Page 57 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

Seemingly, my siblings were intent on revenge. I didn’t blame them. I felt exactly the same.

Honeycutt appeared at the drawing room door. For the second time that morning his face had news in it, though of a different weather. "The Duke of Steele, my lady."

Of course. He would have seen the wagon from his windows. He had likely been standing at them.

"Chrissie." I stood. "Take them up to the schoolroom. All of them. Fox as well."

While she shepherded our brothers and sisters, I went down to the morning room. Steele stood in the middle of the carpet. He did not come toward me as I entered. We both knew if he did, I would lose the composure I had spent the last hour building.

“I saw,” he simply said.

“The entire square did.” Somehow, I kept my voice from wavering.

Still he knew I was barely hanging on. “Let us sit, Rosalynd. I have something to tell you. Something that will help.”

I obliged. It was either that or a full collapse.

Taking the seat across from me, he told me about his family solicitors—Gathorne and Pryce, of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He’d engaged them. They were expecting his summons. A note he’d sent the moment the wagon turned out of the square. Sir Hugo Rennell, a barrister, was also retained.

“From here, I’ll go to Scotland Yard. Cosmos will be held there through the committal. Not Newgate. He will have a room, and a window, and Graves within call."

"You cannot promise a window in Scotland Yard."

"I can promise it. I have the means to make it true and I intend to spend them this morning."

I heard his words and let them stand. I wanted them to be true more than I’d wanted anything else in my life. But then, the way cold follows rain, I arrived at a different conclusion.

"Retained," I said. "Engaged. Expecting your summons.” I gazed at him. "When did you retain a barrister?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"How did you know?"

"Graves came to me yesterday." He gave me Graves’s visit straight without softening a single syllable. "A witness came to the Yard the day before. A member of the Argosy. Respectable, no debts, no malice. He heard Cosmos’s quarrel with Crane through the library door. All of it. The word blackmail. Claire's name. The blow your brother struck.” Steele did not look away as he said it. "Armed with that, Dodson spent the whole of that day on the rest. Cosmos’s carriage in Claire’s street. The balls. An afternoon at Kew this spring in front of half the world. The warrant was being drawn while Graves stood in my study."

I rushed to my feet. “You knew. You knew yesterday. You stood at your window and watched this house go dark and you let us all go to bed—" My voice broke and I despised it. “Why did you not tell me?”

He did not retreat and he did not come toward me. He stood and took it, which made it very much harder to deliver. "Because it was coming whether you slept or not. A lawful warrant, sworn on honest testimony. Nothing I hold and nothing the Queen has lent me reaches a warrant."

"That was not your choice to make."

"No. I made it anyway, and I will answer for it." His voice stayed level. There was nothing cold in it. "But answer me this first. If I had crossed the square last night and told you, what would you have done?"

I opened my mouth to say that I would have prepared. That I would have readied the children. That I would have—I closed my mouth. Because the truth stood in the room with us and would not be stared down. I would have been at Scotland Yard by eight, laying the whole history of that pistol in front of Inspector Dodson to draw the fire onto myself. He would have disbelieved every word of it, and used all of it, and I would have handed him my ruin and my brother's in the same morning.

"You see it," Steele said quietly.

I waved a dismissal at him. “Do not compound your offense by being right about it."

His lips maddeningly twitched. “I have found the two frequently arrive together."

I turned away from him and looked out at the square, at the railings. The crowd had thinned, now that the show was done. The fine, bright, ordinary morning went on, indifferent, while a black wagon carried my brother across London to a gaol.

He should have told me, no matter how he’d explained his reasoning. Even when I knew he was right. Still, I did not wish to be fair about it.

"I am not thanking you," I said at last.

"I have not asked."