“I know.”
He took a long breath, released it on a wicked curse. “When I was ten, my mother became pregnant.”
She’d done the math already. She’d known Cynthia was not his full sister. Now, she finished the calculation. Her eyes went wide. It was his turn to nod. “You see how it fits together.”
“Tremley.”
He dipped his head. “She is his half sister.”
“Christ,” she whispered. “Does she know?”
He ignored the question. “The earl pushed my mother to be rid of her, first when she began to increase and then again when Cynthia was born. He threatened to take her away. To give her to some well-meaning family somewhere on the estate. My mother refused to allow it.”
“I am not surprised,” Georgiana said. “No woman would be willing to let you go.”
He looked to her. “I imagine you would have done the same.”
She lifted her chin. “With my dying breath.”
He put his hand to her face, cupping her cheek in its warmth. “Caroline is lucky to have you.”
“I am lucky to have her,” she said. “Just as your mother was lucky to have you both.”
“There should have been three of us,” he said. “The third was stillborn. A brother.”
“Duncan,” she said, putting her hand to his on her cheek, her eyes filling with tears for him. For what he had seen.
“I was fifteen. Cynthia was five.” He paused. “And my mother . . . she died as well.”
She’d known it was coming, but the words still tore at her.
“He killed my mother,” he said.
She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks for the loss of the woman she would never know. For the loss of the boy she would never know. For Duncan. She filled in the rest. “You ran.”
“I stole a horse.” A grey stallion. “It was worth five times what I was worth. More.”
It was worth nothing compared to him. “And you took Cynthia.”
“Kidnapped her. If the earl ever wanted her . . . if he ever found us . . . I would hang.” He looked toward the ballroom. “But what could I do? How could I leave her?”
“You couldn’t,” she said. “You did the right thing. Where did you go?”
“We were lucky . . . we found an innkeeper and his wife. They took us in, fed us. Helped us. Never once asked about the horse. He had a brother in London who owned a pub. We went to him. I sold the horse, planning to pay the pub owner to take care of Cynthia while I enlisted in the army.” He stopped. “I would never have seen her again.”
There was fear in the words, as he was lost to their memory. She spoke. “But you did. You see her every day.”
He returned to the present. “The night I returned, money in my pocket, ready to change our lives, there was a man in the pub. He owned a newspaper. Offered me a job running ink and paper at the press.”
“And so you became Duncan West, newspaperman.”
He smiled. “A few steps in between—a careful investment in a new printing press—the retirement of a man who saw something in me that I did not know was there—but, yes. I started The Scandal Sheet—”
“My favorite publication.”
He had the grace to look chagrined. “I apologized for the cartoon.”
“I was happy that you felt you owed me a penance.”
The laughter in his eyes disappeared at the reminder of their deal—of his promise to help her marry. She hated herself for bringing it up.
“Once I was Duncan West”—he looked back to the ball—“I suppose I should have expected Tremley to find me once he inherited the title and took his place in Parliament. But once he did, he owned me.”
She understood, immediately. “He holds your secrets. And they are more valuable to him in private, where he can use you for news, than in public, where you end up in prison.”
“Horse stealing is a hanging offense,” he reminded her, all macabre. “As is fraud.”
Her brow knit. “Fraud.”
“Duncan West does not exist.” He looked down at his feet, and she saw a glimpse of the bruised boy he’d once been. “There was another boy who saw us leaving,” he said, the words soft and full of memory. “He tried to follow.
“But he was younger, and he wasn’t strong enough, and I already had Cynthia. I made him take his own horse.” Dread pooled in Georgiana’s stomach. “It was dark, and his horse balked at a jump. He was thrown. Died.” He shook his head. “I left him. I got him killed, and I left him.”
She placed her hand to his face. “You hadn’t a choice.”
He still did not look at her. “His name was Duncan.”
She closed her eyes at the words. At the trust he must have for her in order to confess it.
A trust she had not shown him.
“What was yours?”
“James,” he said. “Jamie. Croft.”
She pulled his face down to hers, letting their foreheads touch. “Jamie,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Gone now. Forever.”
That word, promise and weapon at once.