“Did that friendship continue after he went to school?”
“His father didn’t wish it to,” Patrick said slowly. “But Edward wasn’t the sort of child to turn his back on a former friend. We would sneak out together when he was home on holidays—going to boxing matches and the like.”
“Do you have any proof of this friendship?”
“Edward Delacey was accounted a competent artist,” Patrick said. “He painted a miniature of the two of us when we were thirteen. I’ve brought it with me.” Patrick groped through the bag he carried and handed over an item.
“Did Edward maintain this friendship with you?”
“We got into a spot of trouble when we were seventeen,” Patrick said. “My father was injured.” The line of his back bowed momentarily. “Our family was sent away. Edward protested the treatment and was sent to Strasbourg in punishment.”
That was one way to describe what had happened—a way that left out the radical sentiment and Edward’s own foolish choices. But Patrick’s revelation had caused another murmur in the adjoining room. The men out there likely hadn’t heard that Strasbourg was a punishment.
“Did he write you while he was there?”
“A few letters, yes. And then hostilities broke out, and I heard nothing for months.”
“For months,” the man said, sounding somewhat perplexed.
“Months,” Patrick repeated. “Not quite a year. He sent me a letter in April of 1871 saying that he was in a bad way. At the time, I was only a groom for Baron Lowery.”
Patrick had become more easy as he spoke on, but Edward grew tense. That April had been awful. He’d been wounded. Desperate. Destitute. He hadn’t known who he was, had only known that he’d done some terrible things. His entire world had been ripped to shreds. He’d had nothing at all.
“He asked me to help. So I sold everything I had and got on a steamer.”
“Everything you had, even though you were only a groom?” the man said dubiously. “Really?”
No, Edward realized. He’d never had nothing.
“We’re that sort of friends,” Patrick insisted. “He’s like a brother.”
Even at his worst, there had been constants in his life: Patrick. Stephen. People he couldn’t eradicate from his heart and hadn’t wanted to. He’d always had that much.
The questions continued on. “And did you find him?”
“I did. He was alive, but…” Patrick shook his head. “He barely talked, and he’d been hurt. Badly. He wasn’t well.”
They would no doubt imagine that Patrick spoke of physical harm. But the physical harm had been minimal—his fingers, a lingering cough in his lungs from the water. It was his mind that had been splintered.
“So I took care of him for a few weeks, and reminded him…” Patrick stopped, coughing.
Edward knew what he’d been about to say. He’d reminded Edward that he wanted to live. But while Patrick was no liar, even he wouldn’t announce to the House of Lords that Edward had harbored thoughts of suicide.
“I reminded him,” Patrick said, “that war had ended and life went on. When he was well enough to be left on his own, he told me to get back to England, but that he was not coming with me. His family had left him in Strasbourg, you see. He felt they’d abandoned him, and he had no wish to return to them.”
This was met with a longer pause. “So the last you heard from Edward Delacey was when you left him in 1871 then? Do you have proof of any of this remarkable tale?”
“Oh,” Patrick said. “I have that letter he sent me in 1871. I’ve kept all his letters.”
There was a pause. “All his letters?”
“Yes. We’ve corresponded ever since.”
A clamor arose at that. Edward let out his breath and put his head in his hands. There truly was no going back after that proclamation, no pretending any longer.
“When was the last time you received a letter from Edward Delacey?”
“Two weeks past,” Patrick said. “But—”
“And how do you know that Edward Delacey has been writing these letters, and not some other man?”
“I know,” Patrick said, “because he saw those letters yesterday morning as we were compiling the evidence, and he did not disavow them.”
That was met with deafening silence. There was not even a shocked whisper in response.
“You saw him,” the questioner finally said. “Two days ago. He’s in England?”
“Yes,” Patrick said. “He is. He’s—” He gestured at the room behind him. “He’s there. Waiting in the back chamber. I had to half-drag him here, your lordships.”
That much was true. Edward smiled sadly.
“James Delacey, would you recognize your brother?”
There was a long pause. “Of course I would,” his brother said, his voice sounding a little too hearty.
“Let Edward Delacey come forward, then.”