-Q3 payment to J.C.
Cottesmore. His grandmother’s maiden name. The estate she’d left him that he’d been forced to sell. But why would his father reference it in relation to agricultural supplies? They’d never farmed that land.
Evan pulled out more ledgers, going back in the months before his father passed. The pattern emerged slowly, like a code revealing itself. Every few months, large sums listed as “agricultural equipment” or “estate improvements” that never materialized. Always paid to “J.C.” or sometimes just “Cottesmore.”
His pulse quickened. He was onto something.
He found a letter tucked between pages, partially burned at the edges as if someone had tried to destroy it. The words that remained made his blood run cold:
“…know what you’ve done…. will kill me before I let you…”
Not in his father’s hand. Someone else’s. A threat to his father?
Evan sat back, mind racing. Does this appear to be more about gambling? What if he’d discovered something? Did something that he’d wanted to remain hidden?
The magistrate told him that there were no funds found, and they hadn’t determined who his father may have owed money to.
But what was his father trying to tell him?
Another margin note caught his eye, but it was in Latin. He thought hard on the translation and believed it to read, “The old oakknows.”
The old oak.Surely he couldn’t mean the one on the border between their land and Viscount Sidmouth’s. That clearing wouldn’t have meant anything to his father, even if it meant everything to Evan. It was where they’d spread that blanket beneath it and—
He shoved the memory aside. This wasn’t about Marina. Couldn’t be about Marina. Not when he needed to uncover what had happened to his father.
But God help him, even still she was all he wanted. He’d rather never know what happened than live a life without Marina. He loved her. Evan Villiers, the Viscount Ockham, was in love with Lady Marina Osborne, yet she resolved to hate him.
He never hated her, despite the vicious things she said every time their paths crossed. His pride had been wounded, yes, but hate? Never. He was completely in love with her, and he had loved her enough to let her go for her own good. And knowing that he she deserved a better life than he could give her, even if she could ever forgive him, it just might drive him to madness alongside whatever mystery his father had left behind.
A knock at the study door made him jump.
“My lord?” His valet peered in. “Forgive me, but you have an early caller. The magistrate, my lord. Says it’s urgent.”
Evan quickly closed the ledgers, his mind spinning. The magistrate at dawn? This couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Show him in.” He pulled on his coat, trying to look less like a man who’d spent the night tortured by desire and more like a lord in control of his household.
The magistrate entered, looking grim. “Lord Ockham. Forgive the early hour, but there’s been a development.”
“Oh?”
“Lord Minto has returned to London.”
The name sent ice through Evan’s veins. Minto. His father’sformer business partner. The one who’d disappeared right after his father’s death.
“I see.” Evan kept his voice neutral.
“He’s been asking questions. About your father’s investments. About some missing funds he claims your father owed him.” The magistrate paused. “I thought you should know. He seems… determined.”
After the magistrate left, Evan stared at the ledgers again. Minto. J.C. could be a false name. The threats. The hidden money. His father’s death.
And Marina, whose father was pressing her to marry Minto.
Suddenly, winning Marina’s heart wasn’t just about love anymore. It might be about keeping her safe from whatever his father had been trying to protect them all from.
He had to solve this puzzle, find what his father had hidden, and somehow convince Marina that he wasn’t the villain in this story.
He took to pacing his study. Back and forth, over and over saying the words in his head.The old oak knows.
