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Whitlow set down his pen. "And?"

"I cross-referenced every expense. You have been skimming from me for years."

For a moment, nothing moved in his face. "I can explain."

"Can you?"

"Everly blackmailed me. I had no choice but to do as he asked."

"Did you?" Sutton entered the room and began to circle the desk slowly, like a hunter stalking its prey.

"It was a small thing," Whitlow assured. "You barely noticed it in all those years."

"I trusted you."

"I know, and I broke that trust. I apologize for it."

Sutton's gaze fell on the heaps of correspondence at the corner of the desk. "What about Temperance's letters?"

"What letters?" The color drained from his face.

"You thought we wouldn't discuss this, did you? Or did you hope we'd simply run out of time before the subject arose? You forged her letters. All those years she wrote to me from Sutton Hall, and I never saw one. She didn't see my letters either."

"Lady Sutton is mistaken if she claims otherwise."

"And the letters I trusted you to send to Norway?"

"I sent them as you instructed."

"Did you, now?"

Whitlow regarded him for a long moment, then drew a deep breath, opened the desk drawer, and produced a pistol.

"My apologies, my lord," he said. "I cannot lose everything now."

Sutton's mouth twisted. "So you believe you can murder an earl and a countess in their own home and escape?"

"It will not be murder. Not by my hand, at any rate." Whitlow rose and came around the desk, the pistol steady. "A jealous husband rides through the rain to the country, having heard his wife was meeting her lover in a garden. He kills her. Then, unable to live with what he has done, he takes his own life. The ton has been whispering about the Cold November Rake and his Intemperate Countess for a month. No one will question it."

"So you'll shoot me and expect no one to rouse?"

Whitlow shrugged. "They will, of course, so I need you to go to your countess's bedroom so I can set the scene."

Sutton almost choked on laughter. "You expect me to simply walk into the scene of my own murder? No thank you."

"I do. Because if you don't, I will kill you at once, and having nothing left to lose, I will take my time with your wife. On your knees."

Sutton's blood boiled, but he obeyed. "Why are you doing this? I would have given you anything."

"Yes. A house, a pension, and a very handsome funeral. I know." Whitlow's voice hardened. "I did your work for you for twelve years, Sutton. I made this estate profitable while you sulked in your study. I deserve all of it. And once that laudanum-gulping idiot is duke, I may as well own the dukedom. I did not want to kill you, truly. All you had to do was go on being sulky and childless, and you did it so beautifully, for so long." He shook his head. "And then your wife came home. I had no choice."

"She was waiting for me," Sutton said. "For nearly three years. And you told her I would not come."

"I stole nothing you had not already thrown away. Throw that sword-cane aside."

Sutton tossed it across the room. It clattered against the bookshelves.

"I will do as you ask," he said. "Only leave Temperance be."