From the end of the table, Valentine spoke up. “I told them of your history with your cousin.”
That wasn’t an affirmation that they believed him, but it wasn’t a disavowal, either. “When did you do so?” Callum asked, wondering just how much his oldest friend had revealed of his private embarrassment and shame. Did they know how Ross used to lock him in the cellar at Castle Stratmore whenever the family would visit his father’s estate in Scotland, or how Ross had given him regular beatings as a lad before Callum became quick enough to evade him, or how in the first year after Ross had come to live with them, he had blamed every mishap in the house on Callum, or how Callum had foolishly let him, thinking his poor cousin Ross, who’d lost his parents, simply needed someone to be there for him. If a vase broke or one of his father’s coin bags went missing, Callum took the blame. If a gun wasn’t cleaned properly or a horse was ridden too hard, Callum took the blame. And when he finally decided he no longer wanted to do so, that Ross was not worth it, it was too late. No one believed him when he tried to tell the truth.
“When you first disappeared,” Valentine said, “I was wary of your cousin and suspected he could possibly have something to do with it, so I reached out to Carrington, who insisted Greybourne would want to help because the man considered you a friend.”
Callum, frowning, looked at the duke. “You do?”
Greybourne nodded. “You took a knife in the face to save my wife. That earns you my friendship for life.”
“Carrington and Greybourne,” Valentine continued, “convinced me that Beckford here—” Valentine motioned to Gabriel Beckford, who was not only co-owner of the Orcus Society with Carrington but was also known as the King of the Underworld “—could be trusted with anything I told him about you and your past with your cousin. He could also be a definite asset to discovering the identities of any unsavory men Ross might have hired to do any dirty work for him in relation to getting rid of you.”
Kilgore nodded. He only knew Beckford from the club and a few encounters with him when Callum was having his self-induced troubles with Carrington, but the one thing Callum had ascertained about Beckford was that he was a man of few words. Callum suspected that was because he didn’t care for people to know too much about him. He also knew that Carrington considered Beckford to be a close and loyal friend.
Valentine set down the drink that he’d been holding and continued. “It was my immediate opinion when you disappeared that your cousin had killed you because he wanted your title, as you and I had discussed on numerous occasions over drinks after fights.”
It was slightly gratifying to know there had been someone out there who had known him well enough, had known his past well enough, that they did not dismiss Ross as the culprit of the misfortune that had befallen Callum. And yet…
“Clearly, at some point,” Callum said, staring at Valentine, a feeling of betrayal and of being failed stirring, “you came to believe the lies my cousin told you and dismissed all I had ever shared with you.”
A distinctly pained look settled on Valentine’s face, and when his friend reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, Callum knew he had hit the mark. Valentine had always pinched the bridge of his nose when Callum said something that disturbed him, ever since the day Callum had broken it in a fight in the ring. The marquess let out a long sigh, and his gaze became undeniably regretful. “I admit that I came to believe Ross had nothing to do with your disappearance.”
“How long did it take for my cousin to convince you that it was my own actions that caused whatever had occurred?” Calum bit out, the feeling of betrayal rising. He’d directed the question solely to Valentine, but now he swept his gaze slowly over Greybourne and Carrington, who both looked distinctly uncomfortable and guilty, and then started to pass it quickly over Beckford. Something in the man’s eyes, an understanding of the betrayal Callum was feeling, caused Callum to linger for a moment before focusing his anger back on his friend.
“I understand your ire at me, Cal,” Valentine said, invoking the nickname his friend had given him after their first fight in the Pugilist Society at Cambridge. “But you have to understand that your cousin went out looking for youdailyfor two months. He appeared deeply upset and worried, and he broached the past and how he’d treated you before I could even bring it up. He said how ashamed he felt, how wrong he’d been to do the things he’d done, and he said he had done it out of jealousy, out of wanting to have a parent to love him, as you had your father.” Valentine shrugged helplessly. “I began to question my theory, and when he found your body—”
Callum unclenched his teeth to say, “Very convenient thathefound it, yes? That none of you were there with him. In fact, was he alone?”
“No,” Carrington spoke. “His coachman was with him. A man named Shepherd.”
Callum nodded. “Yes, Shepherd is someone I already intended to speak with to see if I can get him to admit what Ross did.” He also intended to hunt down the men who had kidnapped him. He had the names Trask and Tate in his head, and he was almost certain that it was a memory of the men speaking to each other on the journey from London to Scotland.
“Do you have any proof of all this, Kilgore?” Beckford asked. Callum started to answer, but the man interrupted. “I ask because we looked for proof of Valentine’s theory and could find none. And as for Shepherd, he’s dead.”
Callum’s blood froze in his veins. “What?”
Beckford nodded, as did the other men. “He died in a carriage accident a month after the body presumed to be yours was found.”
“Is that not proof?” Callum demanded, his tone and temper rising. He’d expected resistance, but he’d also expected some loyalty. But damn him to hell, maybe he didn’t deserve loyalty from any of them—except Valentine. He’d not let Valentine off the hook. He could bloody well rot there, and having decided that, Callum gave Valentine a glare he hoped froze his bollocks, but typical Val, his only reaction was a tic in his jaw. Still, that was a lot for a man like Valentine who’d been abused as a child and had learned early on not to show feelings or risk another beating.
“I would normally say yes,” Valentine said slowly, “but your cousin was not in England when it occurred. I checked. He was in Scotland.”
“And I asked around about the accident,” Beckford said. “The coachman’s ladybird had left him, and it seems he drove quite foxed after departing, as it turns out, my club. He ran off the road, and the carriage flipped on him. Hardly a nefarious plot coordinated by your cousin.”
“We want to help you,” Valentine said, “but if you go around slinging these accusations at your cousin, people will think you are mad.”
“You want proof,” Callum roared, shoving his chair back and slamming his fists on the circular table where they all sat. No one spoke. No one moved, but the decanter and the glasses rattled. He had not wanted to give them all the gory details, but… “Yes, I have made a great many mistakes in my life. I have imbibed too greatly in liquor, women, and my own self-pity, and purposefully thumbed my responsibilities to my family. But I came around, damn it, and I have not gambled once since the day I lost my unentailed land to your bloody half-wit half-brother, Carrington.”
Carrington nodded.
“I have tried to atone for the things I did to you and to your wife—”
“You more than atoned,” Carrington said.
Now Callum nodded. “And I tried to aid your wife when she needed me,” he said to Greybourne, who tilted his head to Callum in acknowledgment. “I paid off the less than scrupulous people I was indebted to years ago, though that left a great many scrupulous people I still owed. As far as I know, the men who might hate me, you two among them,” he said, motioning to Greybourne and Carrington, “either have too much honor or do not have the bollocks to do what was done to me. I was taken from a carriage, stabbed, drugged, whisked away to the remotest part of Scotland, and there I was left at a workhouse jail, masquerading as an asylum, where they told me day after bloody day that I was not who I bloody well know I am. They had two doctors’ signatures pronounce me mentally unstable and committed me to the asylum for life as a Mr. Selkirk for the crime of murdering a woman.”
The only sound in the room was Callum’s harsh breathing. “Someone damn well wanted to be rid of me, and someone damn well planned it. And that someone took my crest ring and my clothes before I ever arrived at the asylum so that they could use it all to prove I was dead after they found a body to use.”
He paused to inhale and slow his hammering pulse and was perversely gratified to see everyone wearing matching expressions of shock except for Beckford, who wore the interested expression of someone listening to a good story. What that said for the horrors Beckford had seen growing up on the streets, Callum felt certain he did not want to know. He had plenty of his own horrors rattling around in his skull.
