“He was talking about his master’s habit of wandering at night, in the city after dark and on that roof at his estate. He mentioned that usually it relaxed him. Calmed him. But not always. At times he would return angry, talking to Edkins but really to himself. And he said that the night before the duke died he came down from the roof muttering about how they acted like he was a bank they never had to repay, how after everything he had given the boy, more was expected for that damned invention. Well, the invention part made it obvious of whom he spoke. It sounded like he met with Kevin, either that evening or that night. Only Kevin was supposed to be out of the country.”

“Of course you checked if perhaps he really wasn’t.” He slammed his fist on the mantel. “Damnation, Minerva, why didn’t you tell me this?”

An invisible veil fell over her face. Her expression dulled into utter blandness. She looked at a spot on the wall, not him.

She had retreated, totally. From the conversation, and him. She was withdrawing from anger, the way she had learned to with Finley.

He strode over and knelt beside her. He took her hands. “I apologize. Forgive me. I should not let my reaction to this news fall on you.”

She did not pull her hands away. Eventually she looked down at them, then at him. Something of her spirit reentered her eyes. “I knew it would trouble you. I thought to spare you that for a while longer. Eventually it would come out, of course. You yourself would have checked each story regarding where they were, now that you know it was not an accident. I did not need to be the bearer of bad news.”

He kissed her hands, not thinking whether he should. It touched him that she thought to spare him, for a while longer.

“Also,” she said. “I do not think he did it.”

“Don’t you now?”

She shook her head. “He is not the sort to.”

“There is no sort, Minerva.”

“I disagree.” She leaned forward, close enough to be kissed if he chose to. Which he didn’t, much as he would like to. “Now, as long as I have you on your knees and feeling bad, you can tell me what you did not share with me.”

He would have laughed, except that she was very serious. “A small detail.”

“How small?”

“A spot of information, nothing more.”

“I will decide if it was a spot or a large blotch.”

He rested back on his heels. Not that he expected a blow to come, of course. “Whether Kevin visited him is yet to be confirmed. However, he did have a visitor.”

“He did? Who?”

“A woman. That is all I know, and all that was seen. Not her face, or even much of the rest of her.”

“Who told you?”

“Edkins.”