“I promised no harm would come to the woman.”
Ian scoffed. “How much did you pay her?”
“Half a crown.”
Which she’d lifted from his coin purse.
“Fortunately, the good Polly Wren lives a short walk away,” Diana said. “Off Shelton Street.”
“Shelton Street is in the heart of St. Giles, surrounded by rookeries.”
“Oh, so you’ve been there?”
“No,” he said, a little too forcefully, to cover his annoyance that she was coercing so much out of him.
“We must consider that Jared’s…lady could have drugged him.”
Ian shook his head. His brother’s mistress was a probable suspect, and until he ruled her out, he wanted Diana nowhere near her. “Paying a visit to St. Giles is the height of foolishness.”
“Neither of us is helpless, Ian.” She raised her chin in a modest display of defiance. She’d venture into the cutthroat neighborhood, with or without him.
It left him feeling hollow, and a little awed at what she was willing to risk.
“Why are you pursuing this?” he rasped.
“You’re satisfied by what we found at the brothel?”
Most women in her station would be terrified to say the word brothel out loud to anyone. Never mind visit one to investigate the drugging of her fiancé. Now, she wanted to venture into the dodgiest corner of London, to confront her intended’s lover.
He almost laughed at her fearlessness.
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” he insisted. “Which is why we can’t chase down shadows. It’s unsafe—and I’m talking about care to your person. Not your reputation, which becomes more and more precarious the longer we stay at this. To continue on is not only asinine; it’s an enormous waste of time.”
“But we are certain that someone hurt Jared. Until we know what rendered him in that state, we won’t know what will wake him from it. Or if he’ll ever wake.”
Ian hadn’t seriously entertained the idea that Jaredwouldn’trecover. He was surprised at the twinge of guilt that surfaced when he thought he might not.
His relationship with his brother had been as strained as a tightrope from the moment they’d met. Little had changed over the last twenty-five years, but that didn’t mean Ian wished his brother dead.
He hoped to hell Diana didn’t either. Wanting Jared to depart the earth would imply she had deeper feelings for his brother than he’d dared to consider.
“No matter what happens to Jared, this series of events leaves too much unanswered,” Diana continued. “There are things that are forgivable and other things that are indefensible.”
She met Ian’s eyes. “If you were me, you’d want to know.”
Christ, she knew exactly where to aim her arrows.
Ian’s mother had concealed his existence from his father for the earliest part of his life. As an adult, he understood her reasons had been noble and justified; at the time, she wasn’t free to marry. But as a boy, learning he had a father and a brother had changed everything.
Diana knew this better than anyone else in his life.
And he knew, better than anyone else in her life, the havoc she could wreak when she discovered a justifiable motivation.
“Tell me honestly,” he said. “What will you do when we find out the truth of what happened?”
Her eyes drifted toward the darkening sky above them before returning to him. “I honestly don’t know.”
Over the years, he’d learned to detect lies by the tenor of a person’s voice, the small facial tics, evasive eyes, and rigid, distancing postures. None of them were present as Diana confessed her uncertainty.