“No, you only associate with and employ them.” Farah’s bravado began to fail, and she grasped it with the desperation with which someone about to be swept downriver would reach for a rope. “Your hands may appear clean, but everyone knows you’re tainted with rivers of blood.” And she’d do well to remember that.
“That is where you’re wrong, Farah. If blood needs to be spilled, it is my hands that do the spilling.” Frost glazed over any of the warmth and interest he’d shown before, and suddenly her bathwater felt chilly and stale.
“I’m not going to help you hurt anyone,” she vowed.
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” He again stood at the foot of the tub, staring down at her with his unholy eyes. “I only require that you claim what is rightfully yours.”
“Someone else has already claimed it! The rightful—”
“Deny it again, and you won’t like the consequences.” Farah was fast coming to realize that the more toneless his voice became, the more dangerous he was.
“All right, yes!” she hissed. “I am—was—Farah Leigh Townsend. But don’t you think there’s a reason I never claimed to be her? That I took on the name of someone else and a life of relative obscurity?”
“I assumed it was Warrington.”
“It’s not just Warrington. Much of my father’s wealth was obtained the same way yours was. The spoils of war, the deaths of enemies, the cloak-and-dagger of lies and espionage.”
“How do you know this?”
“I remember him and my mother fighting about it when he returned from the Crimea.” A band squeezed Farah’s chest as it always did when she thought of the past. “My parents loved me, at least, I remember them loving me. So why they would betroth me to a toad like Warrington is a complete puzzle.”
Blackwell shrugged. “Sometimes greed is stronger than love.”
“No, it isn’t,” she argued. “Not real love. Only fear is stronger than love … and even then only if you allow it to be. My parents must have been afraid of something, in trouble, somehow.”
“And then they died.”
“Precisely.” She returned the soap to the tray, and didn’t miss the glimmer of something like regret that touched his features as he watched the action.
Deciding to ignore it, Farah ran her wet fingers over eyes made tired and puffy by her prior tears. “I could never stand the idea of marrying Warrington. He was my father’s age, and always unsettled me as a child. I was told my family died of cholera … Though as I grew older I always wondered if maybe…” She let the thought trail off into the steam, unwilling to give it life with her words. Could her life be that cruel? Was everyone she loved taken from her by the evil deeds of another?
Distracted from his ire, Blackwell gripped his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “This is all beginning to make sense.”
“I don’t see how it possibly can. My head is spinning.”
“A week ago, a member of the peerage approached one of my men, Christopher Argent, about a business contract of a rather sensitive nature.” Blackwell cast her a meaningful look.
“Argent.” The name pricked Farah’s memory. “One of your friends from Newgate.”
“One of my closest business associates,” he corrected slyly. “Argent contacted me right away. A king’s fortune was offered for the disappearance of a certain employee of Scotland Yard.”
Astounded, Farah gasped. “You can’t mean…”
“You. Mrs. Farah Leigh Mackenzie. Warrington found you, after all, and he wanted you dead.”
“No.” Farah began to shiver in the tub, and Blackwell folded his arms tightly across his broad chest, as though to force them to be still.
“You see, there is no returning you to your old life,” he said victoriously. “If I hadn’t made you disappear, he would have hired someone else to do it.”
“Why would he want me dead? He already has everything he could desire, I’m no threat to him.”
“On the contrary,” Blackwell said. “You threaten everything. You could ruin everything and expose him by claiming your title.”
“But … I wasn’t going to!”
“He couldn’t be certain of that. A risk is better taken care of before an actual threat presents itself.”
Farah couldn’t believe her ears. “Is that how you conduct your affairs?”
“Absolutely.” He said this without shame or remorse, and Farah found she didn’t want to look at him anymore. She hid behind her eyelids as her thoughts raced. What did she do now? She’d been happy—well, contented in her life. She’d had a purpose and knew her place in the world. Now everything had changed. There was no going back, and yet she couldn’t see any options on how to move forward.
“I haven’t anything to prove that I am Farah Leigh Townsend,” she began. “Especially now that someone else has adopted the name. Also, a woman can’t claim the title and lands of the peerage without being married. On top of everything, I’ll have to explain why I was posing as a widow all this time, and I have no evidence of any foul play in my family’s death. I don’t even know where to begin!”
“Leave all that to me,” Blackwell offered.
Farah’s head snapped up. The way he stood, like a general surveying his massacre over a battlefield, made her uneasy. “And you’ll take care of it all for a debt to a friend a decade gone?” she asked dubiously.