Sterling chuckled. “You never were comfortable on this side of the servants’ doors. How is it being home? Settled back in yet?”
The two of them had spent every single day in each other’s company for the last eight years. They knew one another better than some siblings and watched one another’s backs more closely than brothers. Their lives had depended upon complete and utter vigilance and honesty. Hardly any moment passed where Sterling hadn’t been grateful that Ramsay had paired the two of them together. Their first meeting had been mere weeks before Sterling and Alaina’s wedding. Ramsay had informed him that this man would accompany him on his travels by playing the part of his valet. Where Sterling would obtain information from the noble and wealthy, his partner would have access to back rooms and gossiping servants. This turned out to be a masterful arrangement with one or both of them able to acquire valuable intelligence and report back to England. Working so closely together for so long necessitated a deep level of trust—one that did not simply disappear because the mission concluded. They came from two very different worlds, yet they’d become as close as brothers bonded by blood.
The man lifted one shoulder in a shrug as he strode forward and dropped into the chair to which Sterling had gestured earlier. Despite his impressive size, he moved with the innate grace of a jungle cat. “I’m no more at home here than I was on the Continent. Not all of us have a life and a home like this to return to. Or a wife such as the duchess.” With that, the man pulled some folded papers from the inner pocket of his coat and placed them on the desk between them.
Sterling eyed them as if a barn cat had just dropped a dead rat at his feet.
“You always were one to get straight to business, Black,” Sterling commented flatly. Oliver Black, alias “Mr. Grey” (among numerous others), former street urchin, one-time gang runner, and current espionage professional specializing in undercover assignments, was the only man Sterling knew he could trust with the task of tracking down his wife’s movements and where, exactly, she was funneling money…who this Mrs. Worthy was.
He’d known there were few men skilled enough, subtle enough to ferret out the information he’d requested without sounding an alarm…he just hadn’t known how badly he’d hoped to be disappointed until that very moment. Never in his life had he considered preferring ignorance to knowledge.
As if sensing Sterling’s hesitation, Black leaned forward and placed his fingers on the papers between them. He began to drag them away slowly. “You know, this can disappear even more easily than it was acquired.”
Sterling’s hand smacked down atop the corner of the stack and they both froze, the sound of his palm on the wood echoing in the room. Black sat back once again while Sterling pulled the papers toward him and began to skim the information scrawled there.
He learned that “Mrs. Worthy” was a South Bank all-girls orphanage and Alaina had been making substantial donations for a number of years. On its own, this wasn’t an odd thing for a titled woman to do, but it was interesting that the payments were being made outside of the funds directly earmarked for donations.
Sterling’s family had long been benefactors of various charities. Technically, he was even on the board of a couple of foundations, though he’d never even met the members or attended functions—the position was more ceremonial than anything. He had no qualms about making donations and, in fact, there were sums set aside in the Morton accounts for just such things. Surely Alaina knew this…it wasn’t exactly a secret, and she tallied the household accounts herself.
Why, then, did it seem as if she paid special attention to this orphanage? What vested interest existed?
Even stranger, there were notes that she made near-weekly visits to this particular girls’ home and stayed for several hours each time…and she’d never mentioned it to him before. In fact, he quite vividly remembered at least one of the recorded dates where she’d told him she had a meeting with her modiste. He ran a mental recap of her schedule and, sure enough, there were a few other times he recognized where she’d been out, or he’d been attending to business and hadn’t been around to witness her comings and goings.
“This orphanage…”
“Clean. Well-appointed as far as those places go.” Sterling watched over the edge of the paper as his visitor sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “When asked, the matrons and teachers alike had only the most wonderful things to say about the duchess. In fact, they seemed more than a little wary about any man’s intentions that he would inquire after her. She appears to be quite the dedicated and charitable woman.”
Sterling heard Black’s words, the compliments he paid Alaina, but his mind spun and spiraled. The pebble in his boot returned to prod him with a vengeance. Any number of possibilities flashed before his mind’s eye—everything from the innocent to the absurd. Alaina could simply be going above and beyond the normal expectations of a titled lady with charitable inclinations, couldn’t she? The donations were so large; could she have been blackmailed into making them? Could “Mrs. Worthy’s” be nothing more than a disguise for the deposit of the funds? He’d seen stranger things in his life…but it made no sense. Why, then, would she make such religious visits to the girls’ home and stay? What drew her there?
His wife addled him, spun him around, turned him upside down. He was not a man who normally lacked in confidence, but she shook him. The fact that he’d been blind to these activities of hers—had dropped his guard enough for this to slip by him—was more than mildly unnerving to a man whose very life had depended upon his ability to remain observant. That she’d continued to hide these behaviors from him despite their recent rapport shattered the illusion he’d begun to craft that his wife was starting to care for him…to forgive him. Her trust in him was nothing compared to what he’d placed in her. Foolishly.
Sterling’s stomach crashed through the floor as if it were attached to a lead anchor. His mind began to flail and scramble for purchase most uncharacteristically; he turned his eyes back to the words on the papers before him but saw none.
So much of his life had been nothing but secrets. His relationship with Alaina had been riddled with them, but he finally knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of one and he liked it not one bit. It set him back on his heels. It made him lose sight of what he thought he knew and the truths he’d held onto fiercely for eight years. He didn’t know his wife. They’d laid themselves bare, and still, she withheld something from him.
To be fair, he’d done the same to her.
His eyes focused back on the most damning bit of information listed at the top of the very first page: The donations began a little more than three years prior…right around the time her letters to him had stopped.
He didn’t believe this to be a coincidence. Something about Mrs. Worthy’s had absorbed her attention and a not-insignificant amount of money.
Fed up with subterfuge, Sterling knew he needed to go to the source.
Chapter Eighteen
Black took hisleave shortly after delivering the information he’d obtained, but Sterling remained in the study in stony, agonizing silence. He slouched back in his chair, propping up his tense jaw with his white-knuckled fist, his gaze boring holes in the sheaves of paper still laid out on his desk.
Black had been right.
This information could disappear.
He could feign ignorance.
He and Alaina could go about their new life; he could pretend that their bubble of peace hadn’t been pierced by the harsh pin of reality.
No.
He couldn’t live like that…not when he’d been as honest as he could be with her.
