A Lair of Deceit
The travel from secure safehouse to confrontation ground consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The order was dated three days prior, sealed with the Prince Regent’s cipher in wax the colour of arterial blood. Sebastian had read it twice, each pass of his gaze scraping against the same brutal demand: *the child known as Tobias Lennox shall present himself to the Court of St James’s at the pleasure of His Royal Highness, pending adjudication of his parentage and guardianship.*
The word *pleasure* was an obscenity.
Nova stood in the doorway of the lodge’s cramped study, her arms wrapped tight across her chest, and watched him fold the parchment with deliberate, unnerving calm. He could feel her fear across the room—a frequency he’d learned to read in the seven years of silence between them, and now again in the four days since she’d shattered his world with a boy’s hazel eyes and a mole behind his left ear.
“Covington did this,” she said. Not a question.
Sebastian drew the letter opener from his desk—a heavy silver blade, unused for years—and slid it into his breast pocket. “Beckett Covington doesn’t do anything himself. He has the Crown’s ear, which means he’s already whispered the necessary lies into the right amplifiers. The Prince Regent believes he is protecting the Crown’s interest in a bastard heir. He does not know he is being used to launder a family’s vengeance.”
“Then we go to London. We refute it.”
“We can’t refute it fast enough. The Regent’s command is not a summons—it’s a muzzle. If we run, we confirm the insinuation. If we comply, we hand Toby to the Covingtons on a silver plate.” He turned from the window, the low wintry light catching the hard lines of his face. “There is another way.”
Nova’s chin lifted. She’d always done that when bracing for a blow.
“I’ll go to Covington House. I’ll force a parley directly. Buy time. You’ll take the carriage to Lambeth and retrieve the ledger from the solicitor’s vault. The one your father left with Whitmore before he died.”
She blinked. “You knew about the ledger?”
“I know your father kept accounts for the Covingtons. I know he copied the ones that implicated the family in the dockyard frauds, and that he had the spine to hide them. What I don’t know is whether Whitmore will release them to you without a court order.”
“He will.” Her voice was quiet, but sturdy. “He was my father’s friend. Not theirs.”
Sebastian crossed the room and stopped before her, near enough to see the faint scar on her left temple—a childhood fall, she’d told him once, long ago. “Take Silas with you. Not the carriage—the dogcart. If anyone follows you once you’re on the Lambeth road, I want you to swing south and double back through the old drovers’ lane.”
“And if you’re not here when I return?”
He reached out, hesitated, then touched her wrist—a whisper of contact, a question. “I’ll be at Covington House, keeping their attention fixed on me.”
She didn’t move away from his hand. “You’re walking into a wolf’s den, Sebastian.”
“I know exactly what I’m walking into. That’s why I’m the one who goes.”
—
Covington House squatted at the far end of Mayfair like a predator by a watering hole. Three storeys of blackened brick and white columns, built with East India money and polished with colonial guilt. Sebastian had known the house since childhood, had eaten at its table and slept in its guest rooms before he understood what the Covingtons were.
He did not knock. He was a duke, and the door opened the moment he stepped onto the landing, a footman already retreating before him, announcing his arrival in a voice that carried up the marble stair and into the gallery beyond.
Beckett Covington awaited him in the library. The old patriarch sat in a wingback chair positioned to command the entire room—a favourite trick of his, making guests approach across thirty feet of parquet before they could speak. His son Cole stood by the fire, a glass of brandy in his hand, wearing the smug expression of a man who believes he has already won.
“Your Grace,” Beckett said, rising just enough to acknowledge rank without offering the customary bow. His voice was gravel wrapped in silk. “What an unexpected honour. I trust the roads from Essex were kind?”
“Kind enough,” Sebastian replied, selecting his own seat without waiting for invitation—an old leather club chair to Beckett’s right, angled to avoid the fire’s glare. “Though I find the roads to Mayfair always carry a particular stench. One adjusts.”
