“Because whoever killed your mother also killed Stanley Preston—and at least two other men. And because if he feels threatened, he may not stop there; he may decide he needs to eliminate you and your son as well.”
A pulse had begun to beat wildly at the base of her long, elegant neck. But a lifetime of suspicion and resentment held her silent.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
She went to stand before the cold hearth, where a few chipped cups and plates rested on a rough shelf.
He said, “I’ll see that you come to no harm.”
She gave a harsh laugh. “Why should I believe you?”
“Do you have a choice?”
She stared back at him, her hands fisting in her apron, her strangely hued eyes wide with fear and mistrust.
“Tell me,” he said again.
Slowly, haltingly, she began to talk. And as he listened, Sebastian came to realize that he had misjudged Knightly’s motives entirely, that the secrets the man had killed to protect were far more dangerous than Sebastian had ever imagined.
When she finished, he said, “I want you and your boy to come away from here, come with me so that I can keep you safe until this is all over.”
“No.”
“Don’t you understand—”
“What you think?” She took a quick step toward him, one arm slashing through the air as she cut him off, her features stiff with an anger born of a lifetime of slights and insults. “That I’m a fool—or as much of an idiot as your Silas Nelson? No. I ain’t puttin’ our lives in your hands. This is our home. Here, we surrounded by people knows us. People we trusts. Costermongers always take care of their own. You got what you come for. Now, get out of here.”
He drew a calling card from his pocket and held it out to her. “If you change your mind, or if anyone should threaten you in any way, come to me. Number forty-one Brook Street.”
She made no move to take the card, and it occurred to him she probably couldn’t read it if she did. Hero had told him that fewer than one out of ten of the city’s costermongers were literate.
He laid the card on the trestle tabletop. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said.
But she only stared back at him, her face hollow with grief and eyes cold with resentment.
Sebastian’s next stop was Blackfriars Bridge, where he had a short conversation with the owner of Douglas Sterling’s favorite coffee shop. Then he drove to Park Lane, where he found his aunt Henrietta’s shiny carriage drawn up outside her town house and the Dowager Duchess herself smoothing on a pair of elegant kid gloves in the grand entrance hall.
“I don’t have time to talk to you now, Devlin,” she told him, still busy with her gloves. “I’m on my way to Sally Jersey’s.”
“This won’t take long. I want to know what you can tell me about the birth of Sir Galen Knightly.”
“Knightly?” She looked up at him. “Good heavens. Has someone killed him now?”
“No.”
She stared at Sebastian, her blue St. Cyr eyes going wide and still with comprehension. Then she glanced at her wooden-faced butler and said, “Tell Coachman John I shan’t be but a moment.”
She led Sebastian to a small withdrawing room.
Sebastian said, “That bad, is it?”
“Well, it’s certainly not a tale I’d care to relate in front of the servants. Sir Galen’s father was Beaumont Knightly, eldest son of the old baronet, Sir Maxwell Knightly, and as dissolute a young man as ever joined the Hellfire Club—which is truly saying something, I’m afraid. Gambling, drinking, women, dueling—the usual, only far, far worse. If even half the tales told of his conduct were true, he must have cost his father a fortune. In the end, old Sir Maxwell shipped him off to a maternal uncle who owned plantations in the West Indies.”
“Jamaica?”
“Yes. Most people thought old Sir Maxwell was hoping the yellow fever would carry the reprobate off, so that a younger brother could inherit.”
“Only, no such luck?”
“Not quickly enough, at any rate. The young man hadn’t been on the island a month before he seduced the daughter of a local plantation owner. As I understand it, the girl’s father was on the verge of shooting the ne’er-do-well when she announced she was with child. So Beau Knightly was allowed to live, on the condition he make an honest woman of the foolish chit.”
“Doesn’t sound like anyone I’d want as a son-in-law,” said Sebastian.
Henrietta shrugged. “Perhaps the girl’s father intended to shoot the rascal after the child was born. But in the end, he didn’t need to. Both Beau Knightly and his bride died of the fever less than a year later.”
“What happened to the child?”
“He also fell ill with the fever, but obviously survived. He was eventually brought to England to be raised by his grandfather. Carelessly conceived the boy may have been, but he was still old Sir Maxwell’s heir, after all.”
Maybe, thought Sebastian. Or maybe not. “Tell me about this maternal uncle.”
“Kitch McGill? Good heavens; why do you want to know about him?”