Page 76

He stepped back from the desk, resumed his seat, and looked down at the Bristol contract once more. After a few deep breaths and a sip of brandy, his expression had smoothed.

Alden’s footsteps returned down the corridor.

“My apologies. An argument over linens between the new housekeeper and a maid, if you can believe a man of business is reduced to arbitrating such things.” Alden dropped back into his chair with an easy, unbothered sigh. “Now, where were we?”

“I believe the insurance clause,” Nathaniel said. He felt his hand curl into a fist beneath the table and made himself release it. “Shall we?”

He left an hour later and was riding hard for the Surrey road before the last of the afternoon light had begun to fade.

I cannot waste a moment.

He did not send word ahead to Laura. There was no time. Every minute mattered now. A man of Cumberlea’s caution would not linger in one place a moment longer than necessary, and any delay, however small, might cost him everything.

The ride took the better part of three hours, the light falling fast behind him as he galloped. By the time he reached the outskirts of Chertsey, his horse breathed hard beneath him, its coat soaked through with sweat and the fine misting rain that had begun somewhere past Kingston.

He asked for directions twice from men on the road, his tone firm so that neither questioned why a gentleman was riding so hard, so late, toward a house.

Ashwell Grange, when he finally found it, sat at the end of a long gravel drive lined with old, overgrown yews. It was a handsome but unremarkable country house, its windows dark but for a single lit room on the ground floor.

Nathaniel dismounted before his horse had even stopped, tossing the reins to a startled groom who had hurried out at the sound of hooves on the drive. He strode toward the front door with a fury he made no effort to disguise. The time for that had passed.

Nathaniel knocked on the door.

“Good evening,” a butler greeted, his eyes flat.

“I wish to speak with Lord Cumberlea,” Nathaniel said, without preamble. “I understand he is in residence.”

The butler’s expression did not change. “I’m afraid His Lordship departed for London this morning, sir.”

“This morning,” Nathaniel growled, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “At what hour did he depart?”

“Before nine, sir, if I recall correctly. He had business in town that he wished to see to before the week’s end.” The butler’s eyes flicked over his disheveled state, the mud on his boots, the rain-damp coat. He raised an eyebrow. “May I be so humble as to inquire whom I have the honor of addressing, in case His Lordship asks after the visit upon his return?”

“It does not matter,” Nathaniel replied roughly. “It will not matter to him in the slightest.”

He turned and walked back down the steps before the butler could press further, his boots stomping hard against the gravel.

He stood for a moment beside his blowing, exhausted horse, staring back at the dark, unremarkable house that had held, for a matter of hours, the one thing he had spent three years chasing.

Slipped right through my fingers.

Hours. He had missed Cumberlea by hours. Maybe if he had ridden faster, or if Alden’s household crisis had run a few minutes shorter, or if he had found that letter a day sooner—any of it, even the smallest adjustment in a hundred variables—he would have caught Cumberlea tonight. He would have finally faced the cause of his sister’s ruin across a room, instead of chasing the ghost of him down a country road in the dark.

The ride back to London was slower than the ride out; his horse was spent and unwilling to be pushed harder. The rain was thickening steadily into something colder and more miserable with every passing mile.

Nathaniel let it slow him. At that point, he did not care how long the journey took. A cold, exhausted part of him almost welcomed the discomfort, as though the misery might balance out the useless fury sitting hard in his chest.

He thought of Isabella the whole ride back. He thought of her at nineteen, laughing beneath the oak tree at Duskwell, before any of this had touched her. He thought of the last time he had seen her alive, hollowed and frightened, a shadow of the girl he had grown up beside.

Damn it. How maddeningly close did I just come to finally exacting justice?

He did not reach Duskwell House until well past midnight, soaked through to the bone and thoroughly exhausted. His temper had been worn down by the harsh ride to a dull splinter.

He handed his horse’s reins to a startled groom and let himself in through the side entrance rather than wake the whole household with the front bell. He moved like a specter through the darkened halls until he reached his room and opened the door. He wanted to be left alone with his failure.

He did not expect to find Laura awake.

He could see her sitting up in bed through a crack in the connecting door. He walked over and pushed it open to get a better look. A single candle burned low beside her, and a book lay closed and forgotten in her lap as she stared off into the distance.