She steeled herself not to pull away, even though his touch made her skin crawl. Was she sitting with pure evil? Could this man really have done those horrific things to Evelyn and the others? Looking into those eyes, she could believe it.
“I just can’t believe that such a thing happened,” she said, her voice shaking. “Who would want to hurt sweet Evelyn? She never harmed anyone. She was so kind, and she spent all her time trying to make the world a better place.”
He made a noncommittal sound, still patting her hand.
“I just don’t understand how someone could be so depraved, so completely soulless to do such a thing.”
There. She finally saw a flicker of something in those sharklike eyes. A flare of... pride?
“I think it’s rather amazing that he’s been doing this for months, yet is no closer to being caught than he was in the beginning,” he said, and his tacit approval of the monster made her even more convinced that he was the monster.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she couldn’t help but jab. “I think that the police might have a few ideas about who he might be.”
His eyes sharpened. “Well, I certainly hope they catch him then.”
Do you?
She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the tips of her gloves, wondering what else she could say to try and force him to make some sort of confession. She was treading a dangerous line, and while she didn’t want to fall off the edge, she also didn’t want to leave here without something she could use to make sure this bastard didn’t hurt anyone else.
“You must be feeling sad as well, aren’t you?” she finally asked. “Since you and Evelyn were all but promised to each other as children?”
He finally took his hand off hers. “Pardon me?”
“I always thought you and Evelyn had been promised to each other. Was that not the case?” she asked, forging on, despite the sudden ice in his tone.
“Certainly not. If so, it would have happened years ago, don’t you think?” He smiled but there was no warmth behind it. “I think we both know that your sister was not suited to be the wife of a viscount.”
The utter disdain with which he said the last infuriated her, even if it was partly true, but she fought to keep her anger at bay. She couldn’t let him know that this was anything other than what it appeared—two old friends discussing a tragic loss.
“Perhaps. It’s just that before she died, Evelyn told her friend she was going to meet the man whose proposal she’d turned down. I didn’t know who that could be. She never mentioned that anyone had proposed to her.”
He pushed to his feet and strode across the room, looking out the window at the garden below. “Is that why you truly came here today? To accuse me of being the man she met with?” His voice still sounded calm, but she could tell that she’d rattled him a bit.
“No, of course not. I told you, I came here because I just needed someone to talk to and you said that if I needed anything...” She trailed off, suddenly worried that she’d played the wrong card. Until now, he hadn’t known that they had any reason to suspect him.
“Evelyn must have made someone very angry,” he said, turning to look at her, his eyes narrowed. “I heard what happened to her. How she was brutalized. I don’t think someone would do that if they hadn’t harbored a grudge against her for a very long time.”
She swallowed. Was that a confession? Could she get him to say more?
“Whoever she met with must have had a very fragile ego,” she pressed on. “What sort of man would be so upset about something that must have happened half a dozen years ago? If she thought him unworthy of her then, I’m certain she felt the same now. She must have told him to quit bothering her, that she had no intention of becoming his wife, and he killed her for it.”
“Evelyn never did know when to guard her tongue,” he snapped, his careful façade cracking and letting her see what lay beneath his foppish exterior. It terrified her. She never should have come here alone, and she wondered if that had been Evelyn’s last thought as well.
* * *
SEBASTIAN HAD THOUGHT about his evidence, or lack of it, all night, but the next day, after doing a few pressing things that couldn’t wait, he’d hailed a hackney and instructed the driver to head toward Scotland Yard. His mind whirled with what he’d say to Blackstone when he got there.
How did one accuse a man’s brother of such horrific crimes? Especially since he had so little proof to offer.
Danbury’s first name started with M. He was a member of The Viper Club. He’d possibly proposed to Evelyn Lindsay, though no one knew for certain. And someone matching his description had bought the lock that had been on the gardener’s shed. The only real damning evidence he had was the diary entry, and that only made sense if Blackstone believed Evelyn had been referring to his brother.
The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to accuse a viscount of being a horrific killer on such flimsy circumstantial evidence.
Still, his gut was screaming at him that he was right. And how could he ever live with himself if yet another girl was murdered when he could have done something to stop it?
By the time he got to Scotland Yard, he’d almost talked himself out of it, only to find that Blackstone hadn’t shown up that day, saying he was going to be working on something at home.
The irregularity of that spiked his suspicions once more. Blackstone never missed work, and the fact that he’d done so now only solidified Sebastian’s theory that Blackstone suspected Danbury, too, and was trying to stop him.