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They sat down together. Thomas’ movements were slow and stiff, but eventually he managed to get himself on the ground. They were lucky after all that the moon was bright tonight—on his way in, Thomas had been cursing the lack of cover, but now it was paying off.
Lungs tight, Thomas flipped open the ledger. It only contained three sections—January, February, and March of that year.
He went right to January.
What he saw…did not quite make sense.
“It seems as though, according to this, our Fathers did excellent business together,” Thomas said dumbly.
“Yes,” Evelina echoed, leaning over his shoulder. Her brow was knit in confusion.
“So, what does that mean?”
“I am unsure, Thomas. You are the one coming here with all sorts of strange information. I would quite love it if you would enlighten me.”
Thomas thought that was a little unfair, but on that front, he held his tongue. “The state of the January numbers…when our Fathers were supposedly negotiating their merger…suggest there would be no incentive whatsoever for either party to pull out. Or for your Father to deliberately orchestrate the accident that brought my own to his untimely end.”
“That’s what I’m seeing as well,” said Lady Evelina.
Of two things, Thomas was suddenly very aware. The first was how close Lady Evelina was. Her side was pressed up against his, so that her chin nearly rested atop his shoulder, allowing her to read from the ledger in the moonlight as well. He could feel the softness of her hair against the lobe of his ear, as well as the giving press of her bosom against his back.
The second was this realization: anyone could scribble in numbers.
Thomas’ palms began to sweat against the ledger. It looked legitimate, for all intents and purposes. But whoever was behind his Father’s murder, and the attack on himself, had clearly understood the importance of the financial records from the beginning. Enough to the point that they had stolen the records out of Elvington Manor altogether.
Additionally, Lady Evelina was intelligent. She knew how business worked. And she’d been inside Alderleaf Manor just now for a long time.
“Thomas?” Lady Evelina said softly, breath right up against his ear. “What are you thinking?”
Thomas was thinking of the footman. An employee and nothing more—there had been no true personal connection—yet someone he and his father had both trusted at one point or another, only to be betrayed in the most terrible way. He was thinking of his brother, and all the research he’d done to get them to this point in solving the mystery, as well as all the months he’d harbored his dark suspicions in secret.
“I… am not certain,” Thomas said at last, his stomach full of snakes.
“Is there anything there I can clarify for you?” Lady Evelina asked, sounding devilishly sincere.
Thomas wanted to say yes. He wanted to demand to know whether or not the ledger was falsified, purely to put him off the scent. He wanted to know whether Lady Evelina had only pursued him from the beginning with her family’s business interests in mind. He did not know who to trust anymore, and he desperately wanted answers.
“I think it is best that I think over this information on my own for the time being,” Thomas managed, and gingerly began to press to his feet.
Lady Evelina grabbed ahold of his sleeve, stopping him. “Thomas, surely you aren’t serious. We’ve both gone to such great lengths to meet in person. Tell me what you are thinking.”
“You would not like to hear it, My Dear,” Thomas said, pulling his sleeve away rather gruffly.
Lady Evelina’s eyes widened with hurt and surprise. “You cannot mean to say that you don’t trust me, Thomas. Not me of all people.”
“To be frank, I am not at all sure what to think,” Thomas admitted, meaning the words to come out more sharply than they did. In reality, he was at a loss, and panicking for little reason.
Lady Evelina had done nothing directly to cause him to mistrust her. All she had done was presented her father’s old ledger to attempt to resolve the situation. There was no proof—or even reason to suggest—the book had been forged.
Yet Thomas could not stop the pounding of his heart, the shaking of his hands, the quickness of his breath. He felt as though he were being beaten all over again; this time, from the inside out.
“Thomas?” Lady Evelina got to her feet. She gripped onto him. “Thomas, are you quite all right?”
Thomas turned toward her abruptly. She was beautiful in the moonlight. Her dark hair gleamed with a shine he’d scarcely seen elsewhere, and her skin and a luminescent quality about it, as though she’d been carved from marble in the image of some otherworldly goddess.
He could stay in London. Continue trying to get to the bottom of the murder, and likely disappear into a whirlpool of doubts and connections that didn’t add up and paranoia. So, so much paranoia.
In that moment, regardless of what Lady Evelina’s father may or may not have done—regardless of whether she was involved, inadvertently or otherwise—he wanted nothing more than to sweep her away this very moment. To charter a ship and to go somewhere else. The Far East, the Colonies, anywhere—it didn’t matter. So long as it was just Thomas and Evelina, with all this mess behind them and forgotten, he would be content.
Or at least, that’s what he told himself. Guilt over abandoning the case of his father’s murder, as well as his brother, would certainly follow them, a ghastly shadow across the sun.
Even so, Thomas gripped Lady Evelina’s forearms and blurted out, “Run away with me, Evelina.”
