“Aye, they did,” Ethan muttered. “Thank you.” Swiftly he dragged a coat sleeve across his eyes and found himself saying the first thing that came to mind. “You used to be fat.”

West seemed amused rather than offended. “I prefer ‘pleasingly plump.’ I was a London rake, and for your information, all true rakes are fat. We spend all our time indoors, drinking and eating. Our only exercise consists of bedding a willing wench. Or two.” He gave a nostalgic sigh. “God. There are times when I miss those days. Fortunately I can take a train to London when the need arises.”

“There are no women in Hampshire?” Ethan asked.

West gave him a speaking glance. “You’re suggesting I bed the innocent daughter of a local squire? Or a wholesome milkmaid? I need a woman with skills, Ransom.” He wandered to a space next to Ethan and braced his back on the wall in an identical posture. As his gaze followed Ethan’s to the towering portrait, he looked sardonic. “That painting captures him perfectly. A member of the Upper Crust, lording it over the crustless.”

“Did you know him well?”

“No, I saw the earl only a handful of times at large family events. Weddings and funerals and such. We were the poor relations, and our presence didn’t exactly improve a gathering. My father was a violent sod, and my mother was a coquette who, as they say, ‘had a tile loose.’ As for my brother and I, we were a pair of sullen tots who went around trying to pick fights with our cousins. The earl couldn’t stand either of us. He caught me by the ear on one occasion, and told me I was a bad, wicked lad, and someday he would see to it that I was placed as a cabin boy on a trading vessel bound for China, which would undoubtedly be captured by pirates.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I hoped he would do it as soon as possible, because pirates would do a much better job of raising me than my parents.”

Ethan felt a grin cross his face, when he would have sworn nothing could have made him smile, standing in front of that blasted portrait.

“My father thrashed me within an inch of my life afterward,” West said, “but it was worth it.” He paused reflectively. “That was the last memory I have of him. He died not long after that, brawling over a woman. Dear old Papa was never one to let rational conversation get in the way of his fists.”

It hadn’t occurred to Ethan that West and Devon Ravenel had led anything other than a sheltered and pampered existence. The revelation gave him an unexpected feeling of empathy and kinship. He couldn’t help liking West, who was irreverent as hell, at ease with himself and the world, while still retaining the subtle flintiness of a man with few illusions. This was someone he could understand and talk to.

“Did you ever meet the earl?” West asked, wandering slowly along the row of portraits.

“Once.” Ethan had never told a living soul about it. But in the quiet out-of-time atmosphere of the portrait gallery, he found himself sharing the memory that had haunted him for years. “When my mother was younger, the earl kept her for a time. She was a shopgirl when they met, and a beauty. She lived in a set of rooms he paid for. The arrangement lasted until she found out she was with child. The earl didn’t want her after that, so he gave her some money and a reference for a job that fell through. Her family had cast her off, and she had nowhere to turn. She knew if she gave her baby to the orphanage, she could take a factory job, but she decided to keep me instead. Angus Ransom, who was a prison guard at Clerkenwell, offered to marry her and raise me as his own.

“But times grew hard,” Ethan continued. “There came a day we couldn’t pay the butcher’s bill and had no fuel for the hearth. Mam took it upon herself to go to the earl for help. She thought it wasn’t too much to ask of him, to spare a few coins for his own child. But it wasn’t the earl’s way to give something for nothing. Mam had kept her looks, and he still fancied her for a tumble. After that, she would slip off to meet him when we needed money for food or coal.”

“Shame on him,” West said softly.

“I was still a young boy,” Ethan said, “when Mam took me for an outing one day in a hansom cab. She said we were going to visit a gentleman friend of hers, who wanted to meet me. We went to a house like nothing I’d ever imagined, fine and quiet, with polished floors, and gold columns on the sides of the doorways. The earl came downstairs, wearing a velvet dressing robe, similar to that one.” Ethan gave a brief nod in the direction of the painting. “After asking me a few questions—did I go to school, which Bible story was my favorite—he patted me on the head, and said I seemed a bright boy for all that I had the accent of an Irish tinker. He pulled a little sack of sweets from the pocket of his robe and gave them to me. Barley-sugar sticks, they were. Mam bade me sit in the parlor while she went upstairs to talk with the earl. I don’t know how long I waited there, eating barley sweets. When Mam came down, she appeared the same as when we’d arrived, not a hair out of place. But there was something humbled in the look of her. I was old enough to understand they’d done something wrong, that he’d done something to her. I left the little bag of sweets beneath the chair, but it took weeks for the taste of barley sugar to fade from my mouth.

