“You owe me the truth, Sir Alfred,” he began again, taking care to hold back any note of the desperation currently flooding through him. “After all I sacrificed for you. For Turkey.”

Sir Alfred’s expression faltered at that. Perhaps he had a heart after all. “Her husband was a duplicitous scoundrel,” he said reluctantly. “But I needed information to prove it, and she agreed to spy on him. After she took up with your father, she still returned to the count on occasion to stay in his good graces. He refused to give her up completely, and he was a powerful man. They needed his approval.”

Alec inhaled. It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know, but it was still difficult to hear Sir Alfred confirm it.

“Somehow the count found out,” Sir Alfred continued. “He demanded Maria leave Edward or else he would have him thrown in prison. Edward was already regarded as a troublemaker because of his irritating habit of championing the cause of the common man. One word from the count was all it would take. There was no way he would have survived the filthy place, so Maria left.” Then Sir Alfred looked away. “It…it was not an easy decision for her to make.

“But if your father was imprisoned, she would have been forced to go back to the count anyway. And she would have lost you. Appeasing him to keep you with one parent seemed like the better option. And the count was an old man. He could have died at any time.”

Alec squeezed his eyes shut. The count had ended up outliving his mother by two years.

“But neither of us could have predicted your father’s reaction,” Sir Alfred said softly. “I couldn’t tell him why she had really left, of course, but I did try to make him see reason. How all he needed was to wait, that she would return someday, but he was weaker than I realized. God rest his soul, wherever it is.”

And now Alec had done much the same to Lottie—told her a despicable lie in the name of saving her. Alec let out a bitter huff and opened his eyes to see Sir Alfred actually looking remorseful. Alec never expected to feel pity for Sir Alfred until he was faced with an old man who had nothing but a long life full of manipulation to look back on. It was a dire warning of a future Alec wanted no part of.

“I cared about them both, you know. And you. It was an ugly business, what happened.” Then he paused. “I suppose…I suppose I felt partly responsible,” he admitted with great reluctance. “So I took you when she asked me to. But you should know that your mother did not want to leave you. She did the best she could given the confines of her marriage.”

“And yet you would have forced your own niece into a similar arrangement.”

Sir Alfred seemed startled by the comparison, but then nodded. “It appears so.”