Sauly New swayed crookedly, old or drunk or blind in the dim light. He huffed out sawing breaths like a man who’d climbed a thousand steps.
“This is a ghost from my other life,” Stoker said. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Right,”said Sabine, drawing out the word. She grabbed his hand and began to tug his head down, to whisper in his ear.
The man slurred. “I thought I saw you dart through the dancers. I... I would know you anywhere. You always were running.” He coughed violently, his lungs drowning in fluid. “I’m too old and sick, damn you.”
“Sabine?” Stoker said calmly. “Will you go to Bryson and Elisabeth? Just for ten minutes? Do not leave their side, do not speak to Leg—”
Sabine cut him off with a noise of frustration and yanked on his arm hard.
“That,” she whispered harshly, “is the Duke of Wrest.”
Stoker shook his head, barely hearing. “No, he is a man from my boyhood. I’m afraid that my old life has the uncanny tendency to crash in on my new. Generally, it happens when I am the least able to manage it. It was always meant to be far removed from you. I never wanted it to touch you.”
“Stoker, you’re not listening,” Sabine said, all but climbing up his arm. “I mailed you a description of the Duke of Wrest when you had me follow him around. Did you not read it? I even made a sketch.Thisis the man.”
Stoker simply stared. Sabine made a noise that was half shout, half scoff and clapped both hands on either side of Stoker’s face, turning his eyes to stare into hers.“That man,”she whispered, “is the man”—and now she barely mouthed the words—“you had me follow. His name is Lord Saul Newington, the Duke of Wrest.”
Stoker staggered back, jerking his face from her hands.“Him?”he rasped.
But this man had been noduke, Stoker thought. He’d referred to Stoker as Johnny and given him sweets and broke his mother’s heart again and again for years.
This man, who (it was no use in denying it) looked like a very old, very swollen, very stooped version of himself, had not been the man in Sabine’s beautiful sketch.
This manwas the bloody Duke of Wrest?
“No,” Stoker gritted out, shaking his head, his mind racing with memories and misunderstanding and lies, lies, lies, so many lies.
This meant the same man who’d sent an assassin tokillhim was standing here in a bloody ballroom, saying... saying....
But what was he saying?
“How are you enjoying your evening, Your Grace?” Sabine asked flatly, taking hold of Stoker’s arm.
“I’ve had better nights, to be honest,” he said. “But you must be my son’s doxie?”
My son?
Stoker saw red. He lunged but Sabine squeezed his arm with all her strength, tethering herself to him. “Let us be thoughtful about this,” she said calmly. Her voice was a cool splash of water in the inferno of his anger, but he ignored her. He tried to shake her off.
“Stoker,” she said again, louder this time, “wait.” She would not let go.
“There’s nothing to think, this is a lie,” Stoker ground out, trying again to pull free.
“Your Grace?” she called to the teetering old man. “May I call you, Your Grace?”
“Of course. And what shall I call you? You’re a pretty little thing.”
“You will not speak to her!” Stoker growled, his voice breaking.
This was not the way the night was meant to go. Stoker had not spent his life running, and rescuing, and sailing the bloody backside of the world to stand in a ballroom, facing down a man who used to tie his mother’s heart in knots. His beautiful Sabine was notconversingwith a belligerent, inebriated, caustic shadow from his past—the same man who put a price on his head.
For the first time in his life, Stoker felt like he might actually howl—scream like a madman, shout down the walls because of the bloody, futile defeat of it all. He’d worked too hard and made too many correct choices for his life to circle back tothis. While Sabine witnessed it all.
“Tell him,” Sabine snapped to the old man. “Tell him that you are the Duke of Wrest. Let us begin there. So that we are all perfectly clear.”
“Oh yes,” sloshed the old man. “I am he.”
“And you are claiming to be Jon Stoker’s father?”
“Well, I supplied the living-giving essence that got his mother breeding. There was no union, save a mutual affinity for—”
“You blackguard!” Stoker raged and lunged.
