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“Brilliant. So then we know what happened to Evelyn after she survived theVictoriadisaster! She returned to Britain?”
I rest the family tree on my knee while I scavenge for a few more papers, which I lay down one by one.
“This is the amount Evelyn received from the Northern Star Line. This is the receipt for the passage she booked two weeks later, a one-way crossing back to England. Which, by the way, is fucking ballsy of this girl. Imagine almost drowning at sea and then turning around and boarding another ship? Hard-core.”
Sophie laughs. “Indeed it is.”
I slap down another paper. “This is a page from the diary of Josephine and Evelyn’s mother. It was in the original paperwork Ruby gave me but didn’t jump out at me because I was more focusedon Josephine than her little sister. But see here? Mrs. Farnham laments how Evelyn has chosen not to return to the employ of the Tulleys, nor is she choosing to remain in England. In fact, Evelyn doesn’t even visit her mother upon her return to England. She gets on another boat—this one headed for Ireland.”
“To Robert?” Sophie breathes.
“Yes. And no. This part tripped me up for a while before I figured it out. In Catherine Kerr’s paperwork, I found a birth certificate for who I believe is Josephine and William’s son. The date of birth listed lines up with when William booked their last-minute passage on theVictoria. The child’s name is Alexander, and his parents are listed as Evelyn and Henry.”
A groove appears in her forehead. “And we believe Henry is Robert?”
“Judging by this”—I hand her a copy of a small family portrait Catherine Kerr found in her attic— “I’d say so.”
The portrait shows a young woman, eerily similar in appearance to Josephine, and a man in his midtwenties, eerily similar to the paintings I’ve seen of Robert Tulley.
“I think he was living in Ireland under an assumed name when Evelyn tracked him down. I wonder if she already knew how to find him,” I muse. “He may have told Josephine where he was going after she rejected him and chose his brother. Anyway, and this is all supposition at this point, but I think Evelyn showed up on Robert’s doorstep with his brother’s infant son. She couldn’t risk taking the baby home to her own family, because she knew her mother would take the child right to the Tulleys. And she also knew the Tulleys would never love or care for William’s bastard son with the maid.”
“You believe Robert, now called Henry, took her in.”
“Not only that, but he married her.” I lay down another page. “This is a wedding announcement in a small local newspaper of a small Irish village, heralding the union of Evelyn Farnham and Henry Brown.”
Sophie’s entire body tenses.
It takes a moment for what I’d said to register. When it does, she stares at me in confusion mingled with disbelief.
“Did you say Henry Brown?”
The enormous smile I’ve been fighting this entire time breaks free. “That is precisely what I said.”
She shakes her head. Stunned. “But…how…? I don’t understand.”
“Robert Tulley changed his name to Henry Brown after Josephine broke his heart. Also, he was being pressured to marry a royal princess and wanted none of it. I suspect he had every intention of living the rest of his life alone until Evelyn came to him for help. They proceeded to raise William and Josephine’s son as their own and ended up having four other children. One of those kids was Amanda Brown, and she’s Catherine Kerr’s mother. But the firstborn son, William’s son…that son, Alexander Brown, was— ”
“My grandfather,” Sophie finishes, her breath catching.
“Your grandfather,” I confirm. “Who had one son of his own—your dad. Is it safe to say your father is Irish?”
“He is. Yes. He came to London in his late teens.”
Once again, I beam at my brilliant sleuthing. It’s cocky, yes. But after an entire night spent researching this stuff, I’m allowed to gloat a little.
“Grandpa Alex was William Tulley’s son?” She’s shaking her head repeatedly, visibly floored.
“I believe so. You told me your grandfather is the one who got your dad the job with Andrew Tulley?”
She still appears astounded by everything I told her. “He did, yes. When Dad left Ireland, he worried he wouldn’t find work, but Grandad assured him he had connections.”
“Robert had connections,” I correct. “He kept his distance from the Tulleys after he moved away, but clearly he hadn’t cut ties altogether. After all, he did speak to Lawrence Tulley’s investigator. It’s not a stretch to believe he may have maintained some contactwith his brother Lawrence over the years and therefore not a stretch that the Browns and Tulleys remained somewhat connected.”
“This…is a lot to process.”
“God, I bet. I’m sorry to drop all this on you without warning. I couldn’t even believe it when I pieced it all together.”
“Perhaps you’re wrong.” She voices it as a question.
