Skipforth emerged from the shadows. “A letter for you, Captain Blunt.”

Ridgeway gave his butler a look of irritation. “The post? At this time of night?”

“A boy just brought it round from the Cavendish Hotel.” Skipforth handed the missive to Jasper as he stepped down into the hall. “It appears to have been misdirected.”

Jasper examined the letter. The address on the envelope had been penned in a child’s unartful scrawl. It was at once recognizable.

Charlie.

Jasper had told him to write if there was any difficulty. And with Charlie, there was always difficulty.

“One of your by-blows, I presume,” Ridgeway said.

Jasper stiffened. The description was insulting, both to his own honor and to that of the children. But it wasn’t inaccurate, not so far as society was concerned. They believed the worst of him.

Which was exactly how it had to be.

“It looks like it,” he replied.

Ridgeway’s expression of irritation grew more pronounced by the second. “Must we delay?”

“Not at all. I’ll read it in the carriage.”

Ridgeway nodded his approval. “Good man. Lady Clifford despises latecomers to her musical soirees. Claims it disrupts the performers.”

Jasper collected his hat and gloves before following Ridgeway out the door. The viscount’s carriage awaited them in the gaslit street—a black lacquered coach with the family coat of arms emblazoned in gold on the door. A liveried footman set down the steps.

Ridgeway climbed in without assistance.

Jasper followed, taking the seat across from his host. He settled himself in the corner beneath the light of the carriage lamp. As the horses sprang into motion, he opened the seal on Charlie’s letter and began to read.

Dear Sir,

The roof is leaking again. This time it leaked in the nursery right down on Daisy’s head. Mr. Beecham says I am not to burden you and that you have more important things on your mind than the likes of us. But even you would not wish Daisy to catch her death from neglect. Please send fifty pounds for repairs.

P.S. Alfred says to remind you that the roof in the workhouse did not leak.

Sincerely,

Charles X.

A muscle ticked in Jasper’s cheek as he refolded the letter and slipped it into the interior pocket of his evening jacket. He didn’t know which part was more offensive. Was it the implication he was neglectful? Or was it the suggestion that conditions in the workhouse had been superior to that at Goldfinch Hall?

No, he realized. It was neither.

The most offensive was Charlie’s signature. Charles X. As if he were still the same bastard-born boy Jasper had taken from the workhouse. A lice-ridden mite who hadn’t known his letters and who had barely been able to scratch out his mark, a single X taught to him by his similarly illiterate mother.

Charlie had been six at the time, and Alfred five.

Jasper had been little more than a lad himself then. Only five and twenty, with scant experience in handling domestic affairs. But he’d done his utmost in the circumstances. He’d sent the boys to school in the nearby village of Hardholme. Had made sure they learned to read and write.