“I have information.”
Seated in his office, head bent over his ledgers, Vail looked up. Having revealed all Bridget had shared about Atbrooke, his brother had begun searching for the man’s whereabouts and locating his contacts in London. And Vail, unsure how one was supposed to be around one’s wife after everything she’d revealed, he had also steered clear of her.
Colin stood in the doorway, a grim set to his mouth. Vail slowly released his pen and urged him forward. He made to rise, but Colin waved him off. Gavin closed the door, leaving them alone.
“What is it?” he asked as Colin claimed one of the winged chairs opposite him.
“I’ve found a good deal about the family and their connections here in London.” Flipping open his book, he turned it around.
His stomach muscles knotting, Vail had to make himself look at those pages. He reluctantly dragged his gaze over Colin’s illegible handwriting, grateful when the other man turned it back to read from.
“She’s lived in Leeds for nearly ten years.” The year she’d taken in Virgil. That had proven accurate. “Prior to that, she lived in Yorkshire. The parents hired a nursemaid,” Nettie, “to care for her and washed their hands of her. All of that proved accurate.” She’d not been lying on those details. Ironically, after every fabrication and his own desire for the truth, he wished this had been one more falsity she’d fed him. Because he’d rather have found more lies than the truth of the agonizing existence she’d lived.
With every detail confirmed and with every new revelation, a boulder-like weight settled on his chest, restricting airflow and making it impossible to draw forth an even breath. Loathing for the parents who’d sired her and then forgotten her gripped him so strong he gave thanks they were dead and already writhing in hell for their sins against her.
“There is more,” Colin, said, that somberness driving a wedge into Vail’s tortured musings.
“Atbrooke secured work for the lady evaluating old texts. A…” Dipping his gaze, he searched through his notes.
“Mr. Lowell?”
“Yes,” his brother confirmed. “In exchange for securing her work, Atbrooke received a portion of her payments.”
A murderous rage simmered hot in his veins. It was fortunate for both him and Atbrooke that the bastard wasn’t present for he would have run him through, and then gladly gone to Newgate for it.
“He’s been on the Continent for two years, after he was run off by Viscount Wessex.”
“Wessex?” Vail creased his brow. One of the most affable gents in London, the viscount never had a bad thing to say to anyone and there certainly weren’t any dealings those two should have together.
“I haven’t been able to find the connection between them, just enough to know there is no love lost between them.” His brother proceeded to read methodically from his notes. “Recently returned from the Continent, he’s been taking up residence at his various properties but there’s nothing left to sell or wager. No one will extend him credit.”
Which is why he’s hatched the scheme to steal from me. It was a natural connection. Send him a young woman capable and skilled with antique texts, and she’d have access to a fortune at her fingertips.
“Which is why he could have hatched the scheme?” Colin murmured, snapping his book closed. “Perhaps.”
Unaware he’d uttered those earlier words, he looked up. “Do you have proof linking him?” Anything that Vail could coerce the man with and see him in prison over. The threat needed to be gone. Atbrooke needed to be gone. Until he was, there could never be any peace for Bridget and Virgil. Nor could he and his wife move forward as long as her brother lingered in the shadows, prepared to use her like a pawn. And having learned of the sacrifices she’d made and witnessing her love for the child, he’d no doubt she would make the same decisions she had—even if it involved stealing from him. Nor, if he were being honest with himself, could he hold that against her. Then Colin’s earlier words registered. “Which is why he could have hatched the scheme? What are you saying, Colin?” he urged at his brother’s silence.
The other man tossed his notebook down on a corner of Vail’s desk. “I’m sorry, Vail. Thus far, all I have is Atbrooke’s name. I have a motive, but I can’t locate any people connecting him to the attempted theft.” He paused, holding his stare. “There’s only her.”
There’s only her.
Those three words lingered in the air, both damning and warning. Why…why…Colin was suggesting Bridget was guilty? Impossible. He shoved forward in his seat. “What about the two gentlemen meeting at the Coaxing Tom?” Someone had to know something. “Did you interview Tabitha?”
Colin frowned. Vail, however, had larger concerns than Colin’s bruised ego at having his work questioned. “Numerous times. She provided descriptions which I’ve circulated to the men who were in the club that night. No one had names.” Colin stared back, pityingly. “No one.”
Vail thinned his eyes into narrow slits. “What?” he growled, at the suspicions there.
“Vail,” he began.
