“Da told me, but only because he was foxed and miserable.” Kit pulled his body into the shape of a man who spent far too much time stooped in a mine and then slouched on a stool in his favorite pub. “You will always be my boy, even if in the eyes of the law you’re a bastard.” He straightened his spine and sighed. “As though I needed to be told either thing. It was plain the old man loved me, and just as obvious that I looked nothing like him.”
“That’s hardly proof that—”
“Mum had a letter from Edgar in the trunk at the end of her bed, agreeing to pay for my education but nothing else.”
The boys at Eton had teased Kit mercilessly over two things: his Welsh accent and the identity of his benefactor. The larger the crowd, the wilder the guesses, until Kit lashed out. Jasper had fought next to him every time. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Honestly?” Kit shrugged. “I thought you knew.”
“You thought I knew?” Jasper raked his hand through his hair, struggling to keep his temper in check and his brain clear enough to follow Kit’s reasoning. “And simply didn’t mention it for twenty years.”
Kit tilted his glass, first to one side and then the other, as he stared over his shoulder and out the window. “I know how Society is about bastard children.”
Jasper ground his back teeth together to silence his protest. This story was not about him. “How did you get from nothing else to knowing where Edgar kept his will?”
“I never expected to hear from him, but when I enlisted, he sent an invitation to Warwick. I was curious, so I went.”
Edgar had never invited anyone to the country house he’d once referred to as his own personal Elba.
“Big house, garden full of flowers I couldn’t pronounce. Awkward silences. He did say he’d been sad to learn of Mum’s death, which was kind, and then he offered to pay for my commission. Said he thought Mum would want him to do whatever it took to keep me safe, which was true. I took it for her.”
Edgar could have kept his heir in Britain altogether. “Nothing else?”
“I didn’t want to be the Earl of fucking Warwick, and there was still a possibility for him to father a legitimate heir.”
Stranger things had happened.
“That changed after Egypt.” Kit refilled his glass and carried the decanter to Jasper, who shook his head. He needed his wits about him. “I went to see him after I returned—once I saw Da.” He returned the whiskey to the cabinet and kept walking. He reached the door before he reversed direction. “I wanted him to know he’d invested wisely, I suppose.”
Jasper understood that compulsion. He’d often wondered whether his father would be proud of what he was accomplishing. Since Grandfather’s death, the curiosity had doubled.
“It was clear he was ill.” Kit’s jaw kicked sideways. “Very ill. We went on a carriage ride around the village and the estate, and then we went back to the hall. Edgar warned me he’d written a new will, claiming me. He wanted to keep Warwick safe.”
“Safe?” Jasper thumped his glass to his desk. “From me?”
“That was a poor choice—”
“Get out.” Jasper heard his knuckles crack before he felt them. His heartbeat deafened him to anything other than his breathing. “Leave.”
Kit placed his glass on the nearest table and walked to the door.
“Wait.” Jasper didn’t turn, but he knew Kit would stop. He always did. “We were set upon by highwaymen on the way here. We may be getting too close, either in London or in Cardiff. Be careful.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
The door closed with a snick. Jasper refilled his drink, his back to the empty room. The latch clicked again.
“Jasper?”
“Mother.” He had so many questions, but he didn’t dare face her until he had better control of his emotions.
Instead, she put herself in his line of vision. “There is a way to fight this. Mr. Burks says we can argue that Edgar’s illness rendered him incompetent. That a devious man took advantage of a previous kindness, and—”
“You knew, didn’t you?” She had to have known. She and the family lawyer hadn’t arrived at this plan of action surrounded by strangers at a house party. It explained also her cold civility every time Kit visited. “All this time, you knew and you said nothing.”
“We thought it best.”
Best. To keep the secret that his best friend, the man he thought of as a brother, was actually related to him.
“Burks is ready with the paperwork—”
“I will not lie about Kit’s paternity. Edgar did the right thing, finally, and we will honor it.”
He lifted the decanter and carried it with him to a chair that faced the gardens. “Leave me.” The glass was half full when he remembered his manners. “Please.”
She did.
Jasper drank until the garden resembled the impressionist painting hanging over the mantel in the dining room.
His life was full of secrets and lies, the ones he’d perpetuated as a façade to hunt other liars and thieves and the ones others told him. His mother, his best friend, his family—even his wife.
Darkness fell as he finished the whiskey and moved on to the gin.
Was Annabel a spy, using everything at her disposal to get close to him? Or was her interest, her affection, authentic? Had he let her into his life only so she could tell Spencer everything and ruin his plans? Or worse, given the attack on the road? He couldn’t be sure of anything any longer.
Stapleton was a shadow against the firelight as he set a tray on the desk. “Lady Ramsbury insists you eat, your lordship.”
Jasper nodded but didn’t leave his chair. There was every possibility she’d poisoned it. Or, since Kit had hired Stapleton, they were working in concert. Perhaps the assassination attempts weren’t related to his progress in the embezzlement case or Gareth’s death, but instead led to his newly discovered cousin’s darker motives.
