“Your brother,” he forced out. “What manner of man is he, to be laying bombs?”
“He is a Fenian,” she whispered, releasing him at last to press a hand over her mouth. Undisguised upset glimmered in her brilliant eyes. “Please, Felix. You must help me. I have evidence against him at my hotel. A great deal of it. I have been planning to turn it over to the police before I leave for Paris, but I am too afraid of what he will do. I cannot wait.”
She had evidence against Drummond McKenna? That seemed too good to be true. Coupled with her sudden revelations, it made his suspicions of her increase tenfold. It was possible she was lying now. That her confession was but one more act in a series of so many. For a seasoned actress such as her, it would be an easy performance.
This could all be one elaborate ruse created in the event he grew suspicious of her.
But that gave him pause. She had not known of his suspicions. He thought once more of the shock on her countenance, how pale she had grown, and he did not think it had been counterfeit. It had seemed real. Just as real as Johanna Beaumont—nay,McKennaseemed.
His mind quickly worked through the details, the possibilities. If Johanna was indeed Drummond McKenna’s sister, that would certainly explain the closeness of their relationship in New York City. She had claimed she was afraid of him, which could also explain a great deal.
One thing was clear: he could not yet be sure if he could trust her, but he needed to investigate her claims. He needed more time. More evidence.
He took Johanna’s arm in a gentle but firm hold and led her to a settee. “Come and have a seat, my dear. You will need to tell me everything if I am to help you. And you must begin at the beginning.”
She nodded, her sorrow almost palpable. A sob fled her lips. “Oh, Felix. I am so very sorry for drawing you and Verity into such danger. If I had possessed an inkling that Drummond might do such a thing, I would have warned you. I would have stayed as far away from you as possible.”
God, he wanted to believe her. Wanted it so badly he could taste it. Wanted to believe the tenderness she had shown his daughter was real. That she was as terrified of her bastard of a brother as she claimed. That she possessed evidence against him that would lead to the capture of more Fenians here in London.
And more than anything, he wanted to believe everything that had passed between them was honest and true. But he must not think of that now. There was far too much at stake.
“Do not worry, Johanna,” he urged as he helped her to sit and then forced himself to sit opposite her, giving them some necessary distance. “I will do everything in my power to help you.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, then dashed at the tears on her cheeks. “Thank you, Felix.”
He knew a searing shame at her gratitude, for it was spoken with such sincerity. And if she was being truthful with him right now and he was deceiving her, surely he would go to hell for such a sin. Still, to protect his daughter and the other innocents of London from further danger, he would do what he must.
Anything.
“You must tell me what you know,” he urged Johanna.
She cast him a tremulous smile. “My father was a violent man, ruled by his need for drink. Often, when he was so consumed by the bottle, he…beat me. As I got older, he ordered my brother to do it, and he did. He…seemed to take pleasure in hurting me. When I was fifteen, I ran away and joined an acting company. I changed my name to Rose Beaumont in the hopes they would never find me. But over the years, my reputation built. Suddenly, I was sought after, my pictures being passed about on handbills andcartes de visiteand in the papers. A year ago, my brother found me.”
His gut clenched at the broken revelations. Either she was putting on the best act of her life, or every word she was relaying to him was true. “What did your brother do when he found you?”
“One day, I returned home from rehearsals to find him waiting for me,” Johanna continued, and the undisguised fear in her voice was like a dagger to his heart. “I had but one picture of Pearl, and he destroyed it. Ground it beneath his boot heel and then poured a vase full of water all over it. He told me if I did not help him as he wished, he would reveal my true name to the papers. Being an actress is all I have left, the only means I have of supporting myself. And though I have done well and am able to live in comfort, if the public were to turn against me, I would be left with nothing in short order.”
Felix realized his hands had balled into fists. “He destroyed the only picture you had of your daughter?”
She bit her lip, obviously trying to stave off another wave of tears. “Yes. I attempted to salvage it after he had gone, but the damage was severe. I—I still have it, because it is all I have left, aside from the tiny lock of her hair I kept.”
He would hunt down Drummond McKenna like the vile miscreant he was and hang him from the nearest gallows with his own two hands for that crime alone. He could not fathom the sort of man who would willfully ruin a mother’s only picture of her dead babe. And when that mother was his own flesh and blood, his sister…
“I am going to kill him for that,” he vowed before he could think better of the words.
“It is my fault for being so weak,” she whispered. “I should have fought back. I should have clawed at him, done anything I could to save it. Instead, I watched as he ruined it, and then I did everything he asked of me.”
“You were terrified of the man,” Felix said, and before he knew what he was about, he had gotten up from his seat. He could not remain where he was, watching her relive what had happened to her, watching her tremble, and not seek to offer her comfort.
He slid his arm around her, drawing her protectively into his side. The doubts he harbored about her were slowly falling away in the face of the truth she was willingly surrendering to him. Such an intricate tale could not be fiction.
“I should have been stronger,” Johanna insisted, leaning into him. “For the last year, I have been living in fear of him, doing as he asks. He has become, like our father before him was, obsessed with the notion of Irish Home Rule. My family is from County Cork, you see. We immigrated to New York when I was a child. Drummond, my brother, is running a vast network of Fenian sympathizers. They are in New York, and they are here, in England. He was responsible for the bombings here in the London Underground. I am certain of it.”
His blood went cold at her words. “Johanna, if you knew this to be true, why did you not do something to put an end to this?”
“It is what I am attempting to do now,” she said, her expression stricken. “Drummond never admitted his guilt to me, but he has been using me to pass information amongst his men in New York. He is convinced there are people watching him, English agents. Spies of some sort. He is trying to keep his ties as quiet as possible and using others to make it appear as though he is not involved. One of the reasons I came here to London was to escape him, and another reason was that I knew I would have the best chance of turning incriminating information in to the police here.”
If that were true, she was more daring and worthy of his admiration than he had previously thought.
