Page 84 of A Courtship of Conspiracies
“You do not have to come,” he had said quietly.
“No,” she had replied, reaching for her gloves. “I do.”
Now, on the bridge, Kate stole a glance at James as the breeze ruffled his hair. She had never seen him so still, as though every breath he took had to pass through the space where grief had once lived.
“Lord Brenton. Lady Katherine.”
Thomas Whitlock emerged from the mist, his face hollowed by a sleepless night.
“How is he?” James finally asked, his voice rougher than Kate expected.
“The surgeon removed the ball. Henry will live.” Thomas did not soften the words. “Though I cannot say what sort of life remains to a man who traded honor for power.”
“Did you know Henry was an agent?” James asked, his voice raw as Kate took hold of his hand. “Did you know what he had later become?”
Thomas rested his hands on the rail. “I knew Westmarch had recruited him as an agent. I understood enough of that life to know better than to ask him for particulars. And before you ask, yes, I guessed about you. You were too often at his side and too often absent when he was. Either you belonged to that world, or you were close enough to understand it. It was enough, at least, for me to risk trusting you.”
James turned fully toward him. “You sent the list.”
“I did.”
“Where did you get it?” Kate asked.
“I found it beneath a loose floorboard after the river,” Thomas said. “I knew enough of Henry’s habits to know where he hid things. I recognized the list as meaningful, possibly dangerous. At the time, I thought it was part of whatever work he had left unfinished.”
His voice lowered. “Then small irregularities caught my attention. A locked drawer in his writing desk had been opened. An acquaintance insisted I had been on Oxford Street on a night I was nowhere near the place. Another swore he saw me by the dry docks a week later. At first I thought little of it. Then I remembered how often Henry and I had been mistaken for each other, especially from a distance.”
“So, the man at the bookshop, the man below my window, was you?” Kate asked.
Thomas nodded. “The bookshop, yes. I wanted to ensure you were safe.”
The window, then, had been Henry. Kate shivered, tightening her grip on James’s hand.
“You believed he had faked his own death,” James said.
“Not at first,” Thomas said. “But given all of that, and since the river never yielded his body, I began to wonder whether my brother was truly dead.”
Pain, raw and deep, passed over James’s features as he watched the river gently lap against the stones below. Kate remained close, grateful he did not have to stand in this place alone.
“How did he do it?” she asked.
Thomas let out a sigh. “I am not certain. But Henry laid out the scene well enough to fool us all.”
James gripped the iron railing with his free hand until his knuckles paled.
“At first, it seemed as though he had been investigating The Sentinel. Then I remembered what he had become before he vanished, the rising bitterness and contempt, all his talk about how things needed to change, and I grew to fear the list meant something worse.”
“You are the one who marked it,” Kate said.
Thomas nodded once. “I did.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I blamed much of what I had seen on grief. On wanting him alive badly enough to find proof where there was none. Then, a few weeks after the river, a lad approached me while I was in the West End on a job. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he handed me a sealed letter and called me Sentinel. I took the note, but before I could correct or question him, the lad had bolted.”
“What did the note say?” James asked.
“There were only three lines: The warning has been delivered. The Warden expects no further disobedience. No action required.”
