Her Notorious Viscount by Jenna Petersen Page A

topic?”
    She bit back a bark of humorless laughter. As if talking about her own brother’s disappearance was any more pleasant.
    “What do you need to know?” she asked through clenched teeth.
    “You say he disappeared,” Nicholas pressed, tilting his head to examine her as she spoke. “What does that mean? Was he abducted? Did he leave any indication of his whereabouts? What precipitated the break with your family?”
    She shut her eyes but couldn’t block the pain of memories. “I don’t know much. Unfortunately, my father ‘protected’ me from most of what occurred during that time. I know they fought. My brother’s behavior had grown increasingly erratic and my father tried to rein him in.”
    Nicholas grunted, as if he understood that.
    “Our interactions with him grew further and further apart and finally they ceased all together.” She gripped her hands into fists. “I pressed my father, but he would not tell me anything. It was only after his death that I realized my brother had apparently developed some kind of dependence on opium. My father had reason to believe he went into the underground to feed his demons.” She shook her head, willing tears not to fall. “That was where he conducted his investigation.”
    “I see.”
    Nicholas gave no indication of his feelings or thoughts on her story, which she had all but torn from her heart. He simply stared at her, unreadable. Unfeeling. She shifted.
    “I have brought some materials my father collected during his own search for Marcus,” she said as she reached into her reticule and pulled out the items.
    Nicholas took them and scanned over the neat lines of her handwriting. “These are not the original notes.”
    She shook her head. “My cousin refuses to allow me to take the originals from the house. These copies are the best I can do. I assure you, I was careful to leave nothing out.”
    “Nothing you could see.” Nicholas’s lips thinned. “There may be things in the originals that I could use in my search. Nuances. You are certain your cousin will not allow them to be removed, even temporarily?”
    More angry tears stung Jane’s eyes as she thought of Patrick’s stubbornness earlier in the day, but she blinked them away. “He refuses to relinquish control of anything that could prove his claims false. I would not put it past him to destroy my father’s papers entirely just to keep me from the truth.”
    Nicholas’s gaze slowly moved to her face, and he examined her closely. Jane shifted under the scrutiny, trying not to look away and show him weakness, but uncomfortable under his stare.
    “Could your cousin have been involved in your brother’s disappearance?”
    His tone was utterly cool for such a devastating question. Jane sucked in a breath of shock as she realized what Nicholas was implying. That Patrick would—would—
    “No,” she whispered. “I cannot believe he would do such a thing. He was out of the country when my brother first went missing. It was only after my father’s death that he came forward and began his foolishness about Marcus being dead as well.”
    She shivered. Strangely, as much as she despised Patrick at present, she couldn’t believe him capable of any kind of murderous intent to obtain the title. His crime was the fraud he had committed, it could not be anything deeper.
    Or at least she hoped that was true.
    No, according to her father’s notes, it was Marcus’s own sad desire for opium that had driven him further and further into the madness of the underground. Something Jane found equally difficult to believe.
    She shook away her troubling thoughts and dipped back into her reticule. When her fingers touched the smooth round disk of metal within, she shivered. Slowly, she withdrew the item and held it out.
    “I also brought this, in the hope it will aid you in your search.”
    She clicked the release on the side of the silver and the disk opened, revealing it as a framed miniature. On one side