“On the way home, Mam told me the man was very important, a highborn gentleman, and he was my real father, not Angus Ransom. I could tell she took pride in it. In her mind I’d gained something, now that I knew I was the son of a great man. An aristocrat. She didn’t understand I’d just lost the only father I’d ever known. I could hardly look at Angus for months afterward, now that I knew I wasn’t his. ’Til the day he died, I always wondered how many times he glanced at me and saw another man’s bastard.”

Ravenel was silent for a while, looking angry and resigned. “I’m sorry,” he eventually said.

“’Twas none of your doing.”

“I’m still sorry. For centuries, the Ravenels have turned out one generation of cruel, irresponsible arses after another.” West shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced over the rows of stern, haughty faces from the past. “Yes, I’m referring to you,” he said to the crowd of portraits. “The sins of your fathers rained down on you like poison, and you passed it down to your children, and then they did the same. There wasn’t a decent man in the lot of you.” He turned to Ethan. “Soon after Devon’s son was born, he came to me and said, ‘Someone has to absorb all the poison that’s been passed down through generations, and keep it away from the ones who come after us. It has to stop with me. God help me, I’m going to protect my child from my own worst instincts. I’m going to block every violent, selfish impulse that was instilled in me. It won’t be easy. But I’ll be damned if I turn out a son who’s exactly like the father I hated.’”

Ethan stared at him, struck by the wisdom and resolve in those words. He realized these distant Ravenel cousins were far more than a pair of carefree toffs who’d had the luck to come into an unexpected inheritance. They were trying like hell to save an estate, and even more, to save a family. For that, they had his respect.

“Your brother may be the first earl who’s ever been worthy of the title,” Ethan said.

“He didn’t start out that way,” West replied, and laughed. When the brief flare of amusement faded, he said, “I understand why you want nothing to do with the Ravenels. Edmund was an unfeeling monster, and on top of that, no one likes to admit they’re the product of six centuries of inbreeding. But everyone needs someone to turn to, and we are your family. You should get to know us. If it helps, I’m the worst of the lot—the rest are all much better than me.”

Ethan approached him and extended a hand. “You’ll do well enough for me,” he said gruffly. West grinned at him.

When they shook hands, it felt like a promise had been made. A commitment.

“Now,” Ethan said, “where do you keep the guns?”

Ravenel’s brows shot upward. “Ransom, if you don’t mind, I prefer easing into a new topic with a transitional phrase or two.”

“Usually I do,” Ethan said. “But I tire easily, and this is my nap time.”

“May I ask why we’re arming ourselves instead of napping?”

“Because we were nearly murdered two weeks ago, and we’re fairly certain someone will come to finish the job.”

West turned serious, his gaze sharpening. “If I’d been through what you have, Ransom, the devil knows I’d be jumpy too. But no one’s going to come here looking for you. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“Not without a body,” Ethan said. “Unless they find one, they’ll never stop looking for me.”

“Why would they even suspect you’re here? They won’t connect you to the Ravenels. The river police who brought you to Ravenel House were too terrified to say a word to anyone.”

“At the time, they probably were. But either of them could have mentioned it to a friend or sweetheart, or bend the elbow a time too many at the local tavern and say something to the barkeep. Eventually they’ll be taken in for questioning because they were on patrol that night. They won’t hold out for long under interrogation. Furthermore, any of the servants at Ravenel House may let something slip. A housemaid could say something to the fruit seller at the market.”

West looked skeptical. “Do you really think a few careless words in a tavern, or a bit of gossip from a housemaid to a market seller, would make its way to Jenkyn’s ears?”

The question was reasonable, but it almost stunned Ethan. He realized he’d lived for too damned long in Jenkyn’s complex and secretive world—he’d forgotten that most people had no idea what was really taking place around them.

“Long before Jenkyn recruited me,” Ethan said, “he started constructing a network of informants and spies all over the United Kingdom. Ordinary people in ordinary towns. Coachmen, innkeepers, sellers, prostitutes, domestic servants, factory workers, university students . . . all part of an intelligence-gathering apparatus. They’re paid stipends with secret grant money Jenkyn receives from the Home Office. The Prime Minister knows about it, but says he prefers to remain unaware of the details. Jenkyn has made a science of gathering and analyzing information. He has at least eight active officers who’ve been specially trained to carry out any task he assigns. They’re outside the law. They have no fear. They have no scruples. They have little to no regard for human life, including their own.”

“And you’re one of them,” West said quietly.

“I was. Now I’m a target. By now, someone in the village knows that a pair of strangers have been staying at Eversby Priory.”

“My servants wouldn’t say a word to anyone.”

“You have carpenters, painters, and workmen coming and going. They have eyes and ears.”