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The words cleared the fog in Lark’s mind. Understanding snapped into place. His mother had been a victim. His father, a captain, had paid a man named Sneath to assist him in locking her up. Lark was in motion before the next thought formed. She could be there yet.

He hurled himself from the coach past the duke and duchess, intent on reaching the hospital entrance and pounding the door down. As he reached the steps, Wenlocke snagged his arm in an iron grip, hauled him back, and pinned him against a stone pillar marking the opening in the railing. Lark tried to shake him off, but could not break Wenlocke’s hold.

“I take it,” said Wenlocke, “that you remembered something.”

Lark’s chest heaved, a muscle throbbed in his jaw. His breath came and went in gusts. He worked to free the words in his head. “You were right. My mother did not go voluntarily.”

“Good man.” Wenlocke did not release him at once.

“What if she is in there?” Lark asked, the words a hoarse whisper from his constricted throat.

“We will get her out.”

For a moment Lark simply stared blindly, as if bricks and stone could be peeled back to reveal his mother. Then his gaze returned to Wenlocke, a man who knew what it was to be a captive. Wenlocke had said we as if they were again rooftop companions.

“Pardon me.” Lark shuddered. “I thought I was prepared for…anything.”

Wenlocke released his hold and stepped back.

They returned to the coach, but Wenlocke gave no signal to drive on. Both he and the duchess regarded Lark somberly. “Can you tell us what you remembered?”

Lark repeated the words that had echoed in his head. Wenlocke congratulated him again.

“We will begin tomorrow. If there are any patients who have remained in care since you were abandoned, we will find them. If your mother is not among them, we will check the hospital’s admittance records for the year you came to us.”

“I don’t know her name,” Lark said.

“You know that your father was a captain. You know he had help from a man named Sneath. We will question any staff from that time who remain. Someone may remember the unusual circumstances of your mother’s admission. I expect that when she recovered her senses, she protested her confinement.” He paused. “If she left the hospital, there will be a record of her leaving.”

“And the authorities will just open their doors and their books to our scrutiny and allow the hospital staff to be questioned?” Lark asked. He still liked the idea of pounding down the door.

The duchess gave him a gentle smile and tucked her hand through her husband’s arm. “He is a duke, you know, and dukes are quite looked up to by heads of institutions that depend on charity. Never underestimate the power of a duke with funds to bestow.”

“If we have no luck tomorrow with our first inquiries,” said Wenlocke, “we’ll find fellows to do more record checking, parish registers, Navy and Army rolls. Do you remember Finch? He’s a clerk in a law office now and knows other clerks who are always hungry for a bit of extra work. And—” His wife checked the rush of her husband’s thoughts by kissing his cheek. “That is,” he finished, “if you want to continue the quest to find your mother and find your people.”

The search for her, for them, had consumed Lark since the great fire. Now he saw that his search had been a selfish one. His only thought had been to prove himself a gentleman. He had never imagined that his mother’s suffering had led to his abandonment.

Wenlocke signaled his driver, and the coach began to move. By the time the coach reached his lodging, Lark knew only that he had to make sure that his mother, if alive, was not confined to that hospital or another. Then, it would be time to decide whether he wanted the whole truth about his past. Before Viv Bradish, he would not have hesitated. Before Viv Bradish, he had wanted the truth to raise him up. Now he needed the truth for his mother’s sake whatever the cost.

Wenlocke stretched a hand across the coach, and Lark took it. “You’re back, man. We’re glad.”

The duchess added her smile. “You are not a lost boy anymore,” she said. “You’re one of the duke’s men, always welcome in our house.”

Lark climbed out of the coach into the night. The coach rumbled off, a brief disturbance in the quiet street. Astonishment kept him standing on the flagstones. Wenlocke’s powerful grandfather had tried repeatedly to deny his grandson’s legitimacy, to erase his very existence, but Wenlocke had refused to be erased. In time, the truth had come to light. Now Wenlocke offered the same chance to Lark, the chance to find out who he truly was. And with that knowledge he would go to Viv.