“We, as in the brilliant composer and the woman who got him into this mess. We, as in the two friends who always come to one another’s rescue.” I smiled. “You didn’t think I’d leave it all to you, did you?”
His fingers sliced up the back of his scalp. “Well ... yes, actually.”
“Come, catch me up and we’ll sort it out together.”
He stared at me with red-rimmed eyes, cocked a grin, and collapsed upon a paper-strewn chair beside me. “Aye, captain.” He threw back the remainder of his very black tea and looked at me. “How did it go with de Silva? Do you yet see him as the hero of the story? Or at least, an unwitting victim of blame?”
Stiffness crept up my shoulders. “It’s hard to think the man a hero when he hardly says two words to me.”
He frowned, then a light shone through his features. “There may be a reason for that. Here, look at this—I’ve done some digging.” He rose to point to a wall of newspaper articles, all about the fire and Delphine Bessette. “Notice the date.”
I walked over to it and looked, willing my eyes not to latch onto his name anywhere in the articles. “Here it is.”
“And when, exactly, were you born?”
I blinked at the faded date in the corner again. “Why, the fire happened before I was born. Many months before.”
He gave a solemn nod. “You see why he’d be shocked then, to have you approach him. By telling him who you were, you also revealed to him one other startling fact.”
“That my mother survived.”
Another nod.
My stomach churned. What a complicated mess—especiallyif he believed, as a remarried man, that she was still alive now. It wasn’t exactly good news, discovering one’s daughter under such circumstances. He must have been thinking of that. Of course, it was that. He hadn’t rejected me—not truly.
I shook off the building emotions. “Right, then. So what about your villain? Have you come any closer to a possible motivation?”
He studied the pages, jaw jutting out to the side, then looked at me with a steady gaze. “I have. I simply haven’t had time to follow up on it.”
I rose, shocked. “You mean, you found a real lead?”
“Possibly. A decently sized surprise, at least, that may explain many things. Or it may make the story far more complicated than we’d imagined.”
I clung to the chair, trembling.
“I want to untangle it, believe me I do, but it requires a trip outside of London, and I simply haven’t the time to do it until I’ve finished this.”
“Horsefeathers, as you say. Take a day, uncover the motivation, and watch it unlock the rest of this entire story.” I trembled with the desire to know, and the sheer dread of it.
He stared at me, wavering. “I cannot afford the time.”
“No, Jack. You cannot affordnotto take the time, if you want to do this properly. Come, let’s go.”
28
It was morning before we set out, as there were no coaches to be had at that time of night, and midday by the time we arrived. He had come for me at the boardinghouse first thing and escorted me to the coach, which seemed a much shorter ride than the journey to his winter circus. From the coaching station, we hired a hackney to take us out to Balthorp House, the family seat of Lord Gower. And only then did Jack Dorian, that fiend, reveal to me what connection this man had to my mother. “He was her husband.”
I blinked, gripping the edge of the bouncing leather seat. “Her what?” Apparently he hadn’t gotten up the courage to reveal this to me on the long ride out of town.
I rather expected a cocky grin or a laugh, but he seemed almost pained to say it. “Herotherhusband. I’m not certain which came first, or if they were perhaps at the same time.”
My face went warm, then my whole body. What manner of foolishness was this? What woman had two living husbands? It wasn’t logical, especially for my mother. Her heart had beenentirely full of one. As the driver handed us down from the carriage, I couldn’t speak. What could I say that would make any sense? None of this did.
I stared blankly up at the large brick Georgian with white columns at the end of a tree-lined lane. “Where on earth did you hear such a thing?”
“I met your mother’s sister in Cheapside—”
“She has asister?”
