Winston took a step into the room and looked around. It had taken him many hours to arrive at Egerton’s manor house, and although it had been many years since he had last been here, he remembered it well. The place was Gothic in design and cold—as if Egerton never lit a fire. Everything was dark and black. Even the candelabra in the middle of the table flickered with dark candles.
“Did you?” Winston said, his eyes flickering back to Egerton’s. “How very wise of you.”
“You were a child when we dueled,” Egerton murmured, “and you have never been able to forgive yourself for losing to me. I always knew that someday, you would be back to finish what you started.”
“Is that why you think I am here? To kill you?”
Very slowly, Winston began to walk around the edge of the table toward Egerton. The man looked even older; just a week after last seeing him, his face was white as a sheet and his eyes lifeless.
“Why else would you be here?” Egerton asked, a note of contempt in his voice. “I almost hope that you are here to kill me. It would be a better death than the long and painful one that awaits me.”
Winston said nothing to this. Each step he took closer to Egerton resounded through the room, heavy and reverberating. The hate inside of him seemed to increase with every step.
“Just make it quick,” Egerton said as Winston came to stand right in front of him. He sounded bored, almost matter-of-fact. “Your sister got a quick death—I would ask for the same mercy.”
“My sister?” Winston frowned down at him. “I thought you believed that my sister survived the jump. That I collaborated with her to fool you into thinking she was dead.”
Egerton said nothing for a moment. He looked confused, and he blinked several times and shook his head, as if trying to remember something that eluded him.
“Yes,” Egerton said at last. “That is right. She faked her death. You are hiding her.”
Winston hesitated. He had come all this way with one thought and one thought only which was to end Egerton’s life and finally be free of the guilt and failure of his past. But now, something did not feel quite right.
For one thing, Egerton did not seem afraid. Heshouldbe afraid. Even an evil man fears death. But there was not so much fear in his voice as the desire to get it over with.
And now, he had seemingly reversed his position on Clementine’s death.
“You came all the way to London to confront me about this,” Winston said slowly. “You, who are on the brink of death, chanced a trip to London, just so you could accuse me of hiding her. And now, you seem to barely even remember that.”
“I am an old man!” Egerton snapped. “What do you expect of me? My memory is not what it used to be.”
But Winston was not convinced. “Why did you say that just now about my sister’s quick death?” he demanded. “Do you believe she really died that day?”
Egerton’s lip curled. “No, I believe you are hiding her. I believe she is still alive.”
“Then why would you not be sending men out to search for her? Why would you come and confront me? Surely you know that even if I was harboring my sister, I would not simply hand her over?”
Egerton said nothing. The wheels in Winston’s head were turning. Something was starting to make sense, but he wasn’t sure what it was yet.
“Unless… unless you wanted to speak to me for another reason,” he murmured. “Unless you hoped that by seeing me, and hearing your outlandish theory, it might provoke me to do something… to harm you, even.”
The constable’s words while he was being interrogated suddenly came back to him.
But after speaking with Lord Egerton, and gleaning more into your past…I am beginning to think that it is you, Your Grace, who is the instigator.
The Bow Street Runners had been speaking with Lord Egerton. Was it possible that they had been working together? That they had asked Egerton to come to London and speak to Winston, to provoke him, so that he might strike against him, and they could catch him in the act of meting out vigilante justice? Were they here, now, waiting for him to strike?
Winston took a step back, his heart racing.
“You want me to kill you,” he murmured. “You hope that if I do, I will spend the rest of my life behind bars, and then you will truly have had your vengeance against me. That is what you are hoping for, is it not? Tell me the truth! You are working for the Bow Street Runners!”
Egerton stared up at him, a terrible look of hate on his face, and for a moment, Winston wondered if he had just made all of this up—if he was the one who had truly lost his mind.
“I do not care about whether or not you spend the rest of your life behind bars,” Egerton said at last, spitting out the words. “My vengeance is not about what happens to you. The Runners—they care about such trivial things. My vengeance is much greater, Thornfield. It is in knowing that if you kill me, you areno better than me. No better than me or your father. Then I will die happy, knowing that you who thought you could shame me for your sister’s death are just the same.”
Winston took a step back. Then another. Something strange was happening inside of him. It wasn’t exactly that his hatred was ending so much as it was changing, morphing into another feeling—one he never remembered feeling before.
He stared down at Egerton, all the rage sapping away, replaced by… pity.
