“What happened next?”
“Father and Mother proceeded to sit on opposite sides of the room and lecture me about suitable mistresses.”
And she’d thought it wasn’t possible for him to shock her further.
“No shop girls. No coffee house girls. They recommended finding a mistress among the ranks of expensive courtesans. Or a married lady for spice. ‘But not the sort of girl who makes you heartsick. Not like your father gets on occasion.’ My mother laughed. My father turned scarlet.”
“Your parents were—” Hortense searched for a word.
“I can help you, if you’re at a loss for adjectives.”
“Beastly.”
That was the word, the perfect one, and she saw in his eyes he agreed.
He cleared his throat. “Then they proceeded to hold forth on my duties as heir. I had only two. The first was to find a suitable wife. The second was to continue the line with an heir and a spare.”
“Isn’t that the duty of all firstborn aristocratic sons?”
“From love and respect come a sense of duty and obligation.” He snorted mirthlessly. “I decided at that moment I owed them, and the title, nothing.”
Although she happened to agree with that sentiment, a feeling of portent strummed through her.
He faced her. “I wouldn’t be marrying, and I certainly wouldn’t be continuing the Asquith line.”
“So you began drinking.”
“And gaming.” A hesitation. “For years. I’d shown an inclination toward becoming a wastrel before Mollie, I perfected the art after her.”
“Then, five months ago, your parents died in a carriage accident.”
“And the compulsion died with them.”
That struck Hortense as odd. “It is rare for someone to lose their taste for drink once they’ve acquired it.”
Clare’s mouth curled into the approximation of a smile. “Oh, the taste for it has gone nowhere. At first, the urge was so strong my body wanted to curl into a tight ball with need. But days, then weeks, then months passed, and the urge faded, which isn’t to say it doesn’t still rear its head at times.” He stared out across the burial yard that grew more bleak as a heavy bank of clouds rolled in. His eyes shone with the blankness of one who had suffered a shocking loss. “Mollie is dead,” he said aloud, for his own benefit. “And buried here, possibly beneath our feet.”
“I am sorry for it.” Hortense meant every word. Yet she must say something more. “Our investigation is now at an end.”
Clare’s brow furrowed. “At an end? How can you say that?”
This was familiar territory. At times, clients had difficulty accepting an unsatisfactory end to an enquiry. “We found out all there is to know about what happened to Mollie.”
“But how can you say this is the end?” He looked entirely nonplussed. “If anything, it’s the beginning.”
“Beginning?”
“There is the matter of the boy.”
Hortense’s stomach dropped to her feet.The boy.In all this, she’d lost sight of him.
“Disappeared,” Clare said. They reached a low retaining wall overlooking the river. “That was the word Mrs. Ditch used. Not dead, butdisappeared.” He released a harsh, frustrated breath. “Where could he have disappeared to?”
Hortense wanted to collect her money and put this day—and this man—behind her. What she didn’t want to do was answer that question. The next words she spoke, she weighed carefully. “He could have gone anywhere.”
“But he didn’t goanywhere,” Clare pressed. “He went somewhere.” His eyes, gone silver with emotion, narrowed into thin slits. “That woman back there”—he pointed in the general direction of St. Mary Magdalen—“she remembered you.”
Temptation pulled at Hortense. She could turn tail and lose herself in the dark warrens of Southwark in a flash—this aristocrat would never catch her. But she must resist. She wasn’t sure if it was obligation or the desperation in his eyes that caused her to relent with a “Perhaps.”
