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“Yes. Yes, I did.” He looked out the window, unable to face the Earl. “After your father killed Rose, I needed to make things ...” Not right and not fixed. He spun around because he’d never been a coward and he wasn’t going to start now.

“Tell me. Tell me what you needed to do.” The Earl was frozen to his desk chair. His fists were clenched on the desk, and he stared at Adam with ice in his brown eyes.

“I had to even the score. I had to do something so he wouldn’t just get away with it.”

“What did you do? Tell me exactly how you destroyed my family’s heritage, our estates, and my future.”

When it was put like that, Adam couldn’t breathe. It was too much. It’d been fine when he’d deliberately set out to destroy the old fucker, but the future... He hadn’t given any thought to the future. Fuck. The future meant this Earl, who was currently glaring icily at him. It meant the future that they might have together if he hadn’t ruined everything.

“Well?”

He cleared his throat. “Do you know anything about New South Wales?” Adam wasn’t ready to face the Earl’s full wrath, not just yet. He didn’t want the Earl to hate him—actually, he might want him to love him—and so he began with the story that he’d sold to the Earl’s father. It would give him a few more precious minutes with the Earl before he never saw him again. Was he that desperate? Yes. Pathetically so.

“What has that to do with anything?”

“Indulge me.” He purred out of habit and was gratified to see colour flash over the Earl’s cheeks. If he left now, he’d always have that.

The Earl blinked slowly, and the glare returned. “Continue.”

“The new colony of New South Wales has provided keen investors with the chance to gain ownership of the land there.” He’d told the Earl’s father that he needed to buy the land, while the truth was that much of the land was given to people as grants if they could afford to employ enough people to farm it. He’d spent a year travelling there to understand the set-up back in 1805 only a few years after the colony had been formed. It was a riotous outpost with little governance, although Adam had found many ambitious young men willing to chance themselves for a profit. He interviewed many until he found someone, James Watkinson, suitable to be his agent and co-investor, collecting available grants for Rosewood and the Land Investment Corporation, using the Earl’s name to lend legitimacy to their enterprise.

“My father invested in land in New South Wales?”

“Technically he owns a share in Rosewood Estates which owns land there.”

The Earl leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Explain to me why this means he is broke.”

“The climate in New South Wales is difficult. Farming is not an easy business there. Between the drought and the bushrangers and other problems, the initial expectations for income weren’t able to be met.” Adam had told this version of the story so many times that he didn’t need to think, but it wasn’t why he was here. It was time to come clean and stop using the habitual half-truths in his story that he’d told too many times. “At least, this is what I explained to your father. Initially he saw excellent returns and we told him that if he increased his holdings, and spent more on buying sheep, then when the drought broke, we’d be back into a profit.”

“Is that true?”

“It could be. His greed told him enough that I didn’t need to try very hard to convince him.” This wasn’t a lie. There was always potential in land ownership, no one knew that more than the peerage who owned all the land in England. They collected it and hoarded it for their own advantages. He’d always loved Rosewood and the Land Investment Corporation as it meant he owned as much land, if not more, than the toffs who sneered at his origins.

“So it’s not true? I need to understand what you actually did. Is this land even real?”

Adam breathed in slowly. “Everything I’ve told you is true. However, there are two things your father didn’t know that were key to sinking him financially.” And here was the risky part, telling the whole truth.

“Explain.”

“We—” He coughed. There was no need to involve his partners in this confession, and every need to remind himself and the Earl about why he’d done this.

“I knew that if your father had no money, he would be shamed by his peers. He might even stop his abuses of other women. I couldn’t save Rose, but maybe I could stop him doing it again, and there were enough rumours that he was buying young women from the Duke St orphanage that I knew he intended to do it again.”

“I don’t need to be reminded of my father’s many sins.”

Adam wasn’t so sure of that. The old Earl was the real villain here. “What your father didn’t know was the land in New South Wales could be acquired under a grant system for little to no cost provided the new owner could provide enough labour to work the land. Rosewood Enterprises paid the passage for many young men and women wanting to improve their situations. They worked for Rosewood for three years and then were given a small land-holding of their own from the bigger grant.”

The Earl blinked. “Are you saying that my father paid actual money for free land?”

“Yes.” Adam held his ground.

“You stole from him.”

“He stole my friend’s life. And the land he bought exists. It wasn’t a con where he ended up owning nothing, he simply paid a higher price than he needed to. People often pay overs for something if they truly desire it.” Adam was paying an emotional price right now to be here and tell the Earl this, with the knowledge that he would never kiss his handsome face again. But he needed to unburden himself from the bitter beginnings to give the sweet flower of love a chance to grow. Earnest was going to tease him so much for this poetry. Adam sighed as he finally understood the angst Earnest had felt every time that he’d fallen out of love with someone.

“Could I sell this land?”

Adam swallowed. “Of course you can.”