Guilt.
“It wasn’t necessary,” he said gruffly, knowing Julia as he did. “Her Grace is confident in the veracity of the lady’s claims, as am I now.” There’d never been a need to involve the famed detective, and guilt soured in his gut at the fact that he’d gone against the duchess’ wishes and enlisted the man’s assistance. “Therefore”—he pulled out his center desk drawer—“your services will no longer be required.”
“Your intuition was correct, my lord,” Steele said quietly, and Harris froze, his fingers hovering over the banknotes he’d been about to write.
“Correct?” he repeated dumbly, not following the other man’s words.
Or is it that you don’t want to follow them? Because you don’t really wish to know what he’s actually saying.
Grabbing a folder from the chair beside him, Steele opened the file, and as he spoke, he handed over a series of pages. “I can report definitively that the lady is not, in fact, the duchess’ missing niece, Lady Adairia. There have been a number of people who’ve identified the woman now residing with your godmother as Julia Smith.”
With every word uttered by the investigator, Harris’ heart beat faster and harder in his chest, his pulse hammering away in his ears, threatening to drown out the remainder of words that Harris didn’t want to hear. And yet, he had to.
“The young woman is not who she claims to be,” Steele explained. “She is, indeed, an impostor. I am still uncovering details of her origins, but she was a flower peddler born to a failed opera singer in the Dials. Her identity has been confirmed by a number of individuals.”
An odd humming filled Harris’ ears, and he fought to follow the detective’s revelation.
Her name was real.
That, at least, was true.
That had to mean something.
“Surely… these people cannot know that?” Even as the question left him, Harris knew he was merely grasping at straws, desperate to believe anything other than this. Still, hope couldn’t stop the queries from coming. “After all, how can they?”
“Because she is well known. There is confirmation from those old enough to remember when the young woman’s mother was carrying the child. They recall her birth and early years.” Steele reached for another paper. “This, however, is where the story becomes interesting.”
Harris briefly closed his eyes. It’s not a damned story, he silently raged. What they now discussed wasn’t a tale in a book with twists and turns, but details about Julia, a woman whom he’d come to care about… and believe. Harris made himself lean forward, stretch a hand across the desk, and take the latest page. How was his hand not quaking? How, when every part of him shook inside?
A vise squeezed at his chest, threatening his ability to get air in through his lungs.
“I trust it is difficult learning the duchess has been deceived once more,” the investigator said, with more a calm pragmatism than with any actual tone that conveyed regret or sadness.
The duchess has been deceived once more. This was a path they’d wandered down so many times before this, and yet, not like this. This time, it was different. Or Harris had believed.
Harris had let his guard down with Julia. He’d come to care and… His mind shied away from the possibility of what else. And all along, she’d been a pretender. The greatest of them all. She’d made him believe in her innocence, and he’d become enrapt with her awe of the simplest pleasures and captivated by her willingness to help those in need. Had it all been pretend? A grand facade she’d expertly played? Or had her actions been motivated by guilt for the comfortable life she’d taken for her own, all the while remembering how people in those streets still lived? He steeled his jaw… and his heart. Once again, he’d been duped. Deceived.
“The news is not all bad,” Steele said, pulling Harris back from his raging thoughts.
“Really?” Harris asked, unable to keep the bitterness from coating his query. “The woman whom my godmother accepted into her household and who managed to convince”—me—“her and everyone around her that she is, in fact, another, and there’s somehow… good?”
Please, let there be more. Let there be something that proved Julia was more than a duplicitous creature who’d managed to invade a heart he’d believed incapable of feeling everything it had for her.
“The young woman and her mother, when she was alive, had a second child with them.” Steele held his gaze. “The girl went by the name Adairia.”
Harris stilled, his own misery and regrets suspended by that revelation.
Steele nodded, confirming the question Harris hadn’t asked.
“I am still gathering what I can about both Miss Smith, along with her supposed sister. Unlike those who could account for Miss Smith’s mother’s pregnancy, there are no such confirmations in the case of the other young woman, who has recently gone missing.”
“Gone missing, you say?”
Steele nodded.
A dark, niggling thought took shape at the back of Harris’ mind. One that he balked at, one that his entire soul arched away from, because he couldn’t give it life. He couldn’t give any credence to the possibility that the woman he’d come to care about and for was somehow capable of an even greater treachery than the one she’d perpetuated here. Still, he made himself ask anyway. “Was she… Was Miss Smith,” he clarified, making himself say her name, “somehow involved in…” Oh, God, he couldn’t even finish the thought.
“There is no indication of that,” Steele said matter-of-factly. He paused. “As of yet.”
As of yet.
Meaning there was no definitive answer at this point.
Meaning it was entirely possible.
Sweat popped up on his skin, moisture slicking his palms, and he dragged a hand through his hair and then made himself rest those shaking palms on the damning file. He’d let down his
