“All right, now we can really talk,” Stenfax said with a motion toward Dane. “What have you discovered?”
Dane stepped forward. “My contacts in the War Department are troubled by the diary page you gave them. The code is…complicated.”
Felicity wrung her hands. “Does that mean it cannot be broken?”
“All codes can be broken,” Dane said, almost apologetically. “It’s easier if one has a key, and certainly there must have been one at some point. Still, my former superiors wonder if this book of yours contains more than just nasty secrets the old Duke of Kirkford held over the heads of his peers.”
Gray wrinkled his brow. “They think it’s related to something bigger?”
“It could be,” Dane said. “So they’ve given me permission to investigate the case in an official capacity.”
Rosalinde gasped and her gaze moved to Celia. Stenfax followed it, but found his former fiancée looked calm in the face of this news.
“Celia, is that…” Rosalinde began.
Celia nodded. “Of course I approve. John may be retired from that life, but in this instance, I think his investigative mind is just what we need. And to protect this family,ourfamily, we’ll do anything.”
Stenfax heard Elise suck in a quiet breath through her teeth, and when he looked, he found her staring at Celia, her expression unreadable. He wished it weren’t. He found himself wondering what she thought of the young woman he’d once planned to marry.
“What about this cousin who committed the murder?” Dane asked. “What do we know about him?”
The attention of the room swung to Elise, and she swallowed, as if the intensity of it was troublesome. Slowly she shook her head. “You must understand that my husband’s entire family are a rotten lot, with the exception of Marina’s branch. They were raised with a great deal of entitlement, so when they’ve felt slighted in the past, they lash out. The situation with Lucien was a perfect example. Toby was willing to marry me, which is a permanent solution, just to cut Lucien down.”
Dane’s focus remained on her, as if he were reading her as much as the situation. Stenfax wondered what he saw. “Would Roger have considered Ambrose getting the title to be a slight?”
“Indeed,” Elise said immediately. “The fight they put up over the lineage was all out war. Roger felt that Ambrose was fraudulent in how he proved he was born first.”
“And was he?” Celia asked.
Elise shook her head. “I kept myself out of most of it, but I would believe it. Ambrose was a bastard who would do anything to get what he…wanted.”
She paled slightly and her fingers lifted to her eye. Stenfax flinched at the motion. Her bruise was nearly gone at last, but he could well imagine the emotional response to the violent attack against her would last a while.
Dane pulled a notebook from his jacket along with a stubby piece of charcoal pencil. “Let’s start with your late husband. Why do you think he collected secrets like whatever is in this book of his?”
Her lips pinched, like thinking about the family was entirely unpleasant, but she did it nonetheless. “Toby liked hurting people. He liked having something over someone. Collecting the secrets, even writing them down, would have given him pleasure.” She shivered. “I can well imagine he saw this book of his as a trophy of his misdeeds.”
Dane was scribbling, but he was also shaking his head. “Still, he would have to be the source of the code,” he murmured. “Would it have been something he learned or was taught? Something he shared?”
Elise blinked. “Are you asking me?”
Dane lifted his gaze with a brief smile. “It’s an old habit to muse out loud on these details. My apologies. Now, what about Ambrose? What would he have done with the secrets, in your opinion?”
“Ambrose was more about proving his worth,” Elise said after she pondered the answer. “From the moment he was given the title a few months ago to the last moment I saw him, he was very attached to, almost obsessed with the idea that he should be respected. I can speak more plainly about this motives to do with me…if it would help.”
Dane leveled his gaze on her again. “Would it be too difficult to tell us what you know?”
Her cheeks flamed bright, and Stenfax strode over to her in three long steps and placed a hand on the small of her back. Her tension was clear in the way she held herself and he stroked her there gently in the hopes his presence would be of comfort.
She glanced up at him, almost in surprise, but then her expression softened. “It is difficult but I’ll do it.”
Stenfax shut his eyes. Here she was, surrounded by strangers and people who had despised her up until very recently, and yet she was willing to risk herself by telling them personal and embarrassing facts.
But washeso willing? Could he give of himself as freely as she was at present? Could he be so brave? When he asked himself those hard questions, standing next to Elise as she gathered herself, he found he didn’t know.
But he’d better decide quickly.
Chapter Twenty-One
