“Everything?” she echoed, and groped for the arm of the nearest couch, bracing one hand upon it as she sat down—hard.
“Everything. Bank accounts, investments. My sisters’ dowries. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d managed to get his hands on my mother’s widow’s jointure.” A horrible little laugh wrestled its way from his throat, and he plunged his fingers into his hair, ruffling the cool dark strands. “I hadn’t even enough money left over to pay for the girls’ wardrobes. The truth of it is, we wouldn’t even have made it to London this Season without your father’s support.”
Andshehad been the price of it. “That’s why your mother sponsored me,” she said softly.
“She sponsored you because I asked it of her, and she was pleased as punch for it. They don’t know, Mercy, and I need you not to tell them. I am going to find him and reclaim what I can—but I need time to do it. Already there have been some whispers, some rumors which could prove ruinous even if I do manage to reclaim our funds. It is so easy to destroy a reputation. I can’t let my poor judgment of a man’s character ruin my family alongside me.”
“That’s why you’ve been gone so often,” she said weakly. “Why you arrive late to events.” Oh, Lord, so many tiny things had begun to make sense. The Armitages had a townhouse of their own, which they typically let for the Season—orhadhad one. She supposed it, too, must be gone.
“That day that you fell out of your hot air balloon,” he said, “I had only just discovered the truth of what had happened. The whole of my funds amounted to a handful of coin, and it could buy little more than a few pints of ale at the village tavern. I spent the evening there, got myself sotted, and couldn’t even manage to make it home again.”
And she’d fallen from the sky straight atop him after whatmight well have been one of the worst evenings of his life. “Probably it would have been more comfortable to drink at home,” she said.
“Probably. But someone would have noticed, certainly.” A weary sigh drifted from his lungs, and he collapsed upon the couch, bracing his elbows upon his knees. “I have got an investigator,” he said. “And your father’s solicitor has been most helpful. I amgoing to find the villain, Mercy, and reclaim what is ours. But I wanted you to know.”
“Why?” Her hands knotted in her lap, fingers tangling.
“Because I am notthem, and I don’t want you to imagine that I am. I don’t want you to look upon me with that same suspicion.”
Perfect, polished Thomas had become something else entirely in these last few minutes. A wreck of a man—or perhaps a wreck of the man he had once been. And she wondered at it, at the changes he had weathered in these last few weeks. At the changes he had wrought in her. At the changes he had made in himself.
He danced along the edge of some admission, and she was dreadfully afraid that she knew what it was. But he kept those words tucked back firmly behind his teeth as if he hadn’t the right to speak them, and held his head in his hands.
He had not feigned an enjoyment of her company. He had not pretended at some manner of affection to keep her complacent, to curry favor with her or her father. He did not want to be considered insincere in the same way that she had judged those gentlemen who had come to call upon her. He had made the confession of this, his most closely guarded secret, because he thought she deserved to know it. To draw her own conclusion.
It didn’t matter. Her heart had drawn one already for her, with or without her consent. Scored his name across itself.
But she, too, kept those words tucked behind her teeth, in the full breadth of her own knowledge of how ruinous they might prove, how very cruel in the end. Instead she said, “You must let me help you.”
∞∞∞
It shouldn’t have surprised him, the offer she had made. But the fact that it had been rendered without censure, without judgment, without even the slightest, most oblique suggestion of blame or fault, had. “The fault is only mine,” he said. “It’s my responsibility to manage.”
“Thomas, you cannot blame yourself for becoming the victim of an unscrupulous man,” she said, and her cool, soft fingers landed atop his hand with gentle pressure, as if she could impress the words into his very flesh and force him to accept them as truth. “Gentlemen in your position—they contract the services of such men every day, rely upon them to manage their affairs with all due diligence. You could not possibly have known that he would betray the trust you bestowed upon him.”
“I placed too much trust in him,” he said. “I should have—”
“What?” she interjected, and her fingers squeezed his in silent reassurance. “Tell me. What might you have done differently? What action might you have taken? What have you done that was in any way beneath what ought to have been expected of you?”
Thomas fell silent, and for the first time he considered, absent the guilt and shame that he had heaped upon his own shoulders, that perhaps he had attributed more blame to himself than he had deserved.
“My father receives quarterly reports,” Mercy said, “from his own solicitor. Did you not receive the same, or fail to request them?”
He had. Of course he had. “I received them,” he said, almost begrudgingly. “I read them, always.” As it had been his responsibility to do. “But they weren’t legitimate. Or at least they weren’t always legitimate. At some point, he must have begun to provide me with false accountings, and I—I hadn’t the slightest idea.”
“How could you have?” she asked. “Papa has got far too many business interests to oversee himself. He relies upon his solicitor to provide him the relevant information. Thank God Mr. Sumner has proved himself indispensable in that regard, for his careful attention to Papa’s finances. But if he were a less principled man than we know him to be,” she said slowly, “I imagine it would not be a simple task to uncover it. Could you have known your solicitor to be less than principled?”
“He was my father’s solicitor before he was mine,” Thomas said. “Father had been satisfied with his services; I saw no reason to deprive the man of his office simply because I had inherited the title.”
“No complaints? Not even the smallest suggestion of something amiss?”
“No,” he said, and then managed an odd little laugh. “He did once attempt to convince me to fund some madcap investment scheme regarding the potential of a gold mine, which I declined to do. But my debts were always paid on time.” Until they weren’t. “Any funds I had requested to settle household accounts were always delivered promptly.” Until they hadn’t been. “My first indication that something was amiss was when our butler informed me that the requested funds to pay the staff their quarterly wages had never arrived. I never knew it; not until he told me perhaps two weeks after they had been due to be paid. Isuppose he must have given me the benefit of the doubt,” he said ruefully. “I have never before failed to provide him with the funds necessary to pay the staff.”
Mercy winced. “But once it had been brought to your attention,” she said, “you took action, yes?”
“Of course,” he said. “I wrote to my solicitor at once to demand an explanation. I wrote also to my bank, thinking it would be wisest, given the circumstances, to apply directly to the institution for the funds necessary. From my solicitor, I received no response.”
“And from your bank?”