Cole’s smile thinned. “The stench of progress, perhaps. Of commerce.”
“Indeed.” Sebastian crossed one leg over the other, letting his coat fall open in a deliberate display of ease. “Tell me, Mr. Covington—how does commerce explain a forged royal order demanding my son appear before the Prince Regent?”
The silence was a held breath. Beckett’s eyebrow rose, a study in manufactured surprise. “I’m afraid I don’t follow your meaning, Your Grace. A royal order?”
“Generated in your solicitor’s office. Penned by a clerk who has since been compensated to flee to Calais.” Sebastian kept his voice conversational, almost bored. “I intercepted the clerk’s correspondence three hours ago. Do you know what he had in his possession, Beckett? A receipt. Your family’s seal. Payment for a document that would brand Nova Lennox a woman of ill repute and her son a legitimate ward of the Crown—which is to say, a possession to be disposed of at the Crown’s discretion.”
Cole’s glass came down on the mantle with a crack. “You dare walk into this house and accuse us of forgery?”
“I dare walk into this house and tell you that I know.” Sebastian let the words settle. “I don’t require your confession. I have the proof. And I have a counter-offer.”
Beckett’s eyes narrowed to slits. He had not moved from his chair, but something in his posture had thickened, as if coiling for a strike. “Speak, then. We are all men here, and I have no patience for theatrics.”
“Withdraw the order. Have your clerk retract his affidavit to the Crown. You and I will sit before the Prince Regent together, present the true record of Toby’s parentage, and end this quietly. In exchange, I will not produce the dockyard accounts your family has spent six years suppressing—the ones my solicitor has been safeguarding since before your brother died of that convenient heart seizure.”
Cole stepped forward, but Beckett raised a hand. The old man’s gaze was flat, cold, reptilian. “You have nothing,” he said softly. “You’re bluffing with cards you never held.”
“I’m not bluffing. But I will demonstrate good faith in return for your cooperation.” Sebastian leaned forward. “Withdraw the order. We both walk away.”
Beckett smiled. It was a terrible expression, all teeth and no warmth. “I will not. And you will not leave this house until you surrender whatever documents you believe you possess.” He raised his voice. “Marsh!”
The library doors opened. Four footmen entered in a line, hands clasped behind their backs, flanking a fifth man—the Covington house steward, a heavyset brute with the neck of a bull. Sebastian counted the exits without moving his head: the main doors, the servants’ passage to the west, the tall windows overlooking the courtyard. Two of them were reachable if the fight started immediately. None of them were reachable if the steward had a pistol.
Something moved in the courtyard below. A familiar silhouette crossing the gravel, heading for the stable entrance. Nova.
She was early.
Sebastian rose with deliberate slowness, letting his anger settle into something sharp and cold. “You’ve made a tactical error, Beckett. You’ve assumed I came alone.”
Cole laughed—a short, ugly sound. “Your security chief is with your whore. We watched her take the carriage south an hour ago. The only man you brought is the driver, and he’s currently disarming—“
A crash from the entrance hall stopped him mid-sentence. A thud, a muffled cry, the sound of a body hitting the marble floor. Then the doors swung open.
Silas stepped through, a bleeding footman draped unconscious over his shoulder like a sack of grain. He dumped the man on the threshold with a casualness that bordered on insolence. “Your steward, Your Grace? He was waiting at the mews with a cosh. My apologies for the mess.”
Behind him, Nova walked in. She held a leather satchel pressed tight to her chest, and her eyes found Sebastian’s in a single, electric glance—*I have it.*
Cole’s face had gone a shade of red that suggested imminent apoplexy. “You—you dare lay hands on my household—“
“I dare to protect my son,” Sebastian said. He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the letter opener, not as a weapon but as a pointer, gesturing toward Nova. “Do you know what she carries, Beckett? The original ledger—your family’s private accounts, maintained over seventeen years. I’ve read enough of it to know the details of your African trade ventures. The ones conducted despite the Abolition Act. The ones that paid for this house.”
