Alden chuckled, enjoying the mirth. “Then I will begin it tonight. Mine will not be a long list, I believe, though my mother might add much to it.”
“Certainly keep Mr. Featherstone and Mr. Colliver off it,” Clara said lightly. She jested, but Alden hadn’t finished with his anger at them.
“I have expunged them from my life,” he assured her. “I have no more need of frivolous jackanapes to distract me.”
“But you must, of course, include Mr. Forsythe.”
The air, which had been cold but almost pleasant, took on a sudden chill, darkness he’d thought banished descending on Alden’s world.
“Mr. Forsythe,” he said woodenly.
“Yes,” Clara said. “Such a pleasant gentleman, very kind. Is there any reason he shouldn’t be included? I hope you haven’t banished him as well.”
She gazed up at him ingenuously, and Alden realized she truly did not know.
He’d not mentioned Forsythe since the night they’d rescued Harvey. A few times, Clara had seemed on the brink of asking about Alden’s deep sorrow but then apparently decided he didn’t wish to speak of it, and had left him alone. Another reason Alden had fallen in love with her.
“Piers Forsythe died,” Alden said, the words thick in his mouth.
“What?” Clara stared at him, stricken, and Alden wished he’d found a less abrupt way to explain. “When? What happened to him?”
Alden let out a heavy breath. “In a duel, more than a year ago now. A stupid exhibition that I could have prevented. All of us were drunk and angry, but Forsythe was a dead shot. I had every conviction he could put Benton in his place, then we’d all laugh and become even more inebriated. Instead…”
Benton had shot Piers through the heart. He had been as shocked as any of them and collapsed himself from the shoulder wound Piers had given him. Benton was now on the Continent, sunk in remorse and self-loathing.
It had been a horrible mess, and the best friend Alden could hope to have was gone.
Clara listened in growing perplexity. “I don’t understand. He cannot be dead.”
“He can, I assure you,” Alden said tightly. “I wish it weren’t so, but it is true. It was his grave I was visiting that afternoon we first found Harvey.”
Harvey glanced up at his name, his feathery ears pricking.
“Mr. Forsythe was there, then,” Clara said, frowning. “I saw him.”
Alden shook his head, his heart leaden. “You could not have. Perhaps there was someone walking about who resembled him.” Not that he recalled Forsythe ever meeting Clara.
“No, I mean, Ispoketo him. He introduced himself to me. Helped us free Harvey from that tomb. Escorted me to the gates when your other friends turned up.”
Alden withdrew himself from his stupor and stared down at her. “What the devil are you talking about? I watched him die,attended his funeral. I know you are not trying to be cruel, but you have to be mistaken.”
Clara continued to gaze at him in true bafflement. Whatever she’d seen, whomever she’d met, it was definitely not Forsythe. If one of his other friends had decided to play a trick on her, Alden would throttle said gentleman before the night was out.
He closed his hand more firmly about Clara’s. “Come with me,” he said, and pulled her along the path toward the edge of the Heath.
Chapter Six
Clara trotted swiftlybeside Alden as he led her beyond the Heath, through the lanes that led to Highgate, and into the cemetery itself. Once again, the gates were unlocked, though Clara wasn’t certain why they would be so late.
The merriment and light of the celebrations quickly faded behind them. This was a place of death, of quiet contemplation of what had once been.
Clara tried to contain her bewilderment as Alden guided her through the paths inside the burial ground, his lantern held high.
She could not fathom what he’d told her—Piers Forsythe, dead? She thought of the cheerful gentleman she’d met, with his wry turn of phrase and a faint air of self-mockery. She’d liked him, trusted him.
But now, it seemed, she’d met a fraud. The most likely explanation was that some gentleman, for reasons unknown, had decided to impersonate Mr. Forsythe. But then, why hadn’t Alden exposed him, shouted at him? It wasn’t like him to ignore such a thing.
Another possibility was that Mr. Forsythe had tricked the world, including his closest friends, into thinking him dead. Clara had heard of people doing so in order to flee their creditors or to escape danger from someone they’d angered. It seemed a cruel hoax to play on Alden, who clearly grieved the man.
