. He straightened, scowling. “There’s nothing here that indicates where he might have gone. Or any sort of proof that he’s done anything we think.”
Angelique felt a pang of frustrated despair. “He’ll never admit anything.”
“Of course he won’t. No one just admits anything,” Alex muttered.
“That’s what Lavoie’s dungeon is for,” the duke said, pulling a journal from one of the shelves.
He was trying to make her feel better, she knew. It wasn’t working.
“What happened?” Angelique asked, not expecting an answer. “What did my father do?”
“These are the old baron’s journals,” Alderidge said, turning the pages of the book he held in his hand. “Starting, as far as I can tell, forty years ago. Perhaps there is a clue in one of them.” He shoved the book back into its space and went farther down the wall, stopping and selecting another one. He opened it and consulted the date on the inside page. “November 1812.” He flipped through the pages, scanning quickly. He made an incredulous face. “The man wrote everything down. From how much the pie he ate for lunch cost to the temperature during the evening.”
Alex had moved from the desk to the shelves. “They are all in chronological order. The last one is dated February 1813. The month the old baron died.”
Angelique joined them, examining the rows of earlier volumes. She was counting, her fingers drifting along the spines. She stopped suddenly and reversed direction, pulling out a number of volumes and examining the dates before finding what she was looking for. “There are three missing,” she said. “April of 1794, September of 1795, and December of 1806.”
Alex was watching her. “Do those dates mean anything to you?”
Angelique shook her head in frustration.
“Something odd that might have happened between your father and the baron?” Alex was clearly grasping. “Or travel? Maybe a purchase of some sort?”
“I wasn’t even born until January of ’95,” Angelique grumbled, just as frustrated as he. “And—” She stopped abruptly, a horrid feeling crawling through her.
“Angelique?”
“January 1795. June 1796. And September 1807. Our birthdays. Mine, my brother’s, the twins. Do the math, Alex.”
Alex stared at her. “The journals nine months before your births. They’re missing.”
Angelique felt suddenly cold.
Alex pushed away from the bookcase suddenly. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he ordered her, stalking back to the desk. “Not yet.” He stood in front of it, his hands on his hips, his face carved in concentration.
“Conclusions?” Her voice sounded shaky. No, she wouldn’t jump to conclusions because, if she did, she might retch.
“Where would a pirate hide his treasure, Alderidge?” Alex demanded, his eyes on the duke who was still standing by the bookcase. “Where would he hide something that he didn’t want anyone to find? But somewhere he could admire it whenever the mood struck him.”
Alderidge came around to stand next to Alex and dropped into the wooden desk chair. He leaned back, his gaze settling straight ahead. “Such a fine painting of a ship battling the elements, is it not?” the duke asked. “The artist didn’t get the rigging quite right, but a moving portrait, nonetheless. Especially surrounded as it is by a garden full of insipid renditions of flowers.”
Alex stalked over to the painting and carefully lifted it away from the wall, setting it down. “And this is why one brings a pirate along,” he muttered.
Set into the wall was a hollow, a wooden box inlaid with ebony resting within. Alex reached in and pulled it out, coming to place it on the desk. Without hesitation, he opened it.
On the top rested what Angelique imagined were the three missing journals. Whatever was in them had made them valuable enough to be hidden, but it would take time to read through the pages. Alex passed them to her, but she set them aside for now.
Beneath that was a thin stack of ornate documents—official-looking deeds to ships that listed one Vincent Cullen as sole owner. A thick ledger was just beneath, and a quick glance showed that it was a record of the cargoes and crews, along with tallies of the expenses and profits for each ship and each voyage. Alderidge leaned forward and took those from Alex, examining them closely.
Beneath that, a smaller book lay, this one more like a woman’s journal. It was bound with scarlet leather, a ribbon of the same color wrapped around the pages. Alex took that out and laid it on the surface of the desk. He glanced at Angelique, and for once in her life, she let someone else take charge, terrified at what they would find. Terrified at what they wouldn’t. He opened it.
The pages were divided into columns, a date and sum of money neatly written into each. The first entry was two months after the death of the old baron. The entries on the first few pages were written in what Angelique now instantly recognized as Lady Burleigh’s script. On later pages, some of the entries were written in a differing, heavier hand—the same one that had recorded the ledgers of the ships. Burleigh’s writing.
“How much would you like to wager that these amounts match the money missing from your family’s coffers?” Alex murmured.
Angelique was biting the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted blood.
At the end of the scarlet journal were three folded papers wedged in between the back cover and the pages. Alex took them out and unfolded the first.
The top sheet was a receipt. The name Trevane stood out, along with a date, a time, and a sum of money. The ugly collection of words continued with detailed expectations. At the bottom, someone had scrawled a sloppy X. But beside that was Burleigh’s signature. Vincent Cullen had hired someone to kill a young maid.
“Who does this?” Angelique whispered, feeling cold all over. It was as King suggested. A trophy, kept in a concealed place.
