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“Yes?” Illingsworth asked warily.
Maximus held out his hand. “I’m Wakefield. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions?”
Illingsworth stared at his hand, perplexed, before taking it. His palm was damp.
“Yes?” he repeated.
Evidently his host wasn’t going to offer him a seat.
Maximus reached into his pocket and took out the pendant. “Thirteen years ago you lost this in a wager to John Alderney. Where did you get it?”
“What…?” Illingsworth leaned forward to peer at the pendant. He reached for it, but Maximus closed his fist without thinking.
Illingsworth looked up at that. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because,” Maximus said, “this pendant was part of a necklace that belonged to my mother.”
“Ah.” Illingsworth had a knowing look that Maximus didn’t like. “Pawned it, did she?”
“No. She was robbed of it the night she was murdered.”
If he hadn’t been watching, Maximus might’ve missed it: a subtle shifting, a slight widening of the eyes. In a second it was gone and all Illingsworth’s face revealed was wariness. “I was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy thirteen years ago. I assure you, Your Grace, that I had nothing to do with your mother’s lamentable death.”
“I never said you did,” Maximus said. “I merely want to know the man you got this from.”
But Illingsworth shook his head, pacing quickly to the fireplace. “I’ve never seen that gem before in my life.”
His manner was too casual—the man was lying. “John Alderney says otherwise.”
Illingsworth laughed, but it was a brittle, cawing sound. “Alderney was a fool at school. I can’t imagine age has improved him any.”
He turned and faced Maximus, his gaze frank and steady.
Maximus contemplated him. Illingsworth knew something—Maximus could feel it in his bones—yet if the other man refused to tell what he knew, there wasn’t much he could do. He made a decision and pocketed the pendant. “You’re lying.”
Illingsworth started to protest.
Maximus cut him off with a sharp movement of his arm. “I could beat it out of you, the name of the man who gave this to you, but I have a certain dislike of violence. So I’ll make you a bargain: I’ll give you a day and a night to tell me who it is. If, at the end of that time you haven’t given me what I want, I’ll ruin you. Take what little you have from you. This house, your clothes, whatever else you might hold dear. By the end of the week you’ll be begging in the gutter if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”
Maximus turned on the sputtered protests of innocence and outrage. They were a waste of time.
He descended the stairs again without the guidance of the elderly maid.
Outside, the boy was patiently waiting with the horse. “Good lad,” Maximus said to him. “Would you like to earn a little more today?”
The boy nodded eagerly.
“I need you to run a message for me.” Maximus gave the boy his address and the message to tell Craven, making him repeat it back word for word. Then he sent the boy out.
Maximus mounted his horse and made a show of riding away.
When he was out of sight of Illingsworth’s house, he dismounted and led the horse back around to an alley that had a view of Illingsworth’s front door.
There he settled down to wait and see what Illingsworth would do with his ultimatum.
“I KNEW THAT lovely shade of hunter green would exactly suit you,” Lady Hero said that night as they walked toward the theater at Harte’s Folly.
“Thank you.” Artemis glanced distractedly around the pleasure garden before reminding herself that Apollo would hardly be out in the open here. No doubt he’d found some place to hide behind the scenes.
