“Might I offer you my arm?”
Sara took it without a word. She had very little idea of what to expect from this conversation, and any verbal response seemed quite impossible. Having barely slept a wink the previous night, as a result of her thoughts being far too caught up with Lord Stoneleigh and what it was that he would explain to her, she was a little surprised that she felt no sense of tiredness. In her bed, she had thought about the situation for many hours, recalling how he had told her that his loss of fortune was not his doing - but how else could a gentleman lose everything that belonged to him? It made very little sense to her mind, but she was more than willing to listen to his explanation. This would decide what their future would like – if there was to be one at all! If there was not to be, then Sara was quite sure that her heart would be broken, but at least she would know that she had done everything she could to try to make the situation work for them both.
“You are anxious, I think.” His smile did nothing to ease her worry. “I cannot blame you for that. Were I to be in your present situation, I would find myself in such a state also, I am sure.”
“Then pray be willing to ease my concerns, for your assessment of my state of mind at present is accurate,” Sara replied quickly. “Given that we face a situation where we find ourselves eager to be in one another’s company but without any certainty as to whether or not we can permit ourselves to be so!”
Lord Stoneleigh’s wry smile faded quickly.
“You may be of the mind that there is some hope for us still, Lady Sara, but I confess to you that I believe there is not. It is as I have said before, which is why I pushed you from my company so that I could force myself to pull away from you: it is simply because I do not believe that there is any future where we can find happiness. The situation is much too difficult. There are expectations when it comes to courtship, and even more so when there is a betrothal expected. I can offer none of those things to you.”
“You speak in such confusing terms, Lord Stoneleigh.” Sara clasped his arm a little tighter. “Please, tell me everything. I must know of it.”
He nodded slowly.
“Very well. At the beginning of the Season, my friends and I went to the East End of London to a gambling den there. Our intention was to play some games of cards and the like – nothing too deep, just an evening’s entertainment. My friend… or I should say, a gentleman I believed to be my friend, encouraged us there and, in fact, showed us the way.” Sara nodded but said nothing, recalling how she had seen Lord Stoneleigh, as he made his way out of a red-doored establishment. Had that been where he had gone that night? “I have very little memory of what took place there, after he led us into that establishment,” he told her, as Sara’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “There were seven of us present with one being my friend, Lord Gillespie, who led us there. From what I understand, he did not linger. But the following day, I woke to find that my fortune was gone and my arm so badly injured that it had required a great many stitches. It took me some time to regain my strength, although my arm has still not fully returned to how it once was. And I soon discovered that I was not alone in my misfortune - a number of my friends had also suffered similar losses.”
Quickly trying to understand what he meant by this, Sara took a deep breath. Surely such situations, where a gentleman might wake from whatever stupor they had placed themselves in with unclear memories of the night before, were not uncommon? But still, for a gentleman to then discover that they had no coin left whatsoever was, of a certainty, more than a little strange.
“I can see the confusion in your eyes, and I shall admit that it was the very same confusion that filled me upon my awakening. A confusion caused, it seems, by my having been administered something untoward in my drink, which led me to become almost insensible. My friends had suffered a similar fate. And whilst we were so affected, each of us was relieved of our fortunes by unscrupulous villains.” Lord Stoneleigh shook his head. “There is no requirement for you to believe me, Lady Sara. For all you know, I may well be telling you an untruth in the hope of redeeming myself somewhat in your eyes.”
“But that would make very little sense, Lord Stoneleigh, since you have already attempted to break us apart,” she countered, as a wry smile lifted the edge of his mouth. “I seek to make sense of what you say, that is all. To believe that you would speak of this in the hope of gaining a closeness with me, which you have already eschewed, does not make any sense.”
Lord Stoneleigh chuckled, but the sound was not a light one.
“I suppose I can understand that consideration, at least,” he agreed eventually. “Lord Foster and Lord Wiltsham, who are very dear friends of mine, are two of the other gentlemen I spoke of who have also been affected.”
“But they are both betrothed, are they not?” Sara closed her eyes for a moment, a flush rising up from her chest into her face. “Forgive me, I did not mean to suggest that a gentleman such as they in their present difficulties could not find themselves a bride.”
Lord Stoneleigh did not seem at all put off by her remarks. Instead, he reached over with his free hand and patted hers as it rested on his arm.
“They are neither inconsiderate nor intemperate men, and would never have been foolish enough to lose every penny they had. However, in the time between that night and today, both have regained their fortunes.”
“Regained them?” she repeated, finding her feet coming to a stop and refusing to move forward as she turned to look a little more directly into Lord Stoneleigh’s face. Her astonishment was almost insurmountable. “How could such a thing come about?”
Lord Stoneleigh gave her a small smile before glancing over her shoulder to where Sara’s mother was also walking, carefully chaperoning her daughter but remaining at a distance so that the conversation could be private.
Leading her forward, evidently concerned that her mother would think something was wrong if they stood still for any length of time, Lord Stoneleigh continued at a slow pace.
“I am well aware that, after this conversation and my explanation to you, your surprise at my statement will be great, but I assure you it is the truth. Lord Foster recovered his fortune after having found the culprit. Lord Wiltsham has only recently taken his back also. The gentleman who engineered Lord Wiltsham’s loss of fortune was a most unscrupulous sort, but his rather close connection to Miss Carshaw made exposure of the guilty party’s foibles rather difficult.”
Sara did not fully understand all of this, but chose to tuck it into the back of her mind so that she might consider it at a later date.
“Then, if Lord Foster and Lord Wiltsham have managed to find the gentlemen responsible for their losses, could you not use those guilty men to find out who has taken yours also?”
Lord Stoneleigh smiled at her, his eyes a little dark.
“I have been doing what I can. I have already explained about Lord Wiltsham’s discovery, but as for Lord Foster… the gentleman who stole his fortune has made his way to the continent. He will not be returning to England for some time, I might imagine.”
“And Lord Gillespie?”
A cloud passed over Lord Stoneleigh’s expression, sending great shadows into his eyes.
“Lord Gillespie is dead,” he said shortly.
Sara caught her breath, one hand flying to her mouth. Had it not been for Lord Stoneleigh’s gentle encouragement to keep her moving along the path, she probably would have stopped again.
“He was my friend.” Lord Stoneleigh only shook his head and turned his eyes away from her. “And yet he led me to that very place, no doubt knowing what would occur.”