“Someone who believes he will never be caught. Someone who believes he is smarter than everyone else,” Alex murmured.
There was another receipt under that, something that looked remarkably similar to the one Alex held in his hand. Except it was dated last June, and the sum and the location were different. Alex turned it over. “You don’t need to read that.”
It didn’t matter. She already knew what it would say. A peculiar numbness had settled into her limbs.
“I’m sorry, Angelique.”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“This is proof that your brother is innocent,” Alex said.
“Yes.” It was the only tiny light. Why would Burleigh do any of this? What had her family ever done to deserve so much hatred?
From somewhere outside, there was the sound of voices and the frantic barking of a dog. She saw Alderidge set the deeds aside and exchange a glance with Alex.
“The lady returning?” Alex asked in a low voice.
“Maybe. I’ll find out. Stall her if necessary.” She did not miss the casual way in which his hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword.
“Matthews is still out front,” Alex said, “in case you need assistance. Try not to kill her until she has a chance to share her insights on this sordid little mess, hmmm? And perhaps direct us to the location of her son?”
The duke slipped from the room, moving with an unsettling speed and stealth for such a large man.
There was a single paper left in the bottom of the polished box, folded square, and Angelique reached for it. This one was visibly older and worn at the edges and written in a different hand altogether. Angelique’s eyes skipped down to the bottom of the page, and she froze.
“My father’s signature is on this,” she breathed.
“What is it?” Alex reached for the paper, but she pulled away from him. She had to read this. No one, not even Alex, could protect her from whatever was in this document.
Beside her father’s signature was the old baron’s signature. Her eyes raced back up to the top and she started reading.
“What does it say?” Alex asked. “Is it proof of another murder?”
Angelique reached the end, her breaths coming in heaving gulps.
“Worse,” she gasped. “So much worse.”
* * *
Angelique was the color of snow, her freckles standing out in sharp contrast to her pallor, her eyes haunted and shadowed. Alex snatched the page from her, reading quickly. What the hell could possibly be worse than discovering that the arrest of your brother and the death of your father had been orchestrated by someone you thought was a friend?
Discovering that your father wasn’t your father at all.
Alex read it a second time, as though he expected the words to have changed. And then very slowly and very deliberately, he folded the paper back into its neat square and slid it deep into his coat pocket, out of sight. But not out of mind. It could never be out of mind. The contents of that document could never be unseen.
“You didn’t know.” It was a stupid thing to say, but he didn’t know where to start.
Angelique shook her head, her eyes looking a little wild. Alex pulled her to him, and she went without hesitation, her hands curling into the linen of his shirt, her forehead pressed into the hollow at his throat. They stood like that for a long minute.
“My father loved my mother more than life itself. There wasn’t anything that he didn’t give her,” she whispered presently into his neck. “Jewels. Gowns. Horses. Homes. But he couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted most in life.”
“No. He couldn’t have children.”
She shook her head. “But he found a way to do it anyway. Found a way to give her everything. Her happiness was worth more than his pride.”
Alex stared sightlessly at the bookcases along the wall. Could he do what the Marquess of Hutton had done? If he had had a wife that he loved more than life itself, could he have allowed his best friend to lie with her so that she might have everything that she ever wanted? So that she might find happiness and he might find a family?
Could he give Angelique to another man?
He tightened his arms around her, the force of that thought nearly overwhelming. The idea of her with someone else was unbearable.
“Why would they ever have written it down?” she whispered raggedly into his coat. “What were they thinking?”
Alex pressed his cheek into her hair. He couldn’t answer for two men long in their graves. The trust that Hutton had placed in his best friend was, in truth, unthinkable. Perhaps it existed as how it read—a pledge from one man to another—one friend to another. That what would happen was something that would never be used against the other. And each man had signed it. “I can only guess this was supposed to have been destroyed at some point in time,” Alex said. “Though I can’t imagine why it wasn’t.”
She pulled back to look up at him. “Lady Burleigh knew. She must have discovered the truth. And this is what my father was trying to protect us from. To protect my mother from.” Her voice was toneless. “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
“Is that more Shakespeare?”
“No. William Congreve. Another one of my mother’s favorites.” The anguish in her eyes was intense. “I’m a bastard, Alex. And so is my brother. And Phillip and Gregory. And my father beggared us so that no one would find out.”
“Yes. A bastard.” The voice was low and smooth. “That’s exactly what you are.”
Alex spun away from Angelique to find a woman standing in the study. Her greying hair was pulled back severely, and hard, cold eyes were set into a lined face. She was dressed at the height of fashion, her walking dress clearly costly. As was the engraved muff pistol she held in her hand.
“Lady Burleigh, I presume.” Alex kept his eye on the pistol. It was small, but no less deadly for it. He listened, but there was only silence from the house, while outside the same dog was still barking. Where the hell was Alderidge? Or Matthews, for that matter?
