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“You thought only to stop her,” said Anthony. “And yet you were very careful to cover your own tracks, to preserve your relationship with my father, to play into his prejudices, to leverage his humiliation—and later his illness.”

No, wounded lover didn’t begin to account for Yardley’s webs of deception, by which he’d gained so much.

Anthony pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands. The muscles of his brow were knotted painfully.

“Whether or not you’re a literal poisoner, you’ve poisoned every well, for what?” he said. “Revenge? Prestige? Enrichment? There is no one in your life you haven’t deceived. That is a form of madness.”

Yardley took a lurching step forward, stumbling into the wingback chair. The blueprint propped against it toppled, bounced, and rolled, stopping short of Anthony’s boots. Yardley’s eyes bulged, and he stooped to pick it up.

Anthony was faster.

“A new project?” He walked around Yardley to the window with the blueprint, spread it open in the light. A detailed drawing showing the north, south, east, and west elevations of an Italianate building with huge windows, the facade elaborated with molded brick courses. The decorative elements didn’t detract from the elegance. Yardley was still experimenting with proportion and pattern, attempting to reference architectural traditions, to establish himself as an artist rather than an engineer. The dignity and charm of this design showed him to have come closer than ever before. It would be a success, this building, with the Academy as well as the city.

The writing in the top left corner drew Anthony’s eye.

Statham’s Emporium.

He checked his abrupt violent motion and let the blueprint curl itself up. Yardley had designed the building for Joseph Statham, the developer who had applied for the Charlotte Road lease.

Anthony’s smile was acid, eating away at his face. After this encounter, he might wear a death’s head on his shoulders for the rest of his days. He wheeled about, grip on the blueprint hardening to iron.

“What a profitable arrangement you all have,” he said. “You, Jephson, Purcell, and whatever developers want to pay for your favors. Exploiting a position on the Board of Works to win commissions as an architect is frowned on in professional circles. What will the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects have to say, I wonder?”

He tucked the blueprint under his arm, walking back across the room toward the door. He paused by Yardley.

“I will ensure that a bill of particulars is brought against you.”

Yardley straightened, swallowed hard.

“I will resign,” he said, composing himself. “The Board of Works itself has little future.”

“Your future should concern you more. I won’t stop with your misconduct on the bloody board.” His mouth felt sandy, but he continued. “That’s the tip of the iceberg. You colluded with what was worst in my father to rob me of a mother.”

That had been the origin, the blow that shattered the family, shattered something in George, in him, in Effie.

Maybe their mother hadn’t been an innocent, but she hadn’t deserved her fate. She’d been stripped of light and color, motion, song, her children, her freedom. She hadn’t possessed the strength to survive such catastrophic losses.

“And you robbed money as well. Fortunately, that kind of robbery is far easier to prove. I’m not a purist. I feel no driving need to connect you with what happened to my mother, or to Effie. I don’t give a damn which of the charges stick, as long as you go to prison for a very long time.”

He pushed past, but Yardley reached out, catching him across the chest, a gesture halfway between restraint and embrace. Anthony’s right shoulder pressed against Yardley’s left.

“Anthony.” Yardley spoke hoarsely. “You’re like a son to me.”

There wasn’t only fear in his voice, but tenderness.

Anthony’s breath stopped. What was the value of truth if its substance was lies?

“I looked up to you,” he said. Their faces were inches apart. He didn’t need to look up now. He could look Yardley squarely in the eye.

“I was desperate for someone to see me as more than an idiot, and so you told me you did. You told me I had a good mind. You made me apply myself. You believed in me.”

He laughed, and a smile twitched Yardley’s lips in response.

“You were the only one. God above, I would have walked across hot coals for you, and you knew it. You always knew it. You played me like the idiot I was.”

The hippodramas. The birthdays. The confidences. Decades of memories. The love between them was real, and it was also rotten to the core.

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again Yardley’s were moist. The smile was gone. The very smile lines in his face had collapsed.