Evan jumped at the pounding of the carriage window and was surprised to see Apollo there.
“He’s gone,” Apollo said grimly, as he pressed a sheaf of papers into Evan’s hands. He scanned the words on the paper in disbelief. He was looking at his father’s signature on a legal agreement, releasing the control of the duchy fully to Apollo and Evan.
“He signed them?” Evan asked, shocked. He leafed through the pages and saw that his father had indeed signed everything they’d left him last night. Every document. He’d also enclosed a note addressed to them both.
It was a resentful diatribe disparaging his sons for their vindictiveness but in the end admitting defeat. There was also confirmation that the Duke of Annan had sent a letter to the House of Lords and Scottish Parliament, recognizing Apollo as his heir apparent.
The story to be deployed among Edinburgh drawing rooms in the coming days was that due to his declining health, the duke would forthwith be spending most of his time in the South of France and therefore would relinquish the management of the duchy to his sons.
“He’s gone to the house in Nice, and from what he says in the letter it seems he intends to stay there indefinitely. The authorization to transfer the deed to the distillery to you is in there too.”
“I don’t understand,” he said woodenly, and Apollo heaved a sigh.
“The duchess is truly gone. I have confirmation she boarded a train to London with the Italian attaché this morning.” One day Evan would have to extract from his brother how it was that he was made privy to all this information, but now there were more urgent things at hand.
He knew he ought to be feelingsomething. He finally had everything he’d ever wanted. He’d won. He should be elated, but the niggling feeling that something was amiss would not go away.
“The fire,” Evan said as things started becoming clearer. If his father was giving up, if he accepted defeat, then...
“I don’t think it was him, Evan.” The tendrils of fear that had been sliding up his spine since he saw the papers gripped him all at once. He had missed something. Something vital, and he somehow knew it meant Luz Alana was not safe.
“I’ve got to go look in on Luz,” he said, thumping the roof of the carriage to alert the coachman.
“Is there anyone who would want to hurt you or Luz Alana?” asked Apollo with urgency, just as one of the men Evan had left at the site of the fire arrived on a horse, riding at a breakneck speed. He practically leaped off the animal as soon as the horse came to a stop.
“Sir,” he yelled, his fist extended in front of him as he ran toward the carriage. “We found this in one of the warehouses.”
In the palm of the younger man’s hand was a silver cufflink, the initialsPCetched delicately on its face. Suddenly, everything became clear. He knew who’d done this.
He should have killed him when he’d had the chance.
“I have to go,” he told Apollo.
“Wait! What do you need?” His brother grabbed his arm, not letting him go, and Evan’s throat closed in gratitude.
“Notify the constabulary and tell them to send men to my house and to Luz’s office on Princes Street. Send someone to check with the guards at her bottling plant in Leith.”
Apollo clapped him on the back and brought him in for an embrace. “Go. I’m right behind you.”
Afterward, Evan barely remembered the carriage ride. In his life he’d experienced many moments of fear, but in the twenty minutes it took to get to Heriot Row, Evan thought his mind would break. He stared at the papers that gave him uncontested ownership of the distillery—the very thing only weeks before he thought he’d give almost anything to possess—and tossed them aside.
Evan was no stranger to loss, but until those moments alone in the carriage, praying to a god he scarcely knew how to talk to, he didn’t understand what it was to face the possibility of absolute and total despair. Losing his mother and his brother had been terrible, but Evan had kept his will to fight on, to see justice done. The mere prospect of a world, a life, without Luz Alana engulfed him in such darkness that he was not sure he could bear it. He’d gladly burn Braeburn Hall to ashes and scatter them to the four winds without a moment’s thought if it meant finding Luz Alana safe and sound at home.
If that bastard Childers dared touch a single hair on her head Evan would tear him limb from limb with his own hands.
Needing something to distract himself with, he revisited the plan they’d made before he left the house. She was supposed to get Clarita, then pack and wait for him at home. That secured her sister, while he took care of the rum. She’d told him many times that there were three things that she must know were safe: her sister, her business and—
Her grandmother’s recipe book.
Evan didn’t bother rapping his fists on the carriage roof but stuck his head out and yelled, “Let’s take Princes Street on the way to the house. I want to stop by Lady Luz’s office.” The driver shouted down his understanding and within seconds set them on the new course.
“Where is she?” Evan flew out of the carriage and found Clint standing by the door.
“My lord, Lady Luz asked me to bring her to fetch one of her books.”
“Is the guard I had here up there with her?”
Clint blanched. “No, my lord, Lady Luz said he must’ve been helping with the fire.”
