AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was meant to tempt him.
Surely, plenty of men had played this game over the years. Had taken partners in secret. Had loved and grown old and had families with them. The world gave men a wide swath of opportunity for it. But Adelaide, who’d spent her life alone in the turret on Westminster Bridge, keeping herself safe, trading bits of herself for fear of being cast aside—it was not enough.
She deserved so much more from the world.
From him.
“I straddle two worlds, Henry, one foot in the muck of Lambeth and one in the ballrooms of Mayfair. Neither fits me.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a strange half-life that never seemed to have a path that would lead to this. But this path, I can walk it.”
There was another path, though. She could find a decent man who could give her a full future. A full heart. All she deserved.
And still, he was greedy for her, wanting to say yes. Wanting to take everything he could have of her. Whatever pieces he could carve off.
Hoard.
Before he could find the words to explain, Adelaide was once again lost to the letter.
“Wait. Istolethe box. I stole it, and the letter within, from The Bully Boys, who stole it from you—for someone. Alfie Trumbull does not steal puzzles for sport—and I do not imagine he would care one bit if he knew the truth about you, other than to blackmail you with it until you were bled dry. But even that is not my father’s preferred sport. Which means someone hired him to get it, and paid him well to burgle it from Mayfair. He knows better than to draw the attention of Scotland Yard.”
He nodded. “Havistock.” She recoiled at the name as he pressed on. “The Marquess of Havistock was a childhood friend of my father’s.Friend,” he spat. “My father was a decent man who led too much with kindness. Believed too much in others. Thought Havistock the kind of friend he could trust, and showed him the letter. The box. The ring.”
“No,” she said. “A man like Havistock—he would use this to get whatever he wanted. Forever.”
She shook her head. “But there isn’t a whisper of this in your brother’s file. For all Havistock disdained your parents—he never spoke of it.”
“I don’t think it mattered to him. Until recently.”
“Why now?” He didn’t have to reply. She divined the answer almost as soon as the question had left her lips. Her turn to be clever. “Child labor. He wished to stop your campaign, which threatens his workhouses.”
He shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, “How did you know about them?”
“Havistock has a file, too. And it’s not full of gambling debts and idiocy. It’s thick as my thumb, and filled witha score of activities that, though not illegal, are most certainly immoral.”
“Including employing children in his factories,” he said.
“Yes, well,employingis not the word I would use for the way he treats them, and the little he pays them.”
“And there’s nothing to be done. It’s not illegal. But it will be,” he vowed. “Unless Havistock finds a way to turn Parliament against me.”
“By making you a scandal.”
He nodded. “I wouldn’t lose the title, but I would lose all its influence. The cause would be set back years. Longer.”
“And the only reason why it hasn’t been revealed already...”
He met her gaze. “...is because you stole it.”
She adjusted her spectacles, unable to resist the quip. “You may thank me any time.”
They shouldn’t joke. And still, he liked her too much not to. And she liked him, too. He flashed her a smile. “I intend to. Thoroughly.”
She leaned in and kissed him, long and sweet, like a treasure, drugging him with her softness and the scent of her, thyme and fresh rain. When they parted, he said, “I was afraid of that box, of its contents, for so long. I made to destroy it a thousand times, knowing that it was a risk to let it exist. But I couldn’t, because it proved that love existed. That it was good and worthy and true. And so I took the risk.”
He kissed her again, unable to stop himself from stealing another moment with her. Another piece of her here, in this magical place. “All that time, I thought the truth of that letter would weigh heavy when it was released. And instead... because of you... I am free of it.”
Staring deep into his eyes she said, “Why did you let me keep the box? Why did you let me open it?” Therehad been a dozen moments when he could have emptied it, and she knew it. “Why did you leave the letter there?”
He’d asked himself the question a dozen times. Told himself it was because the letter was safer there than it was on his person. But it wasn’t the truth. “I wanted you to know,” he said, finally. “I wanted to trust someone with it. I wanted that someone to be you.”
