Evander knocked.
Footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and a woman stood in the frame. Dark hair pinned loosely at her nape. Dark eyes. High cheekbones. She wore a plain dress of charcoal wool with a shawl across her shoulders, and she held herself the way performers did, straight-backed and composed, as though an audience might appear at any moment.
Her gaze moved from Quentin to Evander, and she went still.
The recognition was immediate and unmistakable, followed along by resignation. Her lips parted, and her hand tightened on the doorframe, and she looked at Evander the way a person looks at a letter they have been expecting but hoping would not arrive.
Evander opened his mouth. “Good?—”
“You had better come in,” she said, cutting him off.
The apartment was small, tidy, and warm. A sitting room with a pianoforte against one wall, sheet music stacked on every available surface, and a vase of fresh flowers on the table besidethe window. She gestured toward the chairs and crossed to a sideboard, where she poured three glasses of brandy without asking whether they wanted one.
“My name is Evander Brightshaw, Duke of Blackholm,” Evander said. “This is Quentin Hale, the Marquess of Suntley.”
The woman set the glasses before them and curtsied. “Lucrezia Fierro. Though I suspect you already know that, or you would not be here.” She sat across from them and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been expecting you, Your Grace. Not today, specifically. But eventually. Richard told me you would come.”
The sound of his brother’s name in this woman’s mouth sent a jolt through Evander’s chest. “You know my brother.”
“I love your brother.” She said it without hesitation, without apology, and the certainty in her voice made clear she had considered the cost and chosen to pay it. “We met six months ago, at aconcertoin Mayfair. A mutual acquaintance introduced us. Richard was…” A smile crossed her face, quick and private. “He was unlike anyone I had met in this country. Open. Reckless. Kind in ways that surprised me.”
“Kind men do not abandon their families.”
“No.” Lucrezia’s gaze held his. “But desperate men do.”
Evander leaned forward. “Tell me what happened.”
Lucrezia turned the brandy glass between her fingers. “Richard and I became close very quickly. I knew he was engaged to another woman. He never hid it. But the betrothal was arranged, not chosen, and by the time we met, Richard was already struggling with the weight of it.”
Evander’s jaw tightened. Quentin placed a hand on the arm of his chair, a quiet signal.
“About five months before Richard disappeared,” Lucrezia continued, “His fiancée came to him. Privately. She told him she could not go through with the wedding.” She paused. “Because she was carrying another man’s child.”
The room tilted. Evander heard the words, processed them, and felt the ground beneath the entire story he had built over the past six weeks shift and resettle into a shape he did not recognize.
“Another man?” he repeated.
“She begged Richard to disappear at the same time as her. If they both vanished together, the scandal would attach to both families equally, and no one would look closely enough to discover the truth about the child. Richard agreed because he cared for this woman, and because disappearing gave him a way out of a life he felt he was failing at.” Lucrezia’s voice was steady, but her hands gripped the glass. “He did not leave because he was a coward, Your Grace. He left because Charlotte asked him to and because he believed it was the only way to protect her.”
Evander stared at her. The brandy sat untouched on the table before him. His mind worked through the implications with the same methodical precision he applied to estate accounts.
Except the numbers would not add up, because the foundational assumption he had carried since the morning a basket appeared on his doorstep, that Tommy was Richard’s son, was crumbling.
“You expect me to believe this?” His voice came out harder than he intended. “You were my brother’s mistress. He would have told you whatever story suited his purposes.”
Lucrezia’s chin lifted and her eyes hardened. “I know what you see when you look at me, Your Grace. An Italian woman. A singer. A convenient explanation for your brother’s failures. But I am telling you the truth, and I will prove it.”
“How?”
“Because I know where Richard is.”
Quentin sat forward. Evander went still.
“We have been in contact since he left London,” Lucrezia said. “Letters. Carefully routed. He is safe, and he has been waiting for the right time to return.” She rose from her chair, crossed to the writing desk beneath the window, and took out a sheet of paper. She wrote for a minute, then folded the paper and held it out to Evander. “He is staying at a cottage in Sussex that I boughtduring my more prolific season. He has been staying there since he left.”
Evander took the paper. The directions were precise: a village name, a lane, and a description of the property.
“Bedelicatowith him.” Lucrezia’s voice softened, and the fierceness gave way to something more vulnerable. “He carries more guilt than you know. About Charlotte. About the bambino. About you.” She held Evander’s gaze. “He is more like you than you expect, Your Grace. He simply never learned to carry the weight the way you do.”
