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“Then I will do that.”

“It will not be enough to fix the estate’s financial woes. And it is true that when the drought breaks, the land will be productive and will likely make a good income.”

The Earl frowned. “In the beginning it made ten percent per quarter. Is that possible again?”

Fuck. Adam’s heart thumped erratically. His instinct was to fall back on old habits and use that little snippet of greed in the Earl’s phrasing to hook him in for more, but he blinked, forcing himself to tell the awkward truth instead.

“You know about that?”

“It’s in black and white in the account books. I assumed that was why he kept investing.”

“Yes. It is exactly why he kept investing. Those returns were the hook that allowed me to use his greed to keep him spending.”

“What aren’t you saying?”

Adam’s voice cracked a little as his conscious kept prodding him to confess. “The returns were fake.”

“What?”

Well, he’d said it now. He was going to have to apologise to Nobbie, Earnest, and Sebastian. Later. First he had to ignore the way his heart was racing and confess to what he’d done. It was time to take the biggest gamble of his life and risk his heart for the truth.

“Not only did your father pay good money for land that Rosewood Estates acquired for almost nothing, but we—” He skipped over that, knowing that if he corrected himself, the Earl would notice. “—preyed on his greed by faking those early returns to get him to invest more and more until he was broke. It was deliberate. I needed to get revenge for what he did to Rose.” He needed to remind the Earl, and himself, that he had done this for a damned good reason.

“You faked the early returns?”

Adam had put himself in this trap on purpose, and yet he still wanted to shake the bars on his own cage and get himself out. He had broken his friendship code and talked about this with someone who really should not want to protect him. He had fucked it all up. The gamble had failed. He’d risked his heart and his friendships for a man whose stare of disdain and distaste showed that Adam had lost. The Earl would never want him.

“It is simple.” Bravado was all he had left, so he squared his shoulders. His palms were slick with sweat and he was beginning to doubt if love was worth this. “If someone gives me ten pounds, and I give them one pound back, they think they have earned a ten percent return, and I still have nine pounds.”

“But they think they have eleven pounds?”

“Yes. Herein lies the con. I have nine pounds and they have one, but they believe I am investing their ten pounds to earn them an extra pound.”

“And then the next quarter, you have only eight pounds? What happens when it runs out?”

Adam grinned. “That’s the beauty of it. With a return like that, it’s easy to get someone to invest more capital.”

“How can you smile?”

Chapter 12

Theo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His father had been conned out of the entire estate on false pretences and this man, Adam Milnes, was grinning at him as he was bloody proud of himself. But as soon as Theo mentioned his smile, Adam schooled his expression into a more sombre one. It only served to remind him that he was dealing with a con artist. The worst thing was that his father deserved to pay for his sins, but now Theo was left with the mess, and it was suddenly too complicated.

“Your father’s greed was his undoing. He made it easy to convince him to keep spending money, and it wasn’t all faked. We had the land ownership papers to show him.”

“Land you got for free.” Theo’s fingernails cut into his palms. It would be foolish to believe Adam’s handsome face and charming ways and the pain helped remind him that Adam was the cause of Theo’s problems.

“Almost free. I had to provide labourers. There’s a cost in owning land and finding people to farm it.”

He glared at Adam. “I’m not interested in the semantics. You stole from me.”

“Not from you.” Adam’s throat shifted as he swallowed. “Technically I didn’t steal anything. Your father invested willingly in a business, and if you want to call that theft...” Adam’s eyebrows knitted together, and his nostrils flared in a rare show of temper. “Your father stole Rose’s life.”

Theo was definitely a fool for wanting to push Adam more and see what he would do with his apparent anger. “A business with fake returns. You just gave him some of his own money back and pretended it was a return.”

“Yes.”

“He invested under false pretences.” It was hard to sound aggrieved with someone who agreed with him.