“So . . . what’s your problem with your mother? You’ve been figuratively killing her for years. Do you blame her for your father not being around?”
Morland stilled. He came over to look down at her again. But he was still too far away for her to do any damage.
His dark blue eyes had gone eerily flat. “My father was around, Miss Donovan.”
It was hard to keep her own eyes fixed on that soulless gaze. Shivers ran up and down her spine. “I thought your grandfather had him shipped off to India.”
“A clever invention.”
“But he . . .” Kendra drew in a sharp breath as an ugly possibility took shape. She closed her eyes, ashamed at all the details that she’d missed. Details right in front of her face. “Adonis.” She opened her eyes again. “She called you Adonis. And she called herself Myrrha . . .”
Morland watched her with that unblinking gaze, shark-like.
“My father was quite taken with Greek mythology. As was my mother.”
“Jesus Christ.” Kendra remembered the painted mural on the foyer’s ceiling at Tinley Park. It was, she realized, the story of Myrrha, who’d been turned into a myrrh-tree after having committed incest with her father, King Cinyras. Nine months later, Adonis had been born from the tree.
She sometimes mistakes me for my father. Morland had said that to explain his mother’s confusion. Rebecca had talked about how the late earl had doted on him, enjoying their likeness.
“Your mother didn’t elope with anyone. There was no infantryman.”
“They were forced to devise the story when she got herself with child. The world would have ostracized them both had they known the truth.” His lips twisted and the flatness of his gaze was replaced by a glow of rage. “Society, with all its bloody rules to force men to conform, to be something they are not.”
“Why do you hate your mother?”
“I do not hate my mother. She taught me, as her father taught her.”
“Taught you . . . ?” Something in his face alerted her, and she felt the bile rise up in her throat. Like abuse, incest could be a vicious cycle, replayed over and over again for each generation. “You sick son of a bitch. You really never stood a chance, did you?”
“Do not blaspheme me, Miss Donovan!”
“You’re not God.”
“Oh, but I am. I am one of the gods. I am not blinded by the falsehoods of society. I understand power in its fullest sense, because I recognize no boundaries.” Now the glow in his eyes struck Kendra not as rage, but as madness.
He straightened suddenly, and ordered, “Thomas, come here.”
Thomas shuffled forward, eager to do Morland’s bidding.
Morland smiled. “Thomas has been my most loyal manservant. We met during one of my hunting expeditions in London, before I had, shall we say, honed my craft. I was slitting the throat of a street whore when Thomas spotted me. We quickly discovered we had mutual interests. When Lady Atwood mentioned that she desired an ornamental hermit, I thought of my young friend here.”
Kendra said nothing. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t slitting her throat.
“His help has been immeasurable in securing harlots. I formed a little club, invited a select group of disillusioned young bucks to join. It has been . . . amusing. My private joke on the Ton.” He laid a hand on the hermit’s shoulder. “Except for April Duprey, Thomas has been my emissary with the bawds.”
Bawds. It came to her then, that niggling sensation that had been bothering her for days.
“You knew,” she said slowly.
He lifted his brows. “I beg your pardon?”
“You knew April Duprey was a bawd. When we interviewed you, you identified her as a bawd—not a harlot, or any of the other slang you might have used to describe the prostitutes.”
Morland chuckled. “You are very clever, Miss Donovan. Of course, not clever enough or else you wouldn’t be in this . . . position.”
He was still chuckling, still smiling, when he took a step back. Then he was no longer chuckling or smiling. A look of determination settled on his handsome face, and he raised his hand. Kendra caught the glint of the knife, before he brought it down in a swift left-to-right movement. It took only a fraction of a second to sever Thomas’s common carotid artery.
Kendra gasped, instinctively turning her head. She felt the warm spray of blood across her face. In her mind’s eye, she saw Thomas’s surprised expression. Then his knees buckled and he folded like a discarded puppet—which, she supposed, was exactly what he was.
She nearly choked on the raw meat smell of blood in the room. She turned her head to watch Morland approach.
“Alas, Thomas has outlived his usefulness,” he said. “As you so adroitly pointed out, he is the only thing connecting me to the murders. And he had become so terribly careless.” Morland smiled, clucking his tongue. “Yes, I was eavesdropping, Miss Donovan. I know, I know, very ill-bred of me.”
Kendra was still stunned speechless by the unexpected display of violence when Morland lifted the knife that was dripping with Thomas’s blood, and brought it plunging down toward her chest.