“Heartsease,” King replied. “In the Renaissance they represented remembrance, memory, and spiritualization. Evan always liked painting them.”

  Noah Ellery, the Duke of Ashland, joined him, a yellow hothouse rose twirling gently between his gloved fingers. Both men looked down at the headstone, neither speaking. The clatter of hooves and rattle of wheels echoed outside the churchyard from Jermyn Street and Piccadilly. Nearby, a young boy’s voice rose, peddling the newest edition of a scandal sheet to pedestrians hurrying by.

  “I used to love winter,” King said idly, tucking his bare fingers into his sleeves. “I would find Evan on street corners or garden squares trying to paint the city under snow. I’d tease him because he could never quite finish before the snow melted if it was too warm, or his paints froze if it was too cold. At the time, I never understood his need to capture individual moments.” He nudged the snow with the toe of his boot. “Now I wish I could have just one of those moments back.”

  The duke was silent, listening with the same quiet intensity King had come to associate with the boy he had been in those first awful years and then later with the man he had become. Incarceration had not broken Ashland. Nor had it changed the inherent goodness that had always dwelled within him. King could not say the same of himself.

  “Would we have been friends?” King asked abruptly. “You and I? If we had not been cast into hell together?”

  “Why do you ask this now?” The duke touched a thorn on the rose’s stem.

  “Of late, I’ve reflected on lost moments, I suppose. Moments where a different choice, a different action, a different twist of fate would have changed everything.”

  Ashland looked down, once again turning the rose over in his fingers. “Yet all of those moments are gone. You can remember them or forget them, like them or hate them, but you cannot change them. Only the moments to come can be changed.”

  King exhaled, his breath a silvery cloud in the air. “Evan would have liked you. Neither of you ever said much, but when you did, it always seemed to be maddingly sensible.” He paused, tilting his walking stick so that the silver handle gleamed in the sunlight. “Why are you really here, Ashland?”

  “I think the better question is, Why are you?”

  “I’ve come to pay my respects.”

  “Hmm.” The rose in Ashland’s fingers stilled. With great care he bent and placed it on top of Evan’s grave next to the heartsease. His charcoal-colored coat stretched across his wide shoulders, his light blond hair falling over his eyes. Slowly he brushed away the snow clinging to the decorative scrolling engraved above Evan’s name.

  “Say what’s on your mind, Ashland,” King said wearily.

  The duke straightened, his green eyes regarding King. “What do you need?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am a damned duke, King. And with that title comes a shocking degree of power. Power in places that even you do not have it, despite rumors to the contrary.”

  “Your point, Ashland?”

  “If you need something, ask. I do not wish to see you do anything rash.”

  King stared at the flowers on top of the stone, the snow sparkling like a mantle of tiny diamonds in the light. “Like kill a baron on the grounds of St James’s Church?”

  “Like kill a baron on the grounds of St James’s Church,” Ashland agreed.

  King reached the obvious conclusion. “Lady Angelique spoke to you.”

  “Lady Angelique spoke to my wife. And Elise spoke to me.”

  “How quaint. Did you all trade gossip over tea and cakes?”

  Ashland ignored his barb. “She seemed to think that you’ve hired a new assassin. A very beautiful, very clever assassin.”

  “She’s not an assassin. But yes, she is beautiful. And clever.”

  “She also seemed to be of the opinion that you are…rather taken with this particular assassin.”

  “Did you not hear me? She’s not an assassin.” King didn’t address the other part of Ashland’s comments. Mostly because he couldn’t deny it, and Noah Ellery would see right through him. He wasn’t taken, he was bewitched.

  “Is she here? In the churchyard?”

  “Yes.” King hadn’t seen her here, which meant only that. He would be deluding himself if he thought she was anywhere else. That knowledge, instead of being irritating, was like a soothing balm to his soul.

  “Did you ask Marstowe here to kill him?” Ashland asked. To his credit, he sounded merely curious. But then, Ashland had known his share of violence long before he had become a duke.

  “If I were to kill the man, I most certainly wouldn’t do it here with a half dozen witnesses.” He gestured at the bundled people scattered throughout the churchyard. “Though the convenient proximity of a burial ground does hold some appeal.”

  “So the men who have been sweeping the same stretch of pathway for the last quarter hour are not yours.”

  King glanced at the two men with the brooms. They were brothers, their features too similar to mark them as anything else. Both were wearing somber colors, nothing so rich nor so ragged as to draw attention. “No. Those are the Darling brothers. And they work for themselves.”

  “And who are the Darling brothers?”

  “Purveyors of fine medical specimens.”

  Ashland gave him a blank look.

  “Resurrection men. They sell to medical schools in Scotland. Edinburgh, generally. I have used their services on occasion. They are very good at making bodies vanish into thin air.”

  Ashland stared hard at King. King stared back.

  The duke cleared his throat. “That night you saved my life and killed—”

  “Credible deniability, Ashland.”

  “What?”

  “Credible deniability. A little something I learned from my assassin who is not an assassin. And it’s what I’m giving you here.”

