Chapter 33
“How are we going to find him?” Henry asked as the three of them rode home. “Won’t he want to avoid us?”
“I don’t think he will,” Thomas said. “Remember, he doesn’t know that I know anything about his misdeeds. If anything, he’ll be expectingmeto avoidhim.It should be easy enough to arrange a meeting.”
“Did he leave you with a means of contacting him?” Duncan asked.
“No,” Thomas said. “It won’t bethatsimple.”
“And we can’t just go to his office?”
“I don’t know where his office is,” Thomas said. “He always visited me at my home. I suspect he didn’t want the location of his office to be widely known. There are probably documents there—records of payments made to him—that could demonstrate his guilt to the authorities.”
“It’s too bad we can’t find them,” Duncan said. “It would be much simpler if we could just hand over those papers and be done with the whole affair!”
“Yes, it would,” Thomas said. “But we would have to break the law to do it.”
“So what?” Henry asked, sounding rather incredulous. “Are you telling me you would be unwilling to steal from such a man as Simon Crowle? Even to protect yourself?”
“I told you,” Thomas said. “I’m unwilling to turn to any criminal acts, Henry. Not for any reason.”
“But that’s just silly,” Henry said. “Stealing evidence that you could use to free yourself from his scheming—”
“I promised,” Thomas said. “I promised Lady Valeria that I wouldn’t do it.”
Duncan was regarding him with an expression that Thomas didn’t quite understand.
“Valeria would understand this,” he said quietly. “She would understand that you were only trying to protect yourself. She wouldn’t think of it as the same thing as what her brother did.”
“I don’t know that,” Thomas said. “And I can’t be the one to insist that it’s a different matter. The fact is that Lady Valeria was hurt badly when Richard turned to his crimes, and when he was caught for them. It tore her life apart. And she trusted me enough—she opened up to me enough—to confide in me about that. It would unthinkably cruel of me to forget that and to resort to lawbreaking myself. I wouldn’t deserve her back if that was the way I chose to solve my problem.”
Duncan nodded slowly. He didn’t argue again, and Thomas was grateful for that. He didn’t know whether his friends would be able to understand the way he was thinking right now or not. There was every chance that he was simply wrong in the way he was thinking about this.
After all, stealing the paperwork that would prove Crowle guilty—that’s hardly a crime against society, is it? If anything, I would be doing the world at large a favor by helping to lead the constables to a criminal.
But he had promised.
He had gone out of his way to go to Lady Valeria and to give her his word that he would operate within the law.
He couldn’t make exceptions just because he thought this set of circumstances didn’t count. That would be breaking his promise. And he was determined not to do that. He was determined to show her, through all of this, that shecouldtrust him, and that she had been right to do so.
“All right,” Henry said. “So we’re not going to try to break into his office. We’ll have to try to arrange a meeting with him.”
“That will be easy enough,” Thomas said. “He wants to meet with me regularly.”
“But you said you had no way of getting in touch with him,” Henry said.
“I don’t,” Thomas said. “But he’ll soon be in touch withme, I think. He won’t want to leave me to my own devices for too long.”
“That seems true,” Duncan said. “Especially given the fact that he came to Earlington Manor to speak to my mother. It seems he’s determined to interfere as frequently and as heavily as he can.”
“So what do we do?” Henry asked. “What’s our next move?”
“I think the best thing I can do is to return to Woodsford Manor and wait for him to contact me,” Thomas said. “I don’t imagine I’ll be waiting for long.”
“And do you want us to come along with you?” Duncan asked.
“I would welcome that,” Thomas said. “I know it is rather a lot to ask, though, and if you would prefer to return to your homes, I will certainly understand.”