“Just say it,” he snapped. Say what I’m already thinking.
“The fact that her brother was a rotter,” And she took his child in. “And the fact that she’s been treated equally rottenly by her family doesn’t mean anyone but the lady herself orchestrated the plan.”
He sank back in his chair. “You’re wrong,” he said hollowly.
Colin dragged a hand through his hair. “If you were another client, I’d tell you to open your damned eyes. I’d not spare you from details or tolerate your questioning. But you are related to me and the career I have is because of you, but neither will I lie to you.” He scraped his green eyes over Vail’s office and then looked to him once more. “I’ve caught all manner of people, guilty of crimes: men, women, children. Lords, ladies. All of them,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Do you know what I discovered in every case, from every person I apprehended?”
Unable to form a verbal reply, he shook his head woodenly.
“That desperation will make a person do desperate things.”
…The story is of a girl who never knew loving parents, who were wholly incapable of sacrificial love…
It had been her, in every way. She’d been trying to tell him. He pressed his eyes closed. Did it even matter knowing? Did it matter what…rather, who had brought her into his household?
“I understand you care for her,” Colin said gravely. Love her. I love her. “But sometimes the world is just black and white.”
…One might see red and green and yellow and purple, but sometimes buried within are other shades… “Mm. Mm,” he said, giving his head another firm shake. “You are wrong on this.” Because what was the alternative? That even her love had been a lie? “You are wrong.”
He wanted his brother to fight him. Wanted to pound his fists and drive out the uncertainty. Instead, Colin merely inclined his head. “I’m never wrong.”
A knock sounded at the door and they looked as one.
“The Duke of Huntly,” Gavin announced, letting Vail’s best friend in. He’d arrived, Vail having put aside this task for two days now.
“I’ll leave you to your visit,” Colin said, collecting his items. “If you’ve need of me, send word.”
“Of course.”
Huntly claimed the seat just vacated by Colin. “What was that about?” he asked, astute when most lords would have missed the underlying tension between Vail and Colin’s parting.
Needing to have it said, he spoke without preamble. “My wife is the sister of Lady Marianne Carew.”
Huntly may as well have turned to stone. He sat, carved of granite, his eyes unblinking. “What?” that terse question emerged through tightly clenched lips. Did he expect the other man to be as forgiving of Bridget’s crimes when he learned her true identity?
“She is Lord Atbrooke’s eldest sister. She’d been shut away in the country.” His hands formed involuntary fists on his lap. As he concluded the telling, he kept a careful eye on his friend’s response. But for a slight paling of his skin, he gave no outward indication to the revelation.
“I…see,” Huntly finally said. “It’s a vile family.”
He managed a jerky nod, hating that Bridget was part of it.
“My father killed himself.”
Vail went still.
“Lord Rutland called in his loans and debt and my father? Hanged himself from above his desk. I concealed that from the world,” he said quietly, unexpectedly.
My God. “I…I had no idea.” These were the demons that had driven him to exact revenge on Lord Rutland.
“Your father? Some might argue is even more of a disgrace in how he cares for, or rather does not care for his offspring.”
The other man was correct on that score.
“We’re not our blood. We are our actions.” There should be something freeing in that pardon but given Colin’s visit and revelations, there could not be.
“Colin believes she acted without influence. That she’s now passing blame to her brother.”
“And what do you believe?” Huntly asked hooking his ankles together.
“I don’t know,” he confided, in pained tones. “I want to trust her. But had I not discovered her in the act and demanded her marriage, she’d be gone even now.”
His friend grimaced. “In that, it is more complicated, and I can only—unhelpfully—say, that you have to trust what you know in your heart about the lady.”
Shouts sounded in the hallway and the rapid beat of footfalls. The door flew open with such force it nearly slammed into Edward. Framed in the entrance, out of breath, a paper in his hands, he dropped his hands atop his knees. “Vail,” he got out. “The Chaucer is gone.”
“What?”
“And there is something else,” he rushed forward, that page outstretched.
Dazed, trying to make sense of why Edward was brandishing a copy of his marriage certificate, he read those lines over and over…and then stopped at one name: Bridget Petrosinella Hamlet.
Not Bridget Hamilton.
His fingers clenched the edges of the page, wrinkling it.
By God, she’d used a false name.
They weren’t married.
Two days later, Bridget didn’t know what she’d expected in having revealed the truth of Virgil’s parentage. But in sharing everything she had with Vail, she had abandoned the agreement to help Archibald. She’d put her trust in Vail and the hope that her wastrel brother wouldn’t have truly set aside his wastrel ways to care for a child.
