He flipped another page. Time to change the subject. “You did a good thing, bringing Barbara here.”
Her smile, serene for once, made his chest go tighter. “I know. It’s what Stephen would have wanted me to do. I so wish…I so wish I hadn’t been cruel all those years ago. I deprived them of something precious. I made Stephen hide their love.” She shook her head.
And yet the fact that he had… “You and he must have been very close.”
She nodded, sniffed, and blinked a few rapid times. Then she pasted on a smile that was strained around the edges. “What about you and your brother? Were you close?”
She might as well have tossed a bucket of icy water over him. Slade kept his gaze on the page before him. Some sort of encrypted telegram, given the length and arrangement. “No. Never.”
“What was his name?”
“Ross.”
A beat, silent and tense. Marietta lowered the page in her hands. “Were you far apart in age?”
His breath came out short and amused. “Oh, about five minutes.”
“Twins?” The incredulity in her tone brought his gaze up. “I thought twins were always close.”
He set down the page. It was merely an acknowledgment, a promise from Hughes to do what had been asked of him. “We were more Jacob and Esau.”
“Who was who?”
“That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”
He glanced up to see the mask of charm reclaim her face. Or maybe her amusement just struck him that way, maybe it wasn’t a mask so much as the way her smile tugged at him. His fault, not hers. But oh, the way that grin knotted him up inside…
“I have a theory,” she said.
So had Ross.
Her smile faded. “I can see it pains you. I’m sorry. When did you lose him?”
Usually, he would redirect the conversation. Shut it down, extinguish it. But he hadn’t even let himself think about Ross’s death since that night with Pinkerton and his father. When his boss had laid out the plan and his father, eyes deep and sad, had told him to do it.
He had to clear his throat again. “About six weeks ago.”
“So recently?” Her hand settled on his arm. He didn’t dare look into her eyes. “I am sorry. The war?”
“Not directly.” He put aside the papers and reached into the box for a thin, bound manuscript. Her fingers fell away, and he felt the withdrawal down to his toes. Dangerous woman indeed.
“What, then?”
His lips didn’t want to form the words. His chest didn’t want to grant him the air. But he forced it through anyway, forced himself to look her in the eye. And said the sentence that had brought him to this path. “I killed him.”
Sixteen
Marietta let the words rattle around in her mind. But mingled with them, woven through them, stretched the agony. The way his shoulders balled up said he expected her to recoil in horror. But something about his stance made her inch closer instead. “An accident?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tossed a slender, crudely bound book onto the table. “Self-defense. He was waiting for me one night when I got back to my room. I heard someone, felt something swinging toward my head. Ducked. The sledgehammer hit my bureau. When he turned for me again, I shot.” His eyes slid closed. “It was dark. I didn’t know it was him. I…”
“Slade.” No words seemed sufficient. And though he had just pulled away, she didn’t know what to do but touch. She clasped his hands between hers. “Do you know why?”
The shrug of his shoulders was filled with what the Germans would call angst. “He’d made no secret of his feelings when I went home reformed a year ago. He hated me. Then I returned to Washington from the field and ruined his plans.” His obsidian gaze clung to hers. “He was the one who had contacted Devereaux and put this whole thing in motion. He used my name because he knew it would get him in.”
Something inside her strained, and her fingers gripped his tighter. “To foil them and take the glory?”
“No. He was Confederate.”
Her eyes slid shut. It had been bad enough to have a cousin who had fought against her brother. She couldn’t even consider Hez and Isaac and Stephen pitted against one another. “I wouldn’t have thought, your being from New York.”
“He said it was a matter of states’ rights, and he had some valid points. But secession shouldn’t have been the answer. You can’t fix something from the outside.” He gave her hands a returning squeeze and then pulled away, turning back to the crates.
He moved the top one and sorted through the items in the bottom. After a glance inside it to make sure she knew where everything belonged, Marietta stepped toward the table and flipped open the book. She frowned at the columns within. Numbers with dashes and phrases after them. Explanation of gestures. Crude drawings that looked like something a child might do, simple lines and shapes.