Page 64 of A Duke's Lustful Portrait
“Don’t you think there is anything wrong with what you and the rest of the society are doing?”
Sinclair turned his dark eyes on Sebastian. There was warning in them, and Sebastian bit his tongue.
“Think of it this way. We are righting the wrongs done to those in our brotherhood. Nothing more, nothing less. Those who are on the receiving end are only getting what they deserve.”
“Did the man you kill deserve it?” he asked.
He raised his brandy to his lips and held it there, hiding the tension in his face. He didn’t know whether he wanted Sinclair to correct him or not, but his entire body thrummed with the possibility that the truth was about to be revealed.
“Actually, it was a woman in my case. Or, more accurately, a slattern.”
Sebastian baulked and cleared his throat. “A slattern, you say?”
Sinclair chuckled yet again. His memory of the woman was entirely different to Sebastian’s, but Sebastian could not imagine his mother as a loose woman. And even if she were, did that make her a valid candidate for murder?
“Indeed! And a lower-class slattern than we’re used to, it’s got to be said. I really don’t know what Lord Jeffries saw in her. In him, she saw money and a way off the streets, of course.”
Sebastian almost choked on his brandy.Lord Jeffries?Surely his mother would not have been involved with alord! He would have known. He would have noticed something. Except he had been just six years old and had no knowledge of how the world worked. If his mother was somehow involved with this Lord Jeffries, whomever he’d been, he was certain there was a valid reason—food for their table or a roof over their heads.
Or maybe even love, just as he loved his darling Arabella.
“Were they having an affair then?” he asked, though his gentle probing was not required. Sinclair was happy to share, lost in his own memories.
“She was a young, pretty thing, I suppose,” he said as much to himself as to Sebastian. “And such a waste. A body like hers, she could have been put to good use in the Lord’s Society, but old Jeffries kept her for himself until it all went wrong.”
Stay calm, Sebastian told himself.No matter what he says. This is not the moment.
“Why did she have to die?” he asked instead. He could hear the pleading in his own voice. He only wished Sinclair hadn’t noticed it.
“Oh, that!” Sinclair laughed. “The stupid woman thought she could blackmail Jeffries! After all he’d given her and that bastard son of hers, as well. You would have thought the trollop would have known a good thing when she saw it, but no, like all sewer rats, she wanted more than she was worth.”
“What do you mean,blackmail?”
“It’s an easy enough word to understand, Sebastian. Extorted money in order to keep a secret. When Jeffries tried to end their affair in a bid to renew his love with his wife—sentimental old fool—the slattern threatened to tell Lady Jeffries everything if he did not provide her with a rather large sum of money.”
Sebastian forced himself to breathe slowly and calmly. He couldn’t imagine his mother having an affair with anyone, let alone blackmailing them afterwards. She must have been truly desperate, and she was killed for it.
“She said she had proof of their affair,” Sinclair continued, “though what that could be, I do not know.”
“The boy, perhaps?”
Sebastian had no idea who his father was. Could he have been of noble birth after all?
“No.” Sinclair shook his head firmly. “The brat was around long before Jeffries even met the woman. He’d pay him a farthing to leave them alone for the evening. The boy thought it was Christmas every time Jeffries had an itch to scratch.”
Sinclair snorted with laughter, the idea absurd, but Sebastian wracked his mind. He had flashes of memory, though nothing tangible, nothing real. He saw a coin rotating as it flew through the air. He could see his mother’s pleading face, the pain in her eyes. He pictured the cruel smile of an unknown man.
Could it all be true?
Blood rushed through his ears, deafening him to the room. More came back—his mother telling him that sometimes, grown-ups had to do things they didn’t want to do, the cheeks streaked with tears when he returned. But as the pieces fell together, he feltmoreangry, not less. The more he thought of it, the more overwhelmed he became.
“And you murdered her, did you?” Sebastian snapped, his fury balancing on a knife’s edge. “In cold blood? As punishment? When she had so much life to live—and a small boy to care for, at that!”
Sinclair turned to look at him for the first time since he began his little retelling, and he looked at Sebastian with a furrowed brow, confusion written across his features.
“There’s no need to take it so personally, my boy. She was nothing to you! Mind you, it was in the north. Perhaps you were acquainted.”
“Sometimes, Sinclair, I believe you are blind to what is right in front of you.”