In short, she’d wagered with his life.
Nausea churned in her belly still and she fought the urge to cast up the contents of her stomach. With Nettie napping at her chair and Virgil playing spillikins on the floor before her, there was an air of familiarity to all this…and yet a sense of doom lingered in the air. It was silly, nonsensical worrying conjured of her mind, but also born of the uncertainty that now came as she awaited Archibald’s next move.
Not only that, Vail had also become a stranger. Oh, he was polite and pleasant when they shared morning meals and supped together and he was kind toward her son, talking freely with him about his literary interests. But everything had changed since she’d revealed she was a Hamilton.
“Vail said I’ll have a new tutor by the end of the week,” Virgil directed that at the stick he carefully tried to extricate from another.
He’d already set to securing instructors for her son. No questions asked. No resentments held and carried over to the boy. Rather, he’d spend the necessary funds to hire that which she’d never been able to provide. Her throat moved spasmodically as she was filled with a renewed love and appreciation for the man he was.
“He also said that in the autumn I’d be able to go on to Eton.” Virgil paused and looked up from his game. “But that they only let you in that school at certain times of the year.”
A smile quivered on her lips. Vail had, and would continue to give Virgil everything she would have never, in the whole of her lifetime, have done for him.
Tossing aside the stick, Virgil popped up. “Is he angry at you?”
She stared unblinkingly. How had she failed to realize how perceptive he was? “No,” she lied. She’d witnessed Vail’s anger two days ago. But he was more than angry: hurt, disappointed, and wary. “Why would you think that?” she asked instead.
He shrugged. “You don’t talk to one another.” Virgil wrinkled his nose. “Not that I would want to talk to a girl, myself, but it just seems that you’d say something to each other.”
She set aside the copy of Dante’s Inferno she’d been reading and patted the spot next to her. “Come here,” she urged. Virgil was old enough and astute enough that he was also entitled to some truth and answers. “Vail is a good man and I know that must be…confusing, given that you haven’t had any in your life. But one day, I told him a lie…and so he’s….” She searched her mind. “Cautious, now.”
“What did you lie about?” Of course, no ten-year-old boy would be content to leave that detail unexplored.
Bridget sighed. “Someday, I’ll explain it all to you. But for now, understand that he is entitled to his reservations. And when one tells a lie, one must work to gain back that trust. And it’s not always easy. It’s not ever easy.” Nor did she even know if Vail wanted to repair what they’d shared this past month.
Virgil looked to the doorway and she followed his stare over. Her heart started.
He’d come. It was the first time he’d sought her out these past two days. “Vail,” she breathed, hopping up.
Nettie snorted herself awake. “What is it? Where…?” Groggy, she joined Bridget on her feet, offering a lazy curtsy. “My lord.”
“Virgil, Nettie, if you’ll excuse us a moment?”
Her son hesitated and she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Run along. We’ll talk more after.” She looked to Nettie.
“Come along, lad,” she repeated, gathering Virgil by the hand and ushering him out.
“Vail,” she greeted. They’d made love. She’d shared more parts of herself than she ever had with another person, and yet she was more uncertain in this instance than she had been their first meeting.
He pulled the door shut, saying nothing.
She took in the grim set to his mouth. “What is it?” she asked, worry settling like a stone in her belly. For the first time since he’d entered, she noticed the paper in his hand.
“After you discovered the Chaucer, I never found a different hiding place for it.”
He spoke of words that should have hinted at his trust. Bridget wetted her lips and met his vagueness with silence. All the while, an ominous chill rolled through her, freezing her from the inside out. “I don’t…” She shook her head, searching for some reply. “I don’t…”
“Edward just found me. The Chaucer is gone.”
A dull humming filled her ears. That precious tome she’d been sent to steal had been gone. Then, the implications of what Vail danced around and suggested but didn’t say. “You think I stole it,” she breathed, her voice coming as if down a long hall.
“This is a copy of our marriage certificate.”
She struggled to follow that abrupt shift and then did… Oh, God. Her gut clenched, and she sought to steady herself on the edge of the sofa.
“We’re not married.”
“No,” she said on a broken whisper.
“You’re not my wife,” he repeated a different way, like one who sought to embed certain words on one’s brain might.
