Page 8 of Murder in Moonlight

He smiled slightly. “Randolph tells me we may thank you for drawing him away from…theexcessivepleasures one may discover in the capital.”

Well, that was a first. “Oh, I don’t believe he was so very bad. Young men have always sown their wild oats.” She met his gaze with a conspiratorial twinkle. “Didn’t you?”

He twinkled back merrily. “Perhaps.”

And still did, she suspected, though perhaps with more circumspection.

He leaned closer, confiding, “Between ourselves, it was why my father sent me to the West Indies, where I discovered my gift for entrepreneurship. So perhaps it was no bad thing.”

“How long were you there?” she asked.

“Two, almost three years. I left England in 1828 and took ship home from Jamaica in 1831 when the slave revolt broke out. I like to think I returned a better man. I settled down to marriage and worked hard and never looked back.”

“What an uplifting story. Did you not work hardbeforeyou went to Jamaica?”

“No, I toyed with things. And with people,” he said regretfully.

Her heart gave a jolt. “In what way?”

The twinkle came back. “In ways I cannot talk about to a lady.”

She would have liked to dig deeper, but he was already turning once more to Mrs. Bolton.

Still, the conversation left her with much to think about. He had owned up to bad behavior in his past, totoyingwith people. And they had reached enough of a rapport that in a day or two, she could refer back to it, and perhaps reach the truth.

More than that, she could not help liking him. He might have been a thoughtless, selfish youth, but he had grown into a man she might well grow to admire. And that filled her with warmth.

*

Solomon was apatient man. Quite aside from Constance Silver’s inexplicable presence here, Greenforth was a house of secrets. He could feel it in his bones. But did Walter Winsom hold the secret Solomon had come for?

At dinner, he was seated between Mrs. Winsom, who had chosen him to escort her to the dining room, and her younger daughter Ellen, who was clearly curious by nature.

“Have you truly just come from Jamaica, Mr. Grey?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“I came five years ago from Jamaica.”

“What did you do there?”

“I grew sugar and cotton and coffee.”

She smiled. “With your own fair hands, Mr. Grey?”

“Sometimes, when we were short of laborers. I owned the plantation. It was in my interests to make it work however I could.”

Her gaze was very direct and disapproving for so young a lady. But then, her parents were still involved in the anti-slavery movement. “Even with slave labor? Did you own slaves, Mr. Grey?”

At least she didn’t say, as many had,Were you a slave, Mr. Grey?

“No,” he replied. “By the time I inherited, the slaves had been freed.”

“But you received compensation from the government for the loss of yourproperty?”

“My father did,” he said evenly. “Was it helpful to us? Yes, to a point. Do I approve of slavery in any shape or form? No.”

“And yet your fortune was founded on the practice.”

“So was yours, most probably, in some part, shape, or form. One cannot change what was done in the past, only try to be better.”