Jeremy nodded. “Aye. An’ then the man, the one what hurt Mr. Gerrard got angry, an’ he started carrying on at Mr. Sharpe, an’ I don’t know, something about me, and Mr. Sharpe getting the wrong man, an’ then I felt a terrible pain in my head, an’ the next thing I know I wakes up here, an’ I’ve never spoke to a single soul since that night until you come.”
Sophia leaned back on her heels, stunned. It was a strange story, but she knew Jeremy was telling them the truth. It was too complicated a tale for him to have concocted on his own, and he was trembling with horror at the memory of it. No one could feign such anguish.
Lord Gray had gone still when Jeremy described what happened to Henry Gerrard, but now he asked, very quietly. “Henry Gerrard, Jeremy. Was he…did he say anything before he died?”
Just talking about that night had sent Jeremy into a panic. His breath was sawing in and out of his chest, but he calmed at the sound of Lord Gray’s soft voice. “Nay. He couldna talk, my lord, but he…he…”
“Yes? I’d be grateful, Jeremy, if you could tell meanything more.”
“He were looking at the spire of St. Clement Dane’s Church when ’e passed, my lord. Just staring up at it, like, and he…he were calm there at the end, just staring up at that spire, an’ I thought ’e must a’ been a good man, ’cause hedied peaceful.”
“Hewasa good man.” Lord Gray pulled himself to his feet like a man who’d aged a lifetime in the past half hour. “He was the best of men.”
Sophia’s throat closed at the pain in Lord Gray’s voice, and tears stung her eyes. She’d been so caught up with saving Jeremy she hadn’t given as much thought as she should have to Henry Gerrard. But now, witnessing Lord Gray’s stark grief, she wanted to shrink away from a pain so dark and heavy,so suffocating.
All at once, she understood his desperate need to see someone pay for the crime. Such grief as his couldn’t go unanswered. Sophia understood that sort of grief. She’d suffered it herself when her mother died. As young as she’d been at the time, she’d never forgotten the pain of that loss, the burning need for justice, the paralyzing helplessness of not having been able to stop it.
The shame of surviving.
“Jeremy wasn’t Sharpe’s target,” Lord Gray muttered to Sophia. “He mistook Jeremy forsomeone else.”
“Yes, but who?” They had more questions than they did answers.
Jeremy had simply happened to wander through St. Clement Dane’s at the wrong time. Sharpe had been lying in wait for someone else to pass through the churchyard, with the intention of leaping out at them and accusing them of theft. He’d seen Jeremy coming from the direction of the Turk’s Head, and he’d thought Jeremy was his man.
But why would Sharpe want to frame an innocent man for a crime, and at whose bidding had he done it? Sharpe wasn’t clever enough to come up with such a scheme himself. No, he was a mere pawn in something far, far bigger thana random theft.
And how was the Turk’s Head involved in this mess? Who was the fourth man? Of all the information they’d learned from Jeremy, the presence of a fourth man at the scene of the crime was themost shocking.
Whoever he was, he was a murderer, and Jeremy was going to hangfor his crime.
* * * *
Neither Sophia Monmouth nor Jeremy Ives seemed to remember Tristan was there.
He watched, his chest tight, as she held Jeremy’s head to her shoulder, stroking his hair. Tristan could hardly believe this lady with her low, sweet voice and soft eyes was the same sharp-tongued hellion who’d defied him in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard—the same calculating thief who’d slipped her locket into Peter Sharpe’s pocket as coolly as if she sent innocent men to prison every day.
Except that wasn’t what she’d been doing. Peter Sharpewasn’tinnocent, but Jeremy Ives was. Miss Monmouth hadn’t been trying to send an innocent man away. She’d been trying to set an innocent manfree.
Tristan hadn’t gotten a good look at Ives’s face at the trial. When they’d entered his cell today, he’d been stunned to find Ives was hardly more than a boy, seventeen at most. He looked to have been a hearty enough lad at one point, but now his flesh hung loose on his wasted frame, and Tristan could see by his stooped shoulders and the tinge of gray in his skin the weeks he’d spent in Newgate had taken a dreadful toll on him.
Before he came here today, Tristan had thought nothing could change his mind about Jeremy Ives’s guilt, but he’d been mistaken. There was simply no way Ives could have committed the theft Peter Sharpe had accused him of, much less a murder. Not just because he was simple, although that alone was reason enough to question his guilt. He’d looked at Tristan with that same slack-jawed misery and confusion Tristan had noticed in the courtroom the other day. It wasn’t the lookof a murderer.
One only had to look at the boy to see he didn’t have the viciousness to commit a crime. Ives didn’t even know why he was here, or understand in any meaningful way what he’d been accused of. He couldn’t make sense of the concept of guilt or innocence. The judge had told him he was a bad man, and so he believed it to be true, even if it contradicted what he also knew to be true—that he wasn’t a thief,or a murderer.
Or a liar. The account he’d given of the night at St. Clement Dane’s, the tussle with Peter Sharpe, the existence of the fourth man…there wasn’t a chance Jeremy Ives could have invented such an extravagant lie.
Tristan dragged a hand down his face. Jeremy’s agitation had calmed when he described the last moments of Henry’s life, when Henry had been gazing up at the spire. It had comforted Jeremy to know for those few fleeting moments before he died, Henry had been at peace. That said more about the boy’s heart than words ever could.
Jeremy Ives didn’t know it, but he’d given Tristan a gift today—a single tiny, precious drop of peace in an ocean of rage and despair.
Tristan was grateful to him, so unbearably grateful—
“Time’s up, milord.” There was a harsh jangling of keys, then Hogg slammed the cell door open with a crash.
Miss Monmouth stiffened at the sound of Hogg’s voice. She’d been whispering to Jeremy, but now she rose to her feet. “Jeremy, I’ll be right back, sweetheart. I need to have a quick word with Mr. Hogg here. Perhaps Lord Gray would be kind enough towait with you?”
Tristan’s gaze followed her as she and Hogg moved into the corridor, then he turned back to Jeremy, who was watching him with wide eyes. It was clear the boy couldn’t think of a single thing to say to an earl, and Tristan was equally at a loss.
