Chapter Nineteen
Sabine let out a cry and scrambled after Stoker, catching him around the waist and pushing him like a large piece of furniture, through the ballroom door.
“Leave it,” she ordered, her voice ringing with authority. “Leave it for now. Let us be the reasonable ones.”
Behind them, the duke warbled, “I must speak to my son...”
Stoker made a growling sound and Sabine tugged him toward the rear of the house. They walked a few steps before Stoker pulled free and reversed back into the ballroom. Sabine shouted again and scrambled after him, catching him by the arm and pivoting, spinning them back into the hall.
“And you said you didn’t want to dance,” she said, straining with effort.
“Let me go.”
“I will not. Walk. Where does this corridor lead?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, but he began to walk.
“We will discover it, then.”
He seemed to have abandoned the idea of returning to the ballroom, striding away at a fast clip. She hustled to keep pace with him.
“Slowly, Stoker,” she said, “your wound, your ribs.”
“I feel no pain,” he said.
“We are not being pursued. We need not sprint. I merely wanted to prevent a scene.”
“Then why ask Bryson to invite him?”
“I can see now,” she confessed, “that this was a terrible mistake. But please remember, I did not know you actually knew this person. How could we know his claims of paternity were... were—true? Or, how could I know, Stoker? Is it possible that he actually sired you—”
“Thatis the man...?” Stoker demanded, ignoring her question. “That is the man I asked you to follow around London for a month last year?” He glanced at her.
“I’ve said yes—the Duke of Wrest. He was not difficult to discover. He is not out in society but he is hardly a recluse.”
They reached glass doors that appeared to open into a garden, and Stoker turned right, stalking down a second long corridor.
“I knew him,” Stoker said. He sounded like he spoke to himself. Or the furniture. The paintings on the wall. “But I had no idea he was a bloody duke. And I had absolutely no notion that he was my—That he’d known my mother before—” He couldn’t finish.
They strode in silence for twenty yards, and then he said, “She must have known. My mother. She knew all along that he was my father, and the two of them never said a bloody word.”
“Would it have mattered?” Sabine wondered. “Considering he... he never meant to claim you, and he is obviously a man of diminished character.”
Stoker stopped suddenly and rounded on her. “I want you to know that I would never, ever have charged you with trailing around a man who was my actual illegitimate father, let alone someone who would later try to have me killed. Please believe me.”
“I believe you,” she said, panting to catch her breath.
“I thought the paternity claim had come from an anonymous nobleman who’d read about me in the papers and was casting around for an easy source of money. I thought it was a hoax.”
“I believe it is something like a hoax. He is norealfather to you, obviously. Was he... cruel to you as a boy? When you knew him?”
Stoker thought for a moment and then turned on his heel. Sabine swore and hustled to keep up. “Stoker?” she called. “You obviously know him.”
Stoker made a noise of disgust.
“Will you slow down?” she demanded. “Please. I cannot keep up.”
“His name when I knew him was Sauly New,” Stoker said, not looking at her.