  “Did you ask them here today?” the duke demanded. “Thinking that there would be a body you’d need to make vanish?”

  “We’ve already been over this, Ashland. No.”

  “King—”

  “I wish he had died.” King knocked the snow from the edge of the grave in a violent blizzard. “I wish the twisted fuck had died aboard that packet off the coast. He’s sick.” He pulled out his pocket watch, ignoring the way his fingers were white around its edges. “He’s also late.”

  Ashland merely clasped his hands behind his back. “Perhaps your assassin has already done her job.”

  “For the love of God, she’s not an assassin.”

  “Hmmm.” He unclasped his hands. “Did you find Marstowe’s money?”

  “My my, Lady Angelique really was effusive.”

  Ashland ignored that too. “Did you?”

  “Not yet.” King tucked his watch back into his pocket. “The rector swears he has no idea where it is. I believe him.”

  Ashland pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why?”

  “I suggested that he keep his mistress at a better address. Currently she lives in a hovel near the Dials. It’s a dangerous area. One never knows what may happen to an unsuspecting woman who travels alone at night to meet her paramour.”

  “You blackmailed him and threatened his mistress?”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I merely offered him some good advice. Free of charge, I might add.”

  “How could you possibly know he had a mistress?”

  “Because I generally don’t visit this churchyard during daylight hours. Neither does she.” He paused. “The rector did tell me, however, that the late baron called him to his house right before he died and offered him fifty pounds to take whatever measures were necessary to make sure that his family’s graves in the churchyard were not disturbed. Someone, it seemed, had disturbed the grave of the younger Westerleigh brother just before the old baron’s death.”

  “Resurrection men?” Ashland glanced at the Darling brothers.

  “No, grave robbers, more likely. Corpses need to be fresh for the medical folk.”

  The duke made a face. “Perhaps the money is truly gone.”

  “Tsk. Nothing is truly gone, Ashland. One just needs to know where to look. I think your wife might agree with me. She found you, after all.”

  “King—”

  “Go, Ashland. Go be a good husband and a good duke and do all the good things that I never have and never will.”

  “I could take the matter to the courts—”

  “And risk exposing your secrets as well as mine? Not a chance, Ashland. I am not that selfish. I will handle this.”

  “Don’t do anything rash. Please.”

  “Do not worry,” King said. “When I do decide what it is I will do, it will most certainly not be rash.”

  Chapter 11

  King found Adeline sitting in the wide chair behind his desk, considering the depiction of Judith beheading Holofernes. That she had beaten him back to Helmsdale did not surprise him. He had stayed in that churchyard in front of Evan’s grave long after Ashland had departed. Long after it had become clear that Baron Marstowe was not going to appear.

  “There are locks on my doors,” King said for the second time.

  “Not good ones,” Adeline replied again without turning around. She was dressed in her black trousers and coat, her rapier sheathed at her side, her curved knife held absently in her hands. “Who painted this?”

  “Caravaggio.” A faint draft swirled through the study as he shut the door behind him. “I had the version Rubens painted but I sold it. I much prefer this one.”

  Adeline ran her fingers along the smooth surface of her knife. The light from a half dozen sconces that had been lit against the encroaching darkness danced off the steel. “Tell me, is Judith a good person?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Judith.” Adeline gestured at the painting with the tip of her knife. “Is she a good person?”

  “I don’t understand your question.”

  “Look at her. She is assassinating a general without remorse. She has his hair wrapped in her fist, his head wrenched back, and her blade deep across his throat. She displays neither revulsion nor fear, satisfaction nor pleasure. She merely looks…”

  “Stoic.”

  “I was going to suggest determined. But then I suppose all assassins should be both stoic and determined.”

  “Judith wasn’t an assassin.”

  “She was that day.”

  The desk creaked as King settled his weight on the corner. “She didn’t have a choice.”

  “No?”

  “Bethulia would have been destroyed, her people slaughtered. She saved those she loved.”

  “So she was a good person. A good person who was forced to do an awful thing to make sure she and those she cared for survived.”

  King opened his mouth and abruptly closed it again. “I know what you’re doing.”

  Adeline’s head tipped back, and she gazed at the painting for a long time in silence. “I envy Judith,” she said eventually.

  “Why?”

  She jabbed her knife in the direction of the painting. “She’s not alone.” She laughed softly, though there was no humor in it. “Her maid is there to help her kill Holofernes.”

  “Her maid only conceals and carries the severed head in her basket.”

  “A task Judith could have easily done,” Adeline replied. “The maid is not just carrying a head, she’s carrying some of Judith’s burden.” She was still gazing at the painting, a note of sadness creeping into her words. “Her maid already knew what it would cost Judith to kill a man, and this was the only way she could lessen that burden. She didn’t want Judith to be alone in her task.”

