Chapter 20 #2
Because she did. She hated that everything she had learned about Algernon and Augusta had done so little to change how she felt about William.
Distrusting him would have been easier.
Instead, she believed him when he said he had known nothing. She believed his surprise, his confusion, even his hurt.
And none of that made him safe.
The safest thing she could do for Papa was keep William at a distance.
Rosalind was beginning to despise sensible things.
Isabella watched her for another moment before sighing. “Men.”
Rosalind looked at her.
“All of them,” Isabella declared. “Hopeless.”
“You were defending Gabriel’s intelligence only this morning.”
“I have reconsidered.”
A reluctant laugh escaped Rosalind.
“Now,” Isabella said, rising, “if we are no longer relying upon the gentlemen, we shall have to solve this ourselves.”
Rosalind nodded. “We know more than we did before.”
“Your father left White’s willingly.”
“In a carriage belonging to Algernon.”
“The duke has lied about his movements.”
“And Augusta attempted to send us searching elsewhere.”
Isabella began pacing now too.
For several minutes they traded possibilities across the room, each theory giving birth to another. Had Algernon sent the carriage himself? Had Papa expected to meet him? Had something happened during the journey? Why conceal it afterward? And where did the auction clerk fit into any of it?
By the time Rosalind had crossed the room often enough to make herself dizzy, Isabella stopped and frowned.
“I cannot think while hungry.”
Rosalind stared at her. “You ate during our lesson.”
“That was hours ago.”
“It was not.”
“Thinking requires nourishment.”
Rosalind surrendered and rang for refreshments.
A footman appeared soon afterward carrying tea, bread, cheese, fruit, and several small cakes. Isabella immediately took possession of a cake and resumed pacing with it, which Rosalind suspected was not behavior encouraged in any respectable drawing room.
Rosalind was halfway through a piece of bread when Isabella suddenly went still, the cake in her hand forgotten.
Rosalind knew that expression. She had seen it often enough when Isabella noticed some flaw in a painting or stumbled upon an idea she could not immediately explain.
“What is it?”
Isabella’s gaze had gone distant. “The letter.”
Rosalind frowned. “Papa’s letter?”
“The one he supposedly left before he disappeared. Where is it?”
Something in Isabella’s tone made Rosalind set aside her plate. “In the escritoire. Why?”
“I want to see it again.”
“You have seen it.”
“I have read it,” Isabella corrected. “I have never properly looked at it.”
Rosalind’s pulse gave an uneasy beat, but she crossed to the escritoire and retrieved the letter from the drawer where it had remained since she found it.
Isabella took it immediately.
For nearly a minute, she said nothing. Her eyes traveled slowly across the page, lingering upon individual words before returning to the beginning. Then she carried it toward the window and angled the paper toward the afternoon light.
Rosalind’s unease deepened. “What are you looking for?”
“I am not entirely certain.” Isabella narrowed her eyes at one particular line. “Where does your father keep his accounts?”
“His accounts?”
“Ledgers, correspondence, anything written regularly in his own hand.”
“In his study.”
“Take me there.”
This time Rosalind did not question her.
Papa’s study remained almost exactly as he had left it. The familiar scent of leather, paper, and the faint remnants of his tobacco greeted Rosalind as she entered, and the ache that accompanied it was so familiar now that she scarcely allowed herself to acknowledge it.
Isabella was already crossing toward the desk.
“Find me something he wrote frequently. Preferably something he had no reason to think about while writing.”
Rosalind retrieved the household ledger from the shelf behind the desk. “This?”
“Perfect.”
Isabella opened it and turned through several pages until she found one filled predominantly in Papa’s hand. She placed the letter beside it and bent over both.
Rosalind joined her.
At first, she saw nothing.
The handwriting was Papa’s. She would have sworn to it. The same elegant slant, the same elongated strokes, the same peculiar shape of his capital letters. Even his habit of allowing certain words to drift slightly upward appeared to have been preserved.
Yet Isabella remained silent.
“What is it?”
Instead of answering, Isabella drew the lamp closer and pointed to one of the words in the ledger.
“Look at the strokes. Your father writes quickly. He does not form every letter with the same pressure because he does not need to think about how he forms them. His hand already knows.”
Rosalind looked where she indicated.
Isabella moved her finger to the letter. “This person thought about every stroke.”
A chill moved over Rosalind’s skin. “What do you mean, this person?”
“Look.”
Now that Isabella guided her, Rosalind began to see it. The differences were minute, almost absurdly so. A curve made too carefully. A line pressed too firmly into the paper. Two letters Papa ordinarily joined without thought separated by the faintest hesitation.
“But it looks exactly like his writing.”
“Yes.” Isabella’s voice had become very quiet. “Because whoever wrote it intended that it should.”
Rosalind looked at her.
Isabella was no longer merely curious.
She was frightened.
“I spend hours studying lines,” she continued. “Shape, proportion, pressure. I have to know when something is natural and when someone is trying to reproduce what they see. Whoever wrote this knew your father’s hand extraordinarily well.”
Rosalind pulled the ledger closer.
Once she knew what to look for, she could not stop seeing it.
Father’s handwriting moved across the page without effort. It was imperfect in all the familiar ways she had never thought to notice before. Some letters crowded together. Others stretched. His pen grew heavier when he changed direction and lighter when he wrote quickly.
The letter imitated every one of those habits.
But it imitated them.
It was too careful. Too deliberate.
Someone had learned how Papa wrote and reproduced it well enough to fool his own daughter.
Rosalind’s hands began to tremble. “He did not write this.”
Isabella reached for her arm. “No. I do not believe he did.”
Rosalind barely heard her.The carriage returned to her with sickening clarity.
Algernon’s carriage.
Her father had climbed into it willingly, trusting whoever had sent it. Then he had vanished, and a letter in his own hand had conveniently appeared to assure his family that he had gone of his own accord.
Except it was not his hand.
Rosalind looked at Isabella, and the same realization was already written across her friend’s face.
This had not happened by chance.
Someone had taken her father.
And before they did, they had made certain no one would come looking for him.