Lady Burleigh’s eyes flickered over Alex as if he was of no consequence, coming to rest on Angelique. “Lady Angelique,” she said. “Well, not a lady at all, really.” She laughed, a faintly unbalanced sound. “All these years you’ve lived with the superior knowledge that you were better than anyone else, and yet you are nothing more than a gutter rat born to a whore of a mother.”
“You knew all along?”
“Of course I didn’t. I only found out when my husband died. Found all his dirty little secrets hidden away.” She waved the pistol at Angelique. “Did you know he wrote about it in his journals? The times he bedded her? And because his friend asked him to. He was more loyal to him and his whore than he was to his own wife!” Her voice had risen, and her face had flushed with color. “What kind of man does that?”
“So why not just let the world know then?”
“Because that wasn’t good enough!” she shrieked, spittle flying from her lips. “I might have killed the whore, but I wanted her children and your father to suffer for their lies and treachery. I wanted the Hutton name destroyed!”
“You killed my mother?” Angelique’s voice was small.
Lady Burleigh sneered. “All of you, hovering around her bed, believing her to be a saint. Watching her suffer.” Her mouth twisted. “What did you really think she died of?”
“You poisoned her.”
“Of course I did.”
“And then you blackmailed my father.”
“I got what my son and I were owed. He used us, your father. Took from us what was never his. So I took back what was owed me. So long as he kept depositing money into that little bank on Threadneedle and asked no questions, his secret was safe. He was so anxious to protect his family. So anxious to protect his darling wife’s reputation.”
“And then you had him killed,” Angelique said dully. “Beggaring him wasn’t enough for you?”
“He’d outlived his usefulness. There wasn’t any more money to be had.”
“And my brother? What did he ever do to you?”
“He existed,” Lady Burleigh hissed. “I wanted him destroyed before he died. Wanted him to feel the same humiliation and betrayal that your family brought onto me.” She waved her pistol. “Don’t worry, my sweet, you’ll all die. One by one. Vincent will make sure of it.”
“Where is Vincent now?” Angelique asked.
Lady Burleigh smiled, an awful expression that pulled her features into a chilling mask. “To take the rest of the cuckoos out of their nest for good.”
Alex felt Angelique recoil against him. “The twins. He’s gone to Harrow. He’s going to kill them.”
Lady Burleigh laughed. “You’ll never catch him in time.”
Alex edged forward, considering his options. A knife was of little use until that pistol was discharged. Right now, Lady Burleigh had the upper hand. “Put the pistol down,” he said.
Lady Burleigh ignored him like he hadn’t even spoken and gazed at the papers that lay across the desk. “Your father treated Vincent like a charity case, but now he is one of the richest men in London. His power will grow as his wealth does. And I can’t have that ruined now, can I? I had hoped for something better for you, little Angelique, but it would seem you’ve forced my hand. I suppose I’ll just shoot you here.”
“Lady Burleigh, you have one pistol. There are two of us.” Alex spoke loudly, trying to penetrate whatever fog she was in.
The woman finally looked at Alex, but it was too late. “Doesn’t matter,” she said with a fatalistic grin. “There’s really only one of you I want to see die.” She aimed her pistol at Angelique.
Alex threw himself against Angelique, hearing the roar of the shot in his ears. They hit the ground hard, his body covering Angelique’s, and he lay for a moment, waiting for the inevitable pain that would come. Except it didn’t. He hadn’t been shot. How was that possible, given the close range? Oh God, had Angelique been hit? He scrambled off her, and she sat up, pale but breathing hard. He frantically looked for blood but there was none.
“It wasn’t her pistol that went off, Lavoie,” the Duke of Alderidge said from somewhere above him. “It was mine. Or one of Matthews’s, in truth.”
Alex’s eyes flew to where the duke was standing to find him holding a familiar pistol, the faint remnants of smoke drifting around his hand and the stench of gunpowder hanging in the air.
Lady Burleigh lay in a lifeless heap on the floor.
“What took you so long?” Alex demanded, hauling himself upright. “Where is Matthews?”
“He went around back, looking for her. It would seem that Lady Burleigh returned much earlier from her tea than expected.”
“And the housekeeper?”
“Sent her to post an urgent message to London on my behalf.”
Angelique was on her feet now, terror stamped across her features. “The twins,” she said raggedly. “We have to leave.”
“Go,” the duke said. “I heard what she said about Harrow. I’ll take care of things here.”
“There is enough here to get Hutton out of prison,” Alex told him. “But the journals can’t be found. And the body can’t be—”
“I met my wife redressing a corpse, Lavoie. You think I don’t know how to make this look exactly how we need? I’ve got this handled. Now go.”
Alex was heading toward the door, Angelique on his heels. “Would the boys go with Burleigh? If he shows up at the school?” he asked her.
She nodded, her expression stricken. “Yes,” she whispered. “They’ve known him since they were children.”