A Wicked Conceit by Anna Huber (best young adult book series txt) 📗

growing tired of Heron’s stunned silence and Gage toying with him. I’d been unable to sleep much the night before from nerves, and now that the opportunity to speak with Heron was before us, I refused to waste any more time beating around the bush. I cut him off with a slice of my hand as he began to utter another nonsensical question in response. “About your meeting in the Physic Gardens, and her confiding in you about her and her brother’s past, and your telling the information to someone else.” I narrowed my eyes. “Or did you sell it?”

“Nay! Nay, I dinna sell it.”

“Then whom did you tell? And why?”

He lifted his hand to his head, scraping his fingers through his hair and then tugging on it.

“You betrayed her, you know?” I added, grinding the ax in further. “She trusted you.”

“I ken. I ken.” He sank down in a chair and cradled his head in his hands. “She says she’s forgiven me, but I dinna ken if I’ll ever forgive myself. Or if God will.”

“Or if Bonnie Brock will,” I replied, perhaps a trifle mean-spiritedly. But I didn’t come here to listen to him wallow in self-pity. That got us nowhere.

He sat upright in alarm. “Does he ken?”

“Yes. So out with it, before he comes to extract the answer from you himself.”

Heron shrank backward.

“Whom did you tell? And why?” I repeated more stridently.

His eyes darted between me and Gage, who now stood beyond my shoulder, his arms crossed over his chest, allowing me to take the lead. “Mr. Lennox. Our printer.”

I shared a speaking look with Gage, for he had been the name at the top of both of our lists of suspects.

“He . . . he told me he’d seen me wi’ Maggie. That he ken who she was. And then he invited me to have a drink.”

I frowned, not understanding where this was leading.

“He asked if he could take me into his confidence. Said he believed that Maggie was his cousin. Her brother, too. Through their mother. Said the family had been searchin’ for ’em because there was an inheritance owed to ’em. But given Kincaid’s reputation, he needed to be certain.” He gestured with his hand. “Many o’ the Kincaids are descended from the ancient Earls o’ Lennox.”

This was a piece of information I had not been aware of, but it helped fill in the larger picture.

“So it seemed feasible that they could be related. Lennox has always claimed his ancestors were more than tradesmen.”

“So you told him what you knew,” I surmised. “What Maggie had told you in confidence.”

“Aye. Wi’ the help o’ a few too many glasses o’ whisky.” His head hung in shame. “I dinna realize how much I’d actually told him until he brought The King o’ Grassmarket to Mr. Rookwood. When I read it, I wanted to put a pistol to my head.”

I scowled. “Spare us the dramatics. Did you confront Lennox?”

“Sure, I did. But he just laughed in my face. Told me there was nothin’ I could do aboot it wi’oot tellin’ the world, the lass I loved, and her blackguard o’ a brother what I’d done. That my only choice was to keep my gob shut.” He sighed. “So I did.”

“But Maggie figured it out anyway.”

“Aye. Confronted me.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “Told me she hated me. But after I told her why I’d done it, she said she understood.” He shook his head. “I dinna ken how she was able to—”

“The day Rookwood died,” I interrupted before he could dither on, taking us on another melodramatic tangent. “When you couldn’t account for all of the time you spent on errands. That’s because you met with Maggie that day, isn’t it?”

He flushed. “Aye.”

“And the sequel? Was that a surprise?”

“Aye, it was. When Rookwood showed it to me, I was gobsmacked. And furious. But o’ course I couldna tell him why. It’s filled wi’ nothin’ but lies. I told Rookwood no’ to publish it, and he told me he’d already decided no’ to.” His brow lowered thunderously. “But Lennox wouldna take no for an answer. Threatened him even.” He pounded his fist down onto his open palm like a gavel. “So I decided to threaten him in return. That’s why I really went to see him on the afternoon Mr. Rookwood was killed.” His shoulders deflated. “But he wasna there.”

My head reared back and I turned to Gage.

“Did you say he wasn’t there?” he repeated.

“Aye,” Heron replied. “His foreman didna ken when he’d return, so I left.”

Lennox had misled us. He’d told us that Mr. Heron had stopped by to deliver a pamphlet for Mr. Rookwood, but he hadn’t actually said he’d seen him. He’d been deliberately vague. Which made me wonder if there was anything else he’d misled us about.

Chapter 25

That confirms it, then,” I declared when we returned to our carriage. “Lennox is Mugdock.”

Gage slumped deeper into the squabs, the folds of his many-caped greatcoat draping around him. “It was the perfect arrangement, really. Lennox could have published the book himself, without Rookwood’s assistance. The subject matter alone would have sold it. But he needed the concealment that the name of Thomas W. Rookwood Publishing provided, so that all the questions and pressure and suspicions would be directed toward Rookwood instead of him, the lowly printer.”

“He could come and go, visiting with Rookwood in his guise as printer without any suspicions attached to it, and without the fear of their correspondence being intercepted or their meetings being discovered.”

“Which also explains why he agreed to change our names at Rookwood’s insistence,” he mused, rubbing his index finger over his bottom lip as he pondered. “If he took the book to another publisher, he would sacrifice the concealment and convenience Rookwood provided.”

“Plus the fact that Mr. Heron knew,” I pointed out. “Perhaps Lennox saw funneling the publication through Rookwood, and thus bolstering