Page 150 of Courting the Wrong Duke

For several seconds, neither man spoke.

Gabriel finally broke the silence. “Did that say prisoner?”

William read the passage again, hoping absurdly that the word might somehow change.

It did not.

William’s grip tightened around the page. “Bryn Hir.”

The name dragged at a distant memory. It was an old estate in Wales that had belonged to his mother’s family before passing to Algernon, so remote and so rarely used that William could not remember the last time anyone had even mentioned it.

Yet someone was being held there.

And whoever had written the letter believed Algernon was responsible for deciding what happened to him.

William stared at the page while everything they had learned began arranging itself into a pattern he desperately did not want to see. Lord Eastmere had left White’s in Algernon’s carriage. Augusta had attempted to send Rosalind searching after a nonexistent woman. Algernon had lied about leaving London.

Now there was a prisoner being held upon his estate in Wales.

“William?”

He barely heard Gabriel. His attention had fallen to the bottom of the letter, searching for some indication of who had written it, but there was no signature. Nothing except the same unfamiliar hand.

Except it did not feel entirely unfamiliar.

William tilted the page toward the candlelight. “I have seen this handwriting before.”

“Where?”

“I do not know.”

It was not the letters themselves he recognized so much as the endings of certain words. The final strokes curved upward before trailing away in a manner that tugged maddeningly at his memory.

He searched for the connection and found nothing.

With a frustrated breath, William lowered the letter, and his gaze wandered across the room until it caught upon a pair of boots beside the bookcase.

Something about them made him pause.

Algernon often left his riding boots in the study when he changed before dinner, but his brother was almost absurdly particular about his clothing. These were too worn to be his, scuffed around the heels and still dusty along the soles.

William crossed the room and picked one up.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.

“I do not know.”

That was the truth. Some instinct had drawn him toward them, the same uncomfortable sense that had made the handwriting feel familiar. He turned the boot over once before glancing inside.

Two letters had been stamped discreetly into the leather.

E.C.

William went completely still.

He did not need to search his memory for those.

Edmund Carlisle.