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“Cornmeal mash—with molasses. Some of the men had spoons. The rest of us—” Levi stared down at his fingers, as though he could still feel the grit of it. “These cakes are good.”

“Sally made them for you. She was concerned for you, as were we all.” Ezra looked pugnaciously at Alexander, as though daring him to contradict him. “The servants are very fond of Levi. Everyone is very fond of Levi. He should never have been taken to that place.”

Levi scratched one arm. Through the rips in his shirt, Alexander could see the raised bumps of bug bites. “There was a man—he called himself Paul—he said he’d been there two years. He said the rats had eaten his shirt off.”

“You’re not there now and you’re not going back. We’ll see this sorted.” Ezra’s knuckles were white on the edge of the table. “It’s nonsense, of course. Levi was here with me that night. The night the girl disappeared. John McComb will swear to it. John McComb the architect.”

“I am well acquainted with Mr. McComb.” Mr. McComb had designed a lighthouse for Alexander—for the government, that was—and done it very well after Alexander had set him straight on a few points. “It’s no use his swearing to anything unless it’s true.”

“Are you implying it’s not?” Ezra blustered.

“The prosecution will. Mr. Weeks, you must be aware, sentiment runs strongly against your brother.” Alexander held up a hand, forestalling Ezra’s protests. “I place no faith in the verdict of the mob, but many do. Our task is that much the harder.”

“They’ve been whipping up sentiment against the boy, using him as a scapegoat.” Ezra Weeks’s Massachusetts accent was very strong. He wasn’t, Alexander thought, that much older than his brother, for all that he affected an air of authority.

Alexander could just remember being that young. He had thought himself on top of the world in those golden days of the Revolution, certain he had all the answers, certain that industry and truth would win the day. It felt like a very long time ago.

“My goal, Mr. Weeks, is not merely to cast doubt on your brother’s guilt but to prove his entire innocence so he might walk back into the world a whole man, without a shadow cast upon him.”

Ezra grunted. “The entire thing is ridiculous. If that Ring fellow couldn’t control his niece—”

“Cousin.” Levi looked up from crumbling his cake to bits. “She wasn’t his niece. She was his wife’s cousin.”

Ezra scowled. “Niece . . . cousin . . . What does it matter? Eat your cake.”

Levi looked past him at Alexander. Despite the fire behind him, he shook faintly with cold. “They didn’t want her. No one wanted her. That was what Elma said. She had a father but she’d never met him—he’d gone before she was born. He’d never married her mother.”

Bastard. Alexander had had it flung at him time and again.

Alexander cleared his throat. “Elma Sands’s father. Is he still alive?”

Levi nodded. “She told me she had a father in Charleston and someday she’d go to him.”

That past June, on a tiny island in the middle of the Caribbean, Alexander’s father had drawn his last breath. He’d accepted the money Alexander had sent him twice a year—but he’d never accepted Alexander.

It was foolish, Alexander knew. Eliza’s father had taken Alexander in as if he were his own. Alexander had his own children, children who knew how much they were wanted—he’d sat by their bedsides hour by hour when they were sick, played with them, prayed for them. But when he thought of that old man dying alone in Saint Vincent, Alexander felt . . . cheated. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. That someday his father would recognize him, acknowledge him, apologize to him. Say he’d never meant to leave them.

But he had. He’d left them. And now it was too late for amends.

“I don’t see how this is relevant,” said Ezra sharply. “The girl is dead. What does it matter if she had a dozen fathers or none?”

Alexander ignored him. He addressed himself to Levi instead. “What can you tell me about her?”

“Elma was . . . she was herself.” Levi hunched over his tea, cupping his hands around the ceramic bowl for warmth. “When they showed me—I said I recognized the dress and they asked me if I recognized the countenance—but I didn’t! I didn’t. Elma was—she was so alive. She was like strong tea on a cold morning, or punch that goes to your head. She made you feel awake, alive.”

“You know those wild spirits,” Ezra said quickly. “One minute they’re up in alt; the next they’re in the depths of melancholy. The girl probably flung herself in that damned well. Her uncle—pardon me, Levi, her cousin—was telling the whole neighborhood she’d killed herself in a love fit, until suddenly he changed his tune and decided to point the finger at Levi. I don’t know what he thinks he gets out of it.”

There was something Ezra was leaving out.

Alexander looked at Levi. “Her family says she told her cousin she meant to marry you that night. Was there any truth in that?”

Ezra jumped in before his brother could answer. “Maybe she meant to marry him. That doesn’t mean he meant to marry her. She might have fancied herself in love with the boy. He’s a fine figure of a lad, anyone would agree. Half the girls in that house fancied him, you told me so yourself, Levi. But that’s nothing to the lad’s discredit.”

“No.” Alexander let his eyes rest on Levi. The hot tea and well-stoked fire had brought some color to Levi’s cheeks. Rested, clean-shaven, there was no denying he would be a handsome lad. But there was a shadow over his countenance. There was something Levi wasn’t telling—Alexander was sure of it.

Had he offered the girl marriage? Had she gone to meet him that night?

Ezra’s voice went on, over-hearty. “Who’s to say what fits a girl like that might take? Why, you yourself said, Levi, that she’d threatened to do away with herself. With laudanum.”