But he knew. He supposed he’d always known.
Hearing it said aloud was another thing altogether.
“Your stepmother. The duchess. Sent an emissary to me and told me she’d pay my debts and all I had to do was walk with you by the river and shout ‘NOW!’ at precisely that time of the night. And though nothing was stated explicitly, I suppose I did know what was about to happen. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since, Bolt, and that’s the truth. I’m not evil. Weak bastard, perhaps. Not evil.”
Lucien was still.
Hearing his suspicions confirmed was not quite the liberation he’d expected.
It heralded no cleansing surge of triumph. The sadness, however, was a surprise.
But it mattered that it had been said aloud.
The duchess—the former Lady Medger—had swept into the duke’s life years ago and ruthlessly swept everything out of it, and that meant Lucien and his mother. Apparently she’d intended to be even more thorough about it than Lucien realized.
“She did write to you, Lucien, remember. She begged you to behave—what was the word that made us laugh? You and me and Hallworth roared about it that time we were thrown out of the Rogue’s Palace?”
“‘Decorously,’” Lucien said absently. “‘Decorously’ was the word. She wanted me to behave decorously.”
She had indeed written. She’d said his father wanted nothing to do with him and would frown upon her writing to him, and would not see him even if he was contacted. But if Lucien had a shred of decency—this was how she put it—he would strive to remain out of the broadsheets to spare the Duke and Duchess of Brexford and her little son embarrassment.
“I’m not positive she wanted to do you in, Loos,” Cutty said quietly. “Maybe just frighten you a bit. Maybe get you to go away for a time.”
“Do you know who those men were who got hold of me?” He said this abstractedly. He was reeling.
“No,” Cutty said.
Lucien believed him.
He and Cutty stared at the water below in an odd sort of peaceful communion. Doubtless the knowledge had indeed plagued Cutty, and the confession was a release. Lucien had no pity for him. He was the last person inclined to offer absolution to anyone.
But oddly he found he didn’t even care what Cutty did now.
Lucien wasn’t a fundamentally somber person. To shift the sudden weighty bleakness, his thoughts felt about for comfort and landed, to his surprise, on Mrs. Breedlove. He pictured her standing and staring at that stick in the ground outside The Grand Palace on the Thames, a little furrow between her eyes, daring to dream her modest dream of a future, while he stood here and addressed the ugly, ragged ends of his past.
“You can’t prove a damn thing, you know,” Cuttweiler said, after a moment. Though he sounded weary and even sympathetic.
“I know.”
Another little silence.
“Funny thing is, Loos... they liked to say you had devil’s blood and whatnot and we used to laugh about it... I think she really does.”
He left Cuttweiler by the river with the grimly cheery warning: “I’ll be in touch to let you know how you can make it up to me, Cutty. I’m back in London for good now. Don’t even think about contacting the duchess, because I’ll know.”
Because Cutty deserved to have his day thoroughly ruined, at the very least.
Cutty vowed his behavior would be faultless. He seemed resigned to some sort of restitution.
And yet Lucien wasn’t positive hewouldbe in touch. He wasn’t certain he was prepared to let Cutty go for good with a “cheers, got that settled, then!” Extorting the man until the end of his days was only what Cutty deserved. But that meant he would be a part of Lucien’s life until the end ofhisdays. Which struck Lucien a bit like refusing to cut off a gangrened limb.
Lucien had just pulled one glove off with a sort of violence, as if it were the very source of the dark mood clinging like a film to him, when he came upon Mrs. Breedlove standing at the window nearest the landing, clutching the parted curtain in one hand.
He was yanked up short, as though his senses were a team of restive horses.
The afternoon sun poured amber over her. Her expression was so wistful, so very nearly dreamy, that she almost looked like a watercolor of Angelique Breedlove rather than a flesh and blood woman. She was, in fact, so far away in her thoughts she hadn’t yet sensed his presence.
Of whom or what was she thinking?