Page 210 of Courting the Wrong Duke

Rosalind laughed, and his answering smile made him look more like himself than he had since waking at Bryn Hir.

It faded quickly, however, as his attention returned to the papers resting in his lap.

“What is it?” she asked.

“More correspondence arrived this morning. Some from London and another letter from Pembry.”

The last of Rosalind’s amusement disappeared. She crossed the room and settled into the chair opposite him, already suspecting what the magistrate might have written.

“Algernon?”

William nodded and looked down at the letter in his hands. From the worn crease along the fold, Rosalind suspected he had already read it more than once.

“The matter of the title has been resolved,” he said after a moment. “Algernon has been stripped of it. He will remain in custody and will be imprisoned for what he did.”

There was no satisfaction in his face, but she had not expected there to be. William could condemn the man Algernon had become without ceasing to remember the boy who had been frightened and beaten into silence.

“And Augusta?” she asked.

William’s expression changed. “That is where matters became rather more complicated. Pembry has continued the investigation since we left Bryn Hir. He followed several of the connections back to London and managed to find the man from the auction rooms.”

“The one who disappeared?”

“Yes. He had been hiding outside London. Apparently, once he realized what he had become involved in, he was frightened enough to leave.”

Relief came first, but it was quickly overtaken by confusion. “What exactly had he become involved in?”

Rather than answer, William handed her the letter.

She read quickly at first, following Pembry’s account of the man’s disappearance and what his questioning had uncovered. Then her pace slowed.

Augusta had known far more than any of them had suspected. She had known Edmund was being held at Bryn Hir and had helped Algernon conceal it.

Rosalind looked up from the page. “She knew Papa was there all along.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes returned to the letter, and another piece fell horribly into place. “She arranged the farewell letter too?”

William nodded. “She had the man guarding your father write it. The same man who later wrote to Algernon from Bryn Hir.”

Rosalind thought of Isabella seated beside her father’s ledger, studying the peculiar upward curve of the final strokes that appeared in both letters.

“That was why the handwriting matched.”

“Yes. Augusta apparently thought it safer to use someone whose hand no one in London would recognize. She provided him with examples of your father’s writing so he could imitate it.”

“And the letter to Algernon?”

“His own doing. By then, he had become increasingly uneasy about keeping your father there and wanted Algernon to decide what was to be done with him.”

That fit with what Edmund had told them about the arguments he had overheard. It also explained the familiarity that had troubled William when he first read the letter.

“The way he addressed Algernon,” Rosalind said. “We thought they must have known one another.”

“For years, apparently. Pembry has not uncovered all of it yet, but the man had some connection to Bryn Hir long before your father was taken there. Algernon trusted him enough to place your father in his keeping.”

A stranger hired for the task might never have dared challenge a duke, but this man had known Algernon before any of it began. Whatever history existed between them had given him enough confidence to argue with him and eventually demand an end to Edmund’s imprisonment.