  King pushed himself off the desk and came to stand near Adeline, wishing he could smooth away the sorrow and weariness that had settled across her features. But to touch her now would be folly because he wouldn’t just offer her a token of comfort. He would take her in his arms and kiss away her sadness and tell her that everything would be all right. And that was absurd because inane platitudes never made anything all right, and they both knew it.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “Tired of fighting alone,” she clarified, looking up at him. “Of not belonging to anywhere or anyone. Of not having that one person who will put severed heads in baskets so that you don’t have to.”

  You could belong to me as I fear I already belong to you. He swallowed the words before he could make a fool out of himself.

  “You need a partner, then,” he said instead, trying to sound objective.

  “Are you volunteering to be that partner?”

  A peculiar ache settled like a vise around his chest. For one terrifying second, he wanted to say yes. He shook his head hard because there was no point in entertaining an idea that would never come to pass. “I must decline,” he said with all the cavalier wit he could muster. “As much as I might enjoy transporting severed heads, I hear the hours are wretched.”

  She tried to smile but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Then perhaps it’s just time for a change.”

  “The château.”

  “It was always my father’s dream that he could one day reclaim it. Make the vineyards productive again.”

  “And is that your dream too?”

  “Maybe. I’d like the chance to find out.”

  “And what does a goddess of retribution know about wine making?” he asked.

  “Almost nothing,” she admitted. “But in Italy and Spain I loved watching the men and women in the vineyards we saw. Entire generations of families that had the ability to coax something from the earth, to grow and care for it and make it into something wonderful…” She trailed off. “I envied that. I feel like maybe Falaise d’Argent is a place where I could find the remnants of my own familial roots and grow them there. Finally find the place I belong.”

  “And what happens to Adrestia?”

  She smiled faintly. “She’ll always be there. Just in case.”

  “You will have your home in France.” King spoke quietly, not remembering making the decision to tell her this. “Along with the man heading to Spain, I sent a man to Lille this morning. He’ll take care of the paperwork and payment for Falaise d’Argent to be yours.”

  Adeline looked up at him, her eyes wide. “But I haven’t found justice for you yet.”

  “You will. We will.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re here right now, and that’s enough.” But she wouldn’t be here forever. She would leave, and he would be alone—

  He rubbed his face with his hands. Jesus, he sounded positively maudlin.

  “The man who was with you in the churchyard. Was he your duke?”

  He stilled. “My duke?”

  “The one you spoke of—the one who was imprisoned with you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You didn’t guard your emotion with him.”

  King didn’t answer right away. He had known that she would be there watching for the baron. He hadn’t considered how carefully she might have been watching him. “Yes.”

  “Does he know what the baron did?”

  “Enough.” But not all. No one knew it all.

  “Was he there to talk you out of murder?”

  “Yes. He’s a good man. Noble and honorable.”

  “And he really thought you might kill a baron in a churchyard full of witnesses?” she asked. She was making a clear effort to keep her voice light, but it sounded forced.

  “The thought had crossed his mind.”

  “Where was he today?” she asked. “Marstowe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Adeline uncrossed her foot from her knee, her boot thumping softly to the rug. “I tried the Marstowe house in Hanover Square, but he wasn’t there.”

  “Perhaps he simply refused to answer the door.”

  “I didn’t knock, exactly,” Adeline told him. “The house was deserted, as were the stables in the mews around back. It was clear he does not yet have a staff, probably because servants and horses cost money. A groom further down did tell me that he’s seen Marstowe use Rotham’s carriage from time to time.”

  King frowned faintly.

  “There are reasonable explanations for his failure to meet you this afternoon, of course. Perhaps he was too drunk to remember the conversation last night. Or he was too much of a coward to meet you and is on another packet back to Virginia as we speak.” Very carefully she set her knife on the surface of the desk and stood. Without warning she brushed a stray piece of hair from his temple, her fingers lingering against his skin.

  “How did he kill Evan?” she asked.

  He had known the question would come eventually, had prepared answers in his head that would satisfy her without giving away too much. Yet right now, he couldn’t seem to think of those answers. Not with her silver eyes watching him, her touch unapologetic.

  “He hit him,” King heard himself say. “A blow to the head that killed him instantly.” King made a fist with his injured hand, and the resulting sting of the wound across his palm was a welcome pain.

  “Tell me why.” Adeline’s tone was businesslike, devoid of pity, and King was grateful for that small mercy.

  “Why?” he stalled.

  “Tell me why he killed Evan.”

  “To gain access to the title.” That was one of his prepared answers. An answer that kept the true horror of that day at a safe distance.

  Adeline’s hand dropped and her eyes glittered. “Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Lie to me.”

  King sucked in a breath. It was terrifying how easily she seemed to be able to read him. It was equally terrifying just how much of the truth he wanted to tell her.

  King swallowed. He would need to give her some of the truth. “Marstowe—” He stopped. God, after everything that he had seen, everything that he had survived, speaking of a single, violent moment in a life full of violence should not have been this difficult. He was letting weakness creep in again.

  King cleared his throat. “Marstowe had a fondness for young boys. I suspect he still does.”

  Adeline was silent.

  “Evan resisted his advances. And paid for that with his life.” He braced himself for her response.