He watched devotedly and wouldn’t allow himself to blink until the ship was out of sight. Only then would he accept his last moment with her had ended.
“I can’t believe you let her go.”
For a frantic moment, Ian imagined the voice was his disembodied conscience before Leo Ashton stepped out of the fog.
“Your…Grace?” There was no rational explanation for the duke’s sudden arrival. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
The duke raised a compact spyglass and replied, “Spying, Holt.”
Sunderland had worked for the Royal Navy before unexpectedly inheriting his title, and the gossips whispered he continued on in clandestine service. The duke enjoyed stoking those rumors.
As a devil himself, Ian knew it could have served as an excellent cover.
“How long have you been watching my family?” Ian’s low rasp was uncivil, but given the events of the day, he was overly enthusiastic to crush something. Or someone.
“Jared isn’t the one who interests me,” Sunderland said plainly.
Ian stepped in between the duke and his view of the departing ship. “Diana Rives has nothing to do with Her Majesty’s military.”
“Not true. Her father’s company has more shipbuilding contracts with the navy than anyone else in Britain.”
“Her company,” Ian corrected.
“Yes, and wasn’t it supposed to become your brother’s?”
“Is that why you were keeping such a close eye on him?”
A trace of a smirk played on the duke’s face. “I caught wind of Jared’s meeting at the Swan’s Nest. Your brother collected some counterfeit papers. But he also made inquiries about selling the Holt emeralds.”
Ian paused. “That was foolish of him.”
“Indeed,” the duke agreed. “Especially since that necklace can never be bought or sold. It must be won. But you knew that.”
Apparently, Jared hadn’t. Or he’d refused to believe the stories that were more truth than tale. Ian had never uttered the wordsIl Giocoto his brother, but he assumed, wrongly, that their father had warned Jared about the dangerous game and the criminals they’d hidden the gems from for years.
Jared didn’t own the necklace because Jared had never had the chance to win it. And suggesting he had a right to sell it, without earning it in the first place, was more dangerous than entangling himself with counterfeit thugs.
“TheIl Giocolegend is a favorite of mine.” Sunderland’s grin turned predatory at Ian’s silence. “Threefamigliewho all have historic claim to one notorious set of jewels. It’s deliciously heathen to imagine they all played to the death purely for the bragging rights to own it. Once upon a time.”
“What an incredible story,” Ian said faintly.
“Truly,” the duke agreed enthusiastically. “Imagine my disappointment when I encountered a prominent player at the Swan’s Nest, and he refused to divulge what was real and what was fiction.”
He was referring to the silver-haired man Diana and Ian had seen at the pub. The reprobate could have sent the brutes who ransacked the shipping office.
“Is there a credible threat to my family?” Ian demanded.
“Not that I know of, but we haven’t ruled it out. Of course, this,” the duke gestured to Diana’s departing vessel with his spyglass, “is a complication.”
When Ian’s silence offered a tacit accord, Sunderland gave a low laugh. “Why did you let her go?”
“She was never mine to lose.”
Good Lord, he sounded pathetic.
It was enough to draw a louder laugh from the duke. “No, you clodpate. I meant why did you let her escape with that fortune in emeralds around her neck?”
Ian’s hand dove into his waistcoat. And found his pockets empty.