Ready to tear her hair out in frustration, she sat behind the desk and opened a ledger. Maybe she was looking in the wrong places. Maybe men like these kept their secrets hidden in bedside stands or safes hidden behind large portraits. Or maybe….
She paused in her mental rambling to stare at a familiar-looking set of numbers. She flipped back a month and found a similar entry. Then another month and another match. It went on and on. Nine of the last twelve months showed payments to Forent in amounts identical to the funds Loudor had stolen from Whitefield. She’d gone over those numbers enough times to have the exact amounts memorized. And there they were, down to the last shilling.
She trailed her finger along the entry line and found the entries were attributed to Lord Heransly, the earl’s scapegrace son.
If they had been from her cousin, she might have attributed it to debts of honor. Lord Loudor was a notorious gambler. But these entries were from son to father. It made no sense.
She reached for supplies to copy down what she could of the entries but stopped short at the sound of movement in the hallway. She dropped the ledger, snuffed the candle, and raced to the window to throw her legs over the edge. She managed to crawl about a quarter of the way down, but in her haste and fear of being discovered, she made a misstep and lost her footing in the stone.
There was the rip of fabric, then falling, and then the hard impact of the ground.
Ummph!
It wasn’t a far drop, but unprepared for it as she was, she landed fully on her back, and knocked all the air out of her lungs. For what seemed like an eternity, she lay prostrate, stunned and gasping like a fish on land.
Perfectly typical. She’d been lucky enough to have found a window unlocked, and unlucky enough to have fallen out of it.
When her breath finally returned, she managed, against the protest of every muscle and bone in her body, to roll onto her stomach and pushed herself up to her knees. Relatively confident she wasn’t going to pass out, she climbed to her feet, grabbed the cloak and lantern, and ran.
She was almost to her house—having decided she would postpone her trip to Sir Frederick’s until she could fortify herself with a cup of something hot and a change of gown— when the disturbing feeling that she was being watched first hit her. She stopped dead in her tracks and whirled to peer into the shadows, listening intently for sounds of pursuit. Nothing.
She stopped twice more, but each time she listened for footsteps behind her, she heard nothing but the still night air.
It was with immense relief that she mounted the front steps of her home and swung open the door.
“Aah! Oh God! Oh! A…Al…”
“Alex. My name is Alex.”
“Yes! I mean, of course it is…Alex.” Sophie closed the door and stood to face Alex. He was leaning against the stairwell banister—all muscle, tension…and anger. She dropped her satchel on the side table, made a token attempt to smooth her skirts, then having run out of things to occupy herself with, wrung her hands nervously. “What ever are you doing here?” Her voice was bright and cheery. Much, much too cheery.
“I could ask the same of you,” Alex replied.
“Oh, well…I live here.”
The look he sent her was icy enough to make her cringe.
“In London, you mean?” she continued with forced buoyancy. “Right. Well, I…er…I forgot something…something rather important…and I came back to retrieve it.”
“And that something would be?”
She really wished he would blink. That narrow-eyed stare was discomforting. “Ummm. Well, I’m afraid that’s personal.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me anyway.”
Well now, that was a bit much. She frowned at him, giving up all pretense of a normal conversation and said, “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No. Really, are we going to be doing this all night?”
He blinked, finally, but moved not a muscle besides. “That’s up to you.”
“Excellent. I vote we don’t.”
Alex snapped. In one quick movement he had her by the arm and was forcefully dragging her into the front parlor. Shoving her ahead of him, he whirled around and closed the doors. Sophie gave a quick thanks for the several lit candles in the room keeping the dark at bay. Alex looked ready to explode, which was terrifying enough in and of itself.
“You,” he ground out, “will sit…” he lifted a small chair several inches off the floor before slamming it down again in front of Sophie, “here. I…” He lifted a second chair and placed directly in front of the first, “…will sit here. And we will continue sitting until I am completely satisfied that you have answered every one of my questions fully and honestly.”
“Um…”
“Now!”
Sophie sat. She didn’t care for his high-handed tactics, but now seemed an appropriate time to exercise a little verbal prudence.
“What in God’s name happened to your dress?”
Sophie jumped in her seat, startled by the sudden rise of his voice. She looked down and barely managed to stifle a groan. Her dress was covered hem to waist in mud. She picked at it absently a moment, noticing several tears as well.