He closed the door, and both women went to Thomas’s side. Now completely covered, he looked warmer, and some of his normal color had returned. His lips especially had returned to the rosy pinkness Rose had grown fond of over the past few weeks. Emalyn sat next him, tugging his arm from the covers again, holding it against her chest. She folded his hand around hers, clutching his fingers.
“I don’t want to let go of him.”
Rose rested her hand on Emalyn’s shoulder. “Of course not. He’s your son.”
Emalyn nodded, and when she spoke, the husky words were laced with grief. “The first one almost broke me. Philip. After his father. I was so young. Then Thomas and Robert. They were so beautiful. I wanted a dozen more.” She squeezed his hand. “It did not get easier. But I think this would have killed me. I could not bear it.”
Rose had no words, and simply stood, gripping her shoulder. After a moment, Emalyn straightened. “I heard what you said to Robert last night.”
Blinking to clear her tears, Rose swallowed. “What?”
“About finding the men who did this.”
Rose hesitated. “Emalyn—”
The duchess looked up at her, eyes suddenly sharp, her gaze piercing. “Do it. You find them. And you destroy them.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rose sent outher missives, seven of them, before she slept. Normally she would have sent one to Robbie Green, but Robert had already sent his informants scurrying into the London underworld. Satisfied that she had activated the spider web of information she had built, this time on a new and more dangerous mission, Rose let Sarah braid her hair and bring her a hot bath. An hour after putting her messages in the secure hands of Davis, she sank into the depths of her down-filled mattress, surrendering to the exhaustion that had overwhelmed her.
Six hours later, she awoke to the news that she had a guest waiting in the drawing room. Sarah helped her dress quickly in one of her most practical woolen day gowns and caught her hair up in a quick bun at the base of her neck. Downstairs, she found her father having tea with a rarified dandy named Lord Robert Ashton. She stopped just inside the door as both men stood, greeting her.
Robert’s attire for this early afternoon astonished her. A purple silk topcoat with silver buttons had been matched with a lavender waistcoat featuring a dense field of silver embroidered stars. White silk breeches and stockings led to purple shoes. His silver cravat looked as if it had been starched to knife’s edge point. The cuffs of his white shirt emerged from the topcoat sleeves in precisely the right length for admission to Almack’s.
Rose stared at him. “You... are not Robbie Green today.”
His grin crooked one side of his mouth. “I’m paying a call when I leave here.”
“Ah. The duke’s daughter.”
His eyebrows arched and a tinge of red colored his cheekbones. “How did you—”
“Your mother.”
“And I thought I talked too much.”
Her father gestured for her to sit. “Would you like some tea, my dear?”
She shook her head. “In a moment perhaps.” She sat as primly as she could, and the men did as well, Robert on the settee where Cecily had held court with her callers. “Do you have news, Lord Robert?”
He looked at the purple top hat beside him on the settee. He moved it from one place to another, then took a deep breath. “Yes, not all of it pleasant.”
A surge of worry shot through her. “Is Thomas—”
“No!” He looked up quickly. “No... in fact, what I have to say comes from him. He was awake for a bit, and some of his memory of the attack returned. The doctors sedated him again due to agitation from the pain.”
“Does he remember who it was?”
Robert nodded, glancing at the hat again. He took another deep breath and looked at her. “He said it was two men. A large man who looked like a dockworker or warehouse man. And a smaller man, more like a tradesman or a gambler down on his luck. The larger one called the smaller man Marty. They loosened Maximilian’s saddle, which distracted him. They took his cane... which they kept.”
“Good information to have.” Rose straightened. “I can add that to any requests I send to—”
“And they said you paid them to kill him.”
Rose stilled, unsure she had heard the spouted words correctly. “What did you say?”
Robert looked down at the floor, his hands clutching his knees. He swallowed, then repeated the statement slowly. “The one called Marty told Thomas you paid them to kill him. That when you could not—in his words—take care of the men you target in your way, you hire the two of them to do it theirs. When you could not bring disgrace on someone, you paid for a violent solution.”
