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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thomas felt as though all the air had been sucked from his lungs. “How can you know this?”
Gerard quickly recounted the tale of his afternoon. He had begun the day by inquiring with their own staff as to the origins of the footman. After hitting dead ends with the first several servants he’d questioned, he found success with the lad who tended to the horses that pulled the carriage. He was the one to claim the footman worked for Alderleaf Manor before finding employment with the Russells.
“Yet because I know you will not believe the Duke of Alderleaf could possibly be the culprit without irrefutable evidence,” said Gerard, crossing his legs, “I thought it prudent to dig deeper into the matter myself before approaching you with my findings.”
Thomas was practically seething. “Do not tell me you went to Alderleaf Manor by yourself to investigate.”
“I cannot lie to you, Thomas. That is precisely what I did.”
Thomas’ hand curled around one of his rejected letter drafts to Lady Evelina. “You hypocrite—for all your talk of safety, you have gone and put yourself directly in harm’s way, with no one to back you up!”
“You were nearly beaten to deathyesterday, Thomas. What else was I to do?”
“Tell me where you were going, for one, and why.”
“Would you have tried to stop me if I had?”
“I—” Thomas cut himself off. He made himself swallow his anger and actually think about the question. His shoulders sagged. “Possibly. Though whether I would have done so out of some protective instinct toward my relationship with Lady Evelina, or fear for your safety, I cannot say. Likely some combination of both.”
Gerard gave him a look that somehow managed to be both smug and sad at once. “You see? I was only doing what needed to be done.”
Thomas was more than a little certain that Gerard had not needed to doanythingthe way he had—with a lack of communication and total disregard for his own safety.
Yet he did not have it in him to continue being angry, not when Gerard had so willingly put himself on the line for their family. “What was it you discovered, then?”
Gerard looked pleased that Thomas wasn’t going to argue any more. “I managed to slip around back to the servant’s entrance. I caught one of their cooks coming out to dump spoiled goods to the dogs, and from there, all it took was a quick exchange of coin to get the address of their stable master. He was the one who ultimately confirmed the employment of the footman.” As an afterthought, Gerard added, “The footman’s name is Edwin Martin, by the way. I hadn’t known it until this morning.”
Oddly, Thomas was abashed to realize that he had not known the footman’s name either. Criminal or not, as the lord of the household, he should do a better job at knowing the ins and outs of his staff.
He needed to at least do well enough not to unwittingly be housing a mercenary in the midst by accident.
“It is all very suspicious indeed,” Thomas acknowledged after a long moment of thought. “But it still does not prove that the Duke of Alderleaf himself was behind the attacks.”
Gerard’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again in frustration. Finally, he threw his arms up in the air. “Good grief, Thomas! What is it going to take to convince you? A hand-written confession?”
Lady Evelina’s face flashed across Thomas’ mind with all the fleeting brilliance of a comet. The tilt of her smile, the sparkle of her eyes, the charm of her words…he could not lose her.
Perhaps itwouldtake a hand-written confession, Thomas acknowledged gravely to himself.Has Gerard been right all along? Have you been trusting in the Talbot family too blindly?
Rather than putting any of those anxieties out into the open for Gerard’s critique, Thomas asked, “Do you think the footman—Martin—came into the office and stole the ledger before the attack on Father?”
Gerard shrugged. “If he did play a role in orchestrating Father’s attack, and if the Duke of Alderleaf is involved, would it not make sense to take the very ledger that serves as evidence of their conflicts?”
Thomas opened his mouth, meaning to play devil’s advocate, but found the words would not come.
The footman’s previous employment with Alderleaf Manor, coupled with the missing ledger, as well as the footman being hired onto their staff the very month of Father’s death…
Thomas wanted to bury his face in his hands once more, but he settled for merely hanging his head. “I cannot believe the insanity of this. It truly is the Duke of Alderleaf behind it all.”
Gerard looked as though he might pass out from relief. “At last, you see reason.”
Thomas gave him sharp look. “Don’t you ‘At last’ me, Gerard. Prior to this afternoon, there was nothing directly linking the Duke of Alderleaf beyond circumstantial assumptions.”
Gerard schooled his expression immediately. “My apologies, Thomas. While I am pleased for your safety and mine that we are at last beginning to make headway in this matter, I know you have had your heart set on Lady Evelina. Doubtless, this is not at all how you anticipated your relationship would come to an end.”
Thomas thought of Lady Evelina once more. His chest ached at the prospect of losing her, and his beaten limbs felt even greater exhaustion at the idea of going up against all that now stood in their way if they were to be together.
