“But I thought you said Eliza was your wife.”
Darius surged from the chair and nearly knocked Germaine over when he came to stand over him. His voice emerged low yet promising a threat all the same. “Can you rally a few men or not? I will be leaving here as soon as I have the ship’s whereabouts. Unless you have something useful to add, we are wasting time going around in circles.”
Germaine rushed to expel what he knew. “Your Mr Smith is a sinister one. I didn’t have to do too much digging since his is a name well known in the slums. Not a one knows where he lives or even what he looks like beyond his comparison to the devil. When a man owes him money, he pays or he dies. No shades of grey with the fellow. Either Harold or Wickham lost a very large amount to him. He has been looking for the pair.”
Despite his brother’s injuries, despite the fact he was already unlikely to survive the day, Darius marched to where his brother lay on a settee and put his hand over Harold’s throat. He held him down, not that Harold put up any fight. His brother sobbed, already stinking of death and deceit, of cowardice and shame.
“What did you do, brother?”
He didn’t need elaboration. “I knew of father’s plans to steal the fabrics from Montrose. I was the one who gave the details to Mr Smith. Where the ship would dock, how many were on board, what cargo they still carried. It was all me.”
Darius squeezed as the last syllables were croaked out. He didn’t let up as he yelled, “You killed them all! They were his friends, Deklin’s family, and you consigned them to hell without a thought! Father was wrong all those years ago: I’m not the bastard here, you are.”
Germaine intervened and pulled Darius off of Harold, shoving him back into a chair. “That isn’t helping,” he said.
But Harold wasn’t done. He spoke only a decibel above a whisper. “Father didn’t know what I’d done. Not until yesterday. When he found out, he was furious. He blamed me. Said you wouldn’t have come back for the fabrics, that you only came back for the ship.”
“I came back for the debts,” Darius countered through gritted teeth. “The fabrics were worth almost as much as the ship. But the men’s lives, they were worth more than all the gold in England.” And now they had Eliza. She was worth more than all the gold on the planet.
“The men are alive,” Harold whispered. “Some of them. Enslaved on board. Sailing only east, never west. No chances to be recaptured or spotted by Montrose.”
“How do you know all of this?” Germaine asked of his friend.
“Have. Sources.” His voice grew weaker and once again, he lost consciousness, his features replacing a grimace with surreal relaxation, an unsteady breath rattling through parted lips caked with old blood.
He dodged Germaine and grabbed two handfuls of Harold’s stained shirt. “Wake up, you bastard! You don’t get to die and not pay for what you’ve done!”
When the door flew open, the doctor at the butler’s side, Germaine was forced to pull Darius away again. “Why don’t you go upstairs and compose yourself? Help yourself to anything in my wardrobe. I’ll stay with the doctor.”
As he radiated fury mixed with desperation, the butler stepped forward to lead him from the room. As much he wanted his information, his brother needed to be kept alive for a little while longer yet.
Only four steps down the corridor and the front doors opened with a booming slam as though the wind had blown a gale right at the front of the house. Darius cursed long and loud.
For a few very long moments, no one spoke. Germaine’s butler was completely frozen to the spot, not a sputter or cough or anything. Tension filled the large foyer, the ticking of the hall clock marking every fraught second that passed.
Then one of the newcomers drew a pistol from his pocket and aimed it right at Darius’s chest. “You were told never to return here,” the gentleman drawled.
The butler scurried from the room, back in the direction they had come.
“You don’t want to do this, Trelissick.”
“You’re wrong, I really do want to do this,” came his grated reply.
The woman spoke next. “You were warned, Darius. Or perhaps your brain wasn’t fully operational after I punched you?”
“It isn’t what it looks like, Daniella. I didn’t come for trouble.”
James Trelissick cocked the pistol and took a step forward. “You better have a good reason for being here, Darius.”
Chapter Thirty-One
It was all just too much. Darius sat on the edge of Germaine’s desk and let his head sink into his hands. There wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do until his brother woke again. The party had assembled in Germaine’s study while the doctor examined his patient. Germaine sat behind the desk while Trelissick paced and Daniella eyed Darius as though he’d died and come back to life. Word had gone out to them the minute ‘a pirate’ had entered the house. Germaine was furious but they all waited for Darius to say something, anything.
He shocked even himself with his words. “My name is actually Jonathan Meddington. I’d stripped myself of it before your father found me on that stinking ship.”
Daniella jumped to her feet with a triumphant fist pump. “I knew you were someone. You were wearing livery and were too well turned out, but the captain wouldn’t hear it. I don’t think he much cared back then.” Triumph turned to wariness. “But that would mean you are the Earl of Wickham’s… What? Son? Brother? Who is your father?”
“The current earl sired me. I am the shamed and rarely mentioned bastard son.”
Other than Eliza and a handful of his crew—and before that very month—Darius had only
