Page 44 of Courting the Wrong Duke

The carriage rolled through the evening streets while Isabella spoke now and then, though Rosalind could not afterward have repeated a single word.

Father had paid for the horse.

Why?

Why commit himself to such an expensive purchase if he intended to disappear the very next day?

Nothing about it fit.

By the time the carriage drew to a stop before Carlisle House, Rosalind had reached only one conclusion.

They had overlooked something.

Inside, Lady Eastmere retired almost immediately, exhaustion finally overcoming the composure she had maintained throughout the evening.

Rosalind watched her disappear upstairs before turning to Isabella. “I should like to look through Father's study once more.”

Isabella did not hesitate. “Of course.”

The room remained almost exactly as Edmund Carlisle had left it.

His chair stood neatly behind the desk. The inkstand rested where he always kept it. Several ledgers remained stacked in orderly piles, awaiting a master who had never returned to finish his work.

Rosalind crossed the room slowly, her fingertips trailing across the familiar edge of Father's desk.

She had searched this room more times than she cared to count.

Tonight she hoped only that exhaustion or grief had caused her to overlook something before.

Without a word, they began again.

Isabella moved to the cabinet where Father's correspondence was kept while Rosalind settled behind the desk, unlocking the center drawer with the small brass key she now carried herself.

Blank stationery lay neatly stacked beside a bundle of estate accounts. Several sealed documents awaited delivery to the family's solicitor. Everything appeared precisely as she remembered.

Nothing.

She closed the drawer and opened another.

More ledgers.

Receipts tied together with faded blue ribbon.

Her hand was already moving to close it when something caught her eye.

Tucked against the back panel, half-hidden beneath one of the account books, rested a single folded sheet of paper.

It was alone.

Not tied with the household correspondence. Not filed among the accounts. Simply... waiting.

Rosalind frowned. Her pulse quickened as she reached for it.

The moment she turned it over, the breath left her lungs.

Written across the front, in a hand she would have recognized anywhere, were only a few simple words.

To my beloved wife... and my darling Rosalind.