Albatross sailed from Portsmouth in either January or February of 1782. However, an Albatross did set forth from London on the twentieth of December, 1781, bound for New York.” Lovejoy laid the packet on the edge of Sebastian’s desk. The two men’s gazes met. Lovejoy looked away first.

A heavy silence fell. Sebastian reached to take up the Albatross ’s passenger list, the ancient parchment crackling as he spread it open. A quick glance through the names of the passengers was all it took. Charles, Lord Jarvis. Sir Nigel Prescott. A. St. Cyr, the Earl of Hendon.

He looked up. “This is the original passenger list.”

Lovejoy cleared his throat again. “Yes. I seem to have carried it away with me somehow. I trust I can leave it to you to see that it is kept safe?”

Sebastian nodded, his jaw clenched tight. There was no doubt in his mind that Lovejoy had understood immediately the significance of what he had found. It was a moment before Sebastian managed to say, “Thank you.”

The magistrate gave another of his awkward bows. “My lord,” he said, and turned away.

He paused at the door to glance back, as if intending to say something more. Then he must have reconsidered, for he merely settled his hat on his baldhead and kept walking.

Chapter 35

In his memories, Sebastian’s mother was always laughing. A beautiful woman with silken gold hair and sparkling green eyes, she had set out for a few hours’ sailing one brilliant summer’s day the year Sebastian was eleven. She’d kissed him good-bye and teased him gently, the way she so often did. When her friends’ yacht pulled away from the dock, he’d stood and watched her, smiling as the sunlight gleamed for one last moment on the strange blue stone-and-silver necklace she wore so often around her neck.

He had never seen her again.

Drowned, they said. But Sebastian hadn’t believed them. Day after day he’d climbed to the cliffs south of town to stare out over the churning waves of the Channel and watch, waiting for her to come back. Not until seventeen years later did he learn he’d been right that summer. Sophia, the Countess of Hendon, hadn’t drowned. She’d simply sailed away, leaving a husband, a married daughter, the graves of her two dead sons . . . and Sebastian.

For seventeen years he’d lived with the lie of her death. Now he found himself wondering, How many lies can there be? How many lies could obscure the fundamental truths of one man’s existence?

After Lovejoy left, Sebastian stood for a time fingering the Albatross’s passenger list. He poured himself a drink, raised the glass to his lips. Only, rather than taste it, he turned and hurled the glass at the cold hearth in a savage shattering of crystal and pungent, spilled brandy.

Then he went in search of his mother’s husband.

He found the Earl of Hendon in the chambers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street. He was standing beside a bookcase, head bowed, a heavy tome open in his hands as if he were looking something up.

“We need to talk,” said Sebastian.

Hendon raised his head, jaw set with annoyance at the interruption. “Really, Devlin; if you—”

Sebastian sent the Albatross’s passenger list spinning through the air to land with a soft thump on the open pages of Hendon’s book. “Now.”

Setting aside the volume he held, Hendon unfolded the packet, the aged pages crackling in his hands. He studied it for a moment, then carefully folded the papers again with a hand that was no longer steady. “I’ll get my hat,” he said, and turned away.

Sebastian barely waited until they’d reached the deserted paths and flower beds of the old Privy Garden before demanding explosively, “Why? Why did you do it?”

He’d been afraid the Earl meant to persist in his lies. But even Hendon must have realized the time for denials was past. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his chin sunk low between his shoulders. He looked suddenly older than Sebastian remembered him being, and very tired. “You mean, why didn’t I repudiate you when you were born? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Yes.”

“And proclaim myself a cuckold to the world? Not bloody likely.” Hendon squinted up at the spreading branches of the ash trees lining the avenue, pale green leaves trembling against a clear blue sky. His jaw hardened. “I was enraged; I won’t deny it. What man would not be? But I agreed to raise you as my own. I had two strong, healthy sons. No one ever expected you to be in a position to inherit.”

No one ever expected you to inherit.

Sebastian knew a bitter welling of disbelief, fed by rage and a disconcerting sense of being a stranger to himself. “And my real father . . . Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

Sebastian stared at the Earl’s familiar, craggy profile and wondered if it was a lie. One more lie, piled atop so many others. “What about Amanda? Does she know who he was?”

Hendon threw him a quick, sideways glance. “She may. I don’t know. We’ve never spoken of it. Although it’s always been my suspicion she knew far more than a girl her age should of her mother’s activities.”

“She does know I’m not your son?”

“Yes.”

“So the two of you . . . You both knew Kat and I were not sister and brother. Yet you let us think—” Sebastian choked, and it was a moment before he could continue. “In the name of God, how could you?”

Hendon swiped the air with one big hand, his features hardening into a mask of stubborn determination. “I’ve spent the last twenty-nine years of my life hiding the truth from you. Do you seriously think I would suddenly give it all away? So that you could ruin yourself by contracting a disastrous marriage with a woman of the stage?”

Sebastian threw back his head, his harsh laugh startling a nearby pigeon that rose up with a cry of alarm, wings beating the air in a frantic whirl. “My God, that’s rich. Kat is your daughter , while I . . . I’m just the illegitimate son of God only knows who. One would think you’d actually encourage the match. Then my sons really would be your grandsons—only through Kat, rather than me.”

A muscle jumped along Hendon’s clenched jaw. “You are my son in the eyes of the world and before the law. I named you that nearly thirty years ago. Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant. Nothing has changed.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Sebastian, the shells of the walk crunching beneath his boots as he drew up abruptly. “Everything has changed. Everything.”

And he turned and walked off into the trees.

Sebastian sat in one of the high-backed pews that crowded the round nave of the Temple, his eyes half closed as he studied the mail-clad effigy of a medieval knight on the pavement before him. Once, when he was twenty-one and Kat but sixteen, they had come here, to the ancient church of the Knights Templar and pledged their love to each other forever.

He heard the whisper of the door quietly opening and closing, heard her footsteps cross the pavement toward him, breathed in the sweet scent of her as Kat slipped into the seat beside him.

He said, “How did you know where to find me?”

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