“I did it for you.” She willed him to understand. “I knew you’d regret it. I knew—”
“Do not put this lie on me, madam,” he thundered and she cried out, stifling that agonized moan in her palm. “Colin came to visit. He found nothing linking Atbrooke to the theft. He found nothing about the gentleman whatsoever.”
The air left her on a painful exhale. He didn’t believe her. And why should he? What reason had she given him to trust her? She searched around, panicked, as her world crumpled about her all over again. She needed him to understand. Needed him to see that all the lies were not wholly tied. Bridget stretched a palm toward him. “I did not use Hamilton on the marriage certificates. You are correct.”
He laughed emptily. “Of course, I am,” he spat.
“But I did do it for you. I knew after you met with Marlborough and had that collection, you’d no more need for me.” She just hadn’t realized at the time that she’d also be freeing him for the earl’s daughter; a woman certainly more deserving of him than Bridget herself.
“You thought it should be so easy?” he asked, stunned. “That you’d simply disappear and that the ton wouldn’t ask about where my bloody wife had gone?” he bellowed again.
She jumped. “I just thought—”
“You thought of everything. Haven’t you? All along.”
“What are you saying?” she repeated, her voice hollow to her ears wanting him to put his belief out between them.
“The only certainty is my Chaucer is gone and I don’t know about anything else.”
The door opened and Edward entered. A flash of loathing filled his gaze when he looked at Bridget. “Your mount is readied.”
“I’ll be along shortly,” he said tightly.
“Where are you going?” she asked achingly.
“To find my damned book, madam. We are through discussing this.” With that, he stalked out of the room.
Go after him. Go tell him all. Bridget’s legs gave out from under her and she slid into a heap on the floor, too numb for tears, too numb to think.
A small hand rested on her shoulder and she looked up blankly. “Virgil?” she whispered. Her heart raced. How much had he heard? “Why aren’t you with Nettie?”
“I slipped off.” He gulped loudly. “He’s really angry now.”
This time, over one crime she was not guilty of. “Yes,” she confirmed, welcoming the press of his slender frame at her side, selfishly taking comfort there.
“I heard him,” he confided in hushed tones. “Yelling. I thought before this that he might be different than Uncle Archibald.”
“He is!” That truth burst from her. She’d not ever let her son, or any person link those two very different men. One was capable of only goodness who’d only been wronged in life. The other was sin incarnate.
“Well, he doesn’t sound as though he’s one who could take care of us.”
Her already cracking heart, ripped all the more. She’d thought she’d shielded him, only finding now just how much she’d failed to insulate her son from the uncertainty that was the world. She sought to give him assurances that all would be well. That they’d have a home here still but could not even formulate the lie. Absently, she ran her fingers through his thick brown curls.
He angled away from her touch. “It’s about the Chaucer?”
“Partly. It’s…” She ripped her gaze down. What…?
His eyes formed round pools with fear emanating from their depths.
“What do you know of it?”
“I might know something of it,” he said, his voice cracking. Going on her knees, she leaned down to meet his gaze. “I was visiting the mews last night and Uncle Archibald came by.” Her stomach lurched. Oh, God. “He said…he told me that he’d take me away from you. That the only way to be sure I never left you was if I found him that book.” A moan tore from her throat and she dragged her son into her arms.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I? The baron is going to see me hanged.”
“He’s not,” she said her mind whirring. “When did you give it to him?”
“This morning.” She strained to pick up his small voice. “I don’t want to live with him,” he whimpered.
“Never.” Grabbing his hands, she pulled Virgil to his feet and squeezed them gently. “You will never, ever live with him. Ever.” She flattened her lips. She needed to retrieve that book for Vail…and end this once and for all.
“What are you doing?” her son asked as she slid into a nearby secretaire, and rifled through the desk.
She’d brought this to Vail’s life. She’d set it to rights. Dipping a pen in the crystal inkwell, she hastily scratched a note. “I’m going to see your uncle.” He made a sound of protest. “Stop,” she commanded, that firmness seemed to penetrate his worrying. Focused on the words she wrote, she spoke to her son. “I will return. I promise. I always do. If I don’t return by tomorrow morning,” she paused. “You are to give this to His Lordship.”
“What is it?” he asked, as she sprinkled pounce upon the ink.
Bridget blew on it. “’Tis a letter that you’re only to give if I don’t return.”
“But you’ll return,” he pleaded.
Vail had given her everything. She would do this for him.
She set her jaw. “Always.”