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years.
    Merryn uncurled herself from her seat and preceded Tom into the office. There was a chair but she knew from experience that it was uncomfortable so she remained standing. Tom propped himself against the edge of his desk.
    “So did you find any papers relating to the duel?” Tom said. “Any servants paid off around that time, any proof of a cover-up, anything suspicious at all?”
    “I’m very well, thank you, Tom,” Merryn said tartly. “How are you?”
    Tom grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his face. “You know I have no manners.”
    “Clearly,” Merryn said. She looked at him. No one would mistake Tom Bradshaw for anything other than what he was: the self-made son of a working man. The well-cut clothes could not conceal his innate toughness.
    “No,” she said. She turned her face away. “I didn’t find anything.”
    Three weeks previously Tom had come to her with some information that he had said he thought would interest her and when she had read it the shock and outrage had gripped Merryn like a vise. Tom’s information had been a tiny entry from an obscure local Dorset newspaper. He said that he had found it quite by accident when he had been working on a different case. The paper was twelve years old and there, between references to pig rustling and theft at a country fair, had been the report of an inquest into the death of Stephen Fenner.
    Merryn could remember the piece word for word. She thought she would never forget it.
    “The coroner at the inquest into the death of Stephen, Viscount Fenner, reported that there had been two bullets in the victim’s body, one in the shoulder and one in the back…” And then, farther down the page: “Daniel Scrope, gamekeeper on the Starcross estate, reported hearing an altercation followed by the firing of three shots…”
    Merryn shook a little now as she remembered how she had frozen where she had sat, her gaze riveted to the tiny shred of news that contradicted all the official reports of her brother’s death. Before he had fled the country to escape the exigencies of the law, Garrick Farne had left a statement giving details of the duel. He had sworn that it had occurred over the elopement of his best friend, Stephen Fenner, with Kitty, Garrick’s wife of only a month. Two shots had been fired, Farne had maintained, one by Stephen, who had missed, and the other by himself, which had proved fatal. The doctor and the two men’s seconds had supported his statement. Farne’s second had even claimed that Fenner had fired early, an unforgivable piece of cowardice further blackening Stephen’s name.
    The case had never gone to trial and public opinion had been very sympathetic to Garrick Farne. He and Kitty had been married for barely a month. Stephen Fenner had clearly played his best friend false, seducing Garrick’s wife, trying to entice her to run off with him and compounding his deceit by attempting to kill Garrick by firing before the flag was dropped. Besides, a duel was an affair of honor and society understood the rules that governed such cases. Garrick Farne was generally felt to have acted regrettably but understandably.
    That had been appalling enough to Merryn, unforgivable, heinous, but when she had discovered that there had been three shots and two bullets in Stephen’s body, she had been consumed with grief and anger. Garrick Farne had lied, there had been no duel, only an execution, and he should have hanged for murder. She had hated Garrick before, hated what he had done, despaired over the way his actions had wrought such unhappiness and ruin on her family. Now, though, her anger was transformed. If the truth had been buried she would dig it out. She would show the world that Garrick was a liar and a criminal, and she would strip him of all honor and respect. She would find the proof that would mean his life was forfeit.
    Merryn had searched like a woman possessed to find any other evidence such as the original inquest