Page 44 of Let There Be Desire, My Duke

Instead, he went to the bookshelf. Father had kept old ledgers and records stored quite neatly, organized by date and venture. Thomas ran his hand along the spines of the fraying older volumes, half-tempted to open up some of the oldest ledgers, from the days when he was just a boy, or even earlier. There were records here that went as far back as those kept by his great-grandfather, after all.

Such interest was best saved for another day, however. Thomas stopped when he reached the shelf meant to house last year’s books—the ones that would contain the figures for the almost merger with the Duke of Alderleaf. There was October… November… December… February…

February?

Thomas, eyes widening, read through the markings on the spines again. And again, after that. He looked on the shelf above, and the shelf below. He pulled down the books for both December and February, wondering if the information might have been slipped into the back end or the very start of either of those volumes, or had simply been mislabeled. Nothing.

Thomas slumped against the bookshelf, his whole body feeling like a giant bruise, and his burdened brain spinning with the implication of this new information.

There were no records anywhere for the month of January.

The ledger had disappeared.

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