Beckett’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair. His knuckles were pale. “That ledger belongs to my family.”
“It belongs in a courtroom.” Sebastian stepped forward. “But I’m willing to make you a final offer. Withdraw the forged order. Allow Nova and Toby to leave England unharmed, with a pension sufficient to keep them comfortable for the rest of their lives. And I will place this ledger in the Thames, where it can never harm you.”
Nova’s breath caught. Sebastian didn’t look at her.
Cole was shaking with fury. “You insult us with this farce? You think we’ll fold for a stolen book and a dead clerk’s scribbles?”
“I think you’ll fold for the truth.” Sebastian’s voice was iron. “Because the truth has a tendency to find sunlight whether you want it to or not. And once it surfaces, the Crown will not protect you. The Crown will sacrifice you. You are not indispensable, Beckett. You are merely convenient. And in the Prince Regent’s court, convenience is a candle that burns short.”
Beckett rose from his chair. For a moment, the old man looked genuinely dangerous—not blustering, not theatrical, but the cold leader of a family that had buried its enemies for three generations. “You have no army, boy. No political allies. No one will stand with you. You are alone against a house that has survived kings, revolutions, and inquiries. You will not survive us in return.”
“I don’t need to survive your house,” Sebastian said. “I only need to expose it. And I have here—in her hands, in his testimony, in this ledger—the means to do exactly that.”
He turned and crossed the room to Nova. She met him halfway, her eyes bright with fear and something else—faith, perhaps, or the beginning of a belief that might survive this night.
“The letters are still in the carriage,” she murmured, low enough for only him to hear. “Isadora has them.”
“Good.” He raised his voice. “Silas—the courtyard door. We’re leaving.”
“You’ll be dead before you reach the mews.” Cole had drawn a pistol from beneath his coat, a sleek, blackened thing that gleamed in the firelight. “You forget whose ground you stand on, Davenport.”
Silas moved. The steward lunged; Silas pivoted, caught the man’s wrist, and brought him down across a camp table with a crack that spoke of broken ribs. The footmen hesitated—trained to intimidate, not to fight—and in their hesitation, Sebastian saw the path.
He released Nova’s arm and crossed the room in three strides, not toward the door but toward the desk where Beckett had retreated. The old man’s eyes widened, certain of a blow. Instead, Sebastian bent and swept a stack of papers from the desk, sending them scattering across the floor in a cloud of foolscap.
“The regency loves a paper trail,” he said, straightening. “I’ll be sure to mention how cooperative you were. Or not.”
Nova was already at the courtyard door, satchel in hand. Silas followed, blocking the threshold with his body, a footman’s fallen cane in his grip. Cole raised the pistol, and Sebastian saw the calculation in his eyes—the fear of hitting his own family, the insufficient angle, the knowledge that murdering a duke in his own home would bring a scrutiny the Covingtons could not afford.
“Let him,” Beckett said quietly. “Let him go.”
Cole vibrated with outrage. “Father—“
“Let. Him. Go.” The old man’s voice had gone the colour of ash. “He has won nothing yet. The play is not finished.”
Sebastian reached the door and paused. He turned back to face the room, and in that moment he was not a man standing in enemy territory—he was a duke, carrying the weight of a name that had once meant something in this city, and the fury of a father who had been handed a child and a warning in the same breath.
He took the ledger from Nova’s hands and raised it above his head.
The candlelight caught the leather binding, the gold tooling, the faint embossed seal of the Covington family crest. For a moment, the room was utterly still—Nova’s ragged breath, Silas’s watchful stance, Cole’s frozen fury, Beckett’s cold, appraising eyes.
“Take these lies to the throne if you dare,” Sebastian said. His voice carried across the silence like a blade being drawn. “I will follow with the truth—and the truth will choke you.”