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George Harcourt fidgeted with his teacup, staring into dregs at the bottom as if he could read the leaves. Before Sophy could ask him what was wrong, he set the cup down with a rattle.
“Sir Arbuthnot has asked to see the estate books. I’m supposed to present them to him at Pendleton by noon. Whoever heard of such a thing?” He sounded flustered, as if his employer’s demand was both unexpected and unjust.
“But there is nothing to be found in them, Father? I mean, nothing that Sir Arbuthnot can question?”
Her father stared back at her. “No, there is nothing,” he agreed. Nevertheless she could see he was shaken, and knowing Sir Arbuthnot she understood why. Was it to do with the loan? Had Sir Arbuthnot somehow discovered about Harry’s promise?
A sense of dread washed over her, just as a sudden pounding on the door brought her and her father to their feet. The teacup went flying, smashing to pieces on the stone floor, but neither of them moved to pick them up.
“Whoever is that?” Sophy’s father growled, but his expression suggested he knew, or at least suspected.
Sophy watched as he made his way to the door, noticing how his dark hair stood on end as he was yet to comb it, and his beloved face was pale and drawn. The matter of her aunt and the loan, and his hopes for Arnold and herself, were keeping him from sleeping at night. She had heard him pacing.
“What on earth do you think—?” her father began, only for the words to die on his lips. Sophy had followed him but his body blocked the entrance so that she couldn’t see who was on the other side, apart from a glimpse of a dark coat and the tap of a crop against a muscular thigh. Only as she moved closer did she realise their early morning visitor was Sir Arbuthnot himself.
Her heart jumped. His face was red with fury and his dark brows drawn down tight. He looked as though he had worked himself into an alarming state.
“I thought it was at noon that you wanted—” her father began.
“Thief!” Sir Arbuthnot roared and pointed the crop at him, digging it into his chest as if it were a dagger. Her father took a clumsy step back but Sir Arbuthnot pressed closer, eyes blazing. “The constable is on his way and you will go with him.”
Sophy found herself frozen in place.
“Constable?” Her father repeated as if he had never heard the word before.
“You have been stealing from me, Harcourt,” Sir Arbuthnot said, the words falling leaden from his lips. His eyes slid away briefly, as if the expression on his estate manager’s face had shaken him. “You will be arrested and sent to prison until you can pay my money back.”
“What are you talking about?” Her father tried to moderate his voice. “That money was a loan! A loan agreed to between us!”
“You’ve been stealing from me.” Sir Arbuthnot slapped his riding crop against his thigh like a nervous tic. “For months. Years, probably. You will go to prison until you can pay me back what you owe me.”
It was as if he had learned the lines, Sophy thought, horrified and bewildered. Something rehearsed and planned, not a true bout of spontaneous anger. Sir Arbuthnot’s brown eyes slid by her father’s shocked face and fixed on her. And narrowed. What she saw in them lifted the hairs on her nape.
She didn’t know the man, not really. He had been at Pendleton Manor all her life, and he was Harry’s father, but he was not someone she claimed to know, or even understand. And yet he had been genial enough to her, and there had been the night of the Christmas party, when he had praised her singing. The evenings when she and her father had dined with him and he had seemed so affable.
Now he stared at her as if he wished her dead.
Her father fell against the jamb, using it to hold himself up. “You loaned me that money so that I could buy back Audley Farm and give it to my daughter.” He was desperate now, knowing he was in a bad place. It was his word against Sir Arbuthnot’s and the power was firmly on the side of the latter. “I haven’t stolen from you. You know that’s the truth. I beg of you, tell them the truth.”
“Then ask you
r daughter why I can no longer keep my part of our deal,” Sir Arbuthnot said between clenched teeth. “But before you do, remember I know everything that happens here at Pendleton. I have eyes everywhere.”
His gaze had been on Sophy but now it returned to her father and some of the heat went out of it. For a moment it seemed that he might relent. Then his expression returned to stone. “We are finished. You will have plenty of time to consider your situation in prison.”
Sophy stepped forward at last. “Please. Whatever you think happened … You cannot do this,” she said, her voice heavy with tears.
“It is already done,” he said. “The constable is on his way and the magistrate has been informed. Prepare yourself, Harcourt.”
Sophy’s father shook his head, unable to believe this was happening. Sir Arbuthnot’s gaze slid again to Sophy, where it became pitiless once more. He had made his decision and nothing would sway him.
“Your daughter will leave immediately or I will have her thrown out.”
Her father turned to her, as if he’d just realised the extent of his fall from grace. “Where is Sophy to go?”
“Poorhouse.” He shrugged. “I really don’t care as long as I never see either of you again.”
His cruelty was beyond belief. She dug her nails into her palms just to be sure this wasn’t a nightmare and felt the sting.
