Page 28 of The Duke and the Darkness

Crewe shook his head and held out a second glass for Devlin as he walked past on his way to his desk. “Not once you hear what I came to tell you.”

Tying his banyan closed, Devlin sank into the leather desk chair and took a swallow of cognac to calm the dread now beating through him like a drum. It was too early for that, too.

Crewe dropped into one of the leather chairs positioned in front of the desk. “I asked around about the rumblings you’ve been hearing.” He kicked out his long legs and slumped down, his casual posture belying the tension Devlin could sense radiating from him. “Seven Dials, St Giles, Westminster,Southwark—I even went as far as Wapping in case the dockworkers or warehouse porters knew anything.”

“And?” Devlin sat forward as unease stirred inside him.

“You were right. The old criminal ring is being put back together, piece by piece.” Crewe stared down into his glass and slowly swirled the brandy. “Smuggling, fencing, prostitution…all of it, and all being run from a centralized location.”

The earth fell away beneath Devlin, and he gripped the edge of the desk to hold himself still. “Where? It’s not based in St Giles or Seven Dials like before.”

With a grim twist of his lips, Crewe tossed back the rest of the brandy in a gasping swallow. “The rumor is they’ve gone fashionable and moved to the west side.”

“St James?”

“Possibly. No one knows exactly.”

“How are they doing it?”

“No idea. But that kind of enterprise takes connections at all levels, great deals of money—and ways to hide the money once they make it. Keeping all that quiet is next to impossible. We’ll find out eventually.”

“But it can be kept silent.” After all, their fathers had done exactly that.

Devlin’s eyes lifted to the painting hanging above the fireplace. It was a landscape of Wrentham Hall, the family’s main country house in Oxfordshire. He’d commissioned it to replace the portrait of his father that used to hang there, until Devlin took it down and burned it right there in the fireplace.

That was the problem with ghosts. Even after exorcism by fire, they could still come back.

“Quiet, not silent,” Crewe corrected as he raised his glass to his lips. “Money always leaves a trail.”

“So we find the trail. Where is the money coming from, and where is it going?”

Then they would find out who was responsible and shut them down. This time forever.

After all, if someone had the resources and knowledge to put the old ring back together—whether Horrender or someone else—then that person knew what their fathers had done and wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail Devlin and Lucien over it. Everything they’d worked so hard to save during the past ten years would be destroyed.

Crewe shook his head and tossed back the rest of his cognac.

Devlin pushed himself out of the chair and began to pace. He ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “Do we knowanythingfor certain?”

“Yes.” Although Crewe didn’t seem happy about it. “I have a name for you, and you’re not going to like it.”

He steeled himself. “Horrender?”

“Chandler.”

His heart stopped. Somehow Devlin managed to rasp out, “Impossible.” Then, he uttered the one bit of hope he’d been clinging to since last night, when he’d looked his mystery woman in the eyes and felt a terrible flash of recognition—“They’re dead. All of them.”

“Not so much.” Crewe leaned forward to place a piece of paper onto the desk. “Or at least someone connected to the Chandler family isn’t.”

Devlin stared at the paper, but he didn’t dare reach for it, as if it were a snake ready to strike. Or the devil come to take his soul. At long last.

Crewe stood and returned to the liquor cabinet. This time, he brought the crystal decanter back with him as if it were a portent of what he was about to disclose. “Elizabeth Wentworth…does the name ring a bell?”

Devlin sank down into his desk chair before his legs gave out. “The woman at Barton’s.” And last night at the opera.LadyPayne.“Patton said that was the name on the title she used to back her bets.”

“What a coincidence, then, that an Elizabeth Wentworth has also rented a townhouse in London for the season.” Crewe took the liberty of topping off Devlin’s glass. “All the money she’s used to set up her household, buy a wardrobe, lease carriages, and so on, came from an overseas account in Marseilles.” He pushed the glass toward Devlin. “An account where Charles Chandler once kept his money and that is now in the possession of one Elizabeth Wentworth.”

“How do you know that?”