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I have a suspicion about where we’ll end up.”
    Nell raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”
    Tom shoved his hands through his hair, not caring if it stood straight up like a lunatic’s. “Cambridge.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I think…that is…it’s possible…” He flopped down on the bed and rested his chin on his hands. “Don’t hate me, Nelly.”
    Nell sat on the room’s only chair. “I couldn’t if I tried, Tommy. You know that. But this isn’t about us. It’s about Charlie.”
    Of course it was about the boy. Nell would walk through fire for a child, any child. Like
    it or not, though, their relationship hovered over everything. Just as he would always love her, she cared for him, despite his betrayal. Now he was going to make things even worse.
    “Barrowclough,” he said hoarsely, “is a very rare name. Almost extinct, in fact.”
    “You know this how?” Nell gazed into his eyes without blinking. “Is this an Order matter?”
    Tom held her gaze, accepting all the blame he deserved. “No. It’s my matter. You know I’ve been searching for years to find my—” his tongue stumbled over the words “—my…wife. Charles Barrowclough was the name her father wrote on the marriage license as a witness.”
    “Your wife ?” Nell’s powerful voice rose to a shriek. “I have a missing boy and you’re trying to tie this in to a search for the woman you married in university and haven’t seen since?”
    “No.” Tom said. “But I have only run across that name once or twice, and the woman your ghost described—well, she sounds like Polly. And if Polly did have a sister, then your Charlie might be Polly’s son, meaning there’s a possibility, you see…”
    “I do see.” She stood and turned away, fussing with the handle of her carpet bag. “Two birds with one stone. I understand.”
    “No. Not even that. It’s not as if I want to see Polly. Hell, if I’m right, that means she’s probably dead, which I’m human enough to think would be something of a relief, and man enough to feel guilty about it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his voice thick. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth when I told you about my marriage.” Three years ago, he’d blurted it out like an idiot, right in front of Nell and with no real explanation. This was the first time he’d been alone in a room with her since.
    “You didn’t tell me much of anything at all. Until just this minute, I didn’t even know her name.” She stayed as she was, her back to him, which was probably for the best. His eyes were feeling rather prickly and almost damp. “But it’s rather cruel of you to wish her dead.”
    “I didn’t say I wished it. Just that my life would be less complicated,” he said. “But another thing I didn’t tell you is that Polly and I weren’t strangers when I agreed to marry her. I’d known her for a few months. She waited tables at a pub the university crowd frequented. We’d even had a brief…fling.”
    Nell’s spine stiffened. She was too smart not to put the pieces together. “So what you’re saying now is that Charlie…” Nell blinked and turned her head away.
    He wanted to kneel at her feet and beg forgiveness, but there was no point. He’d said it all before, and she hadn’t even known the worst. “Exactly. Charlie could be my son.”
     

Chapter Two
     
    Nell gripped the bamboo handle of her carpetbag so hard the grain of the wood was probably dented into her fingertips.
    Tom’s son? Charlie?
    For a moment she forgot how to breathe and every cell in her body screamed with denial. And yet…it would make sense, in a horrible sort of way. Both were tall, with pale hair and blue eyes. It would explain the way she’d been naturally drawn to the cheerful lad who was determined to make his way despite his handicap, much like a young Tom had decided to survive amid the flotsam of a London slum. Without Tom and Wink, the two eldest of their little band of pickpockets and vampyre