Chapter 21 #2
Algernon had marked the passage years ago, which might have felt significant if he had not marked half the book with equal enthusiasm.
William stared at the crowded pages. “Does my brother possess an unmarked copy of Byron?”
Gabriel glanced up from another volume. “Perhaps he considers untouched margins a personal insult.”
Unfortunately, the next book proved no more useful than the first.
They searched for another two hours while the candles burned low and the household gradually quieted around them.
William followed every annotation that seemed unusual, compared passages between volumes, and read enough melancholy poetry to develop a profound sympathy for anyone who had ever begged Byron to cheer up.
None of it brought them any closer to Lord Eastmere.
Eventually, Gabriel closed another volume and pushed it away. “I am beginning to suspect poetry was a mistake.”
“Do not let Isabella hear you say that.”
Gabriel frowned. “Why?”
“I have no idea. I merely enjoy watching you panic whenever her name is mentioned.”
“I do not panic.”
“You have spent the day reading Christine de Pizan.”
“That is preparation.”
“That is terror.”
Gabriel ignored him and reached for the next volume, but William had finally had enough. He rubbed both hands over his face and leaned back in his chair.
Exhaustion had begun to settle into his bones, though he suspected lack of sleep accounted for only a small part of it. In less than two days, nearly everything he believed about his family had shifted beneath his feet.
He had learned the truth about his father, discovered how much Algernon had endured without William ever knowing, and begun to suspect that Augusta was hiding far more than anyone realized.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, he had lost Rosalind.
William pushed himself away from the table. “I need five minutes in which I do not read about anyone’s broken heart.”
“An understandable request.”
William crossed to Algernon’s desk and sank into the chair behind it.
He had sat there hundreds of times over the years, usually while attending some estate matter William had no interest in understanding. He had opened the drawers without permission, stolen pens, rearranged papers simply to irritate Algernon.
Now he rested his hand against one of the lower drawers and pulled absently.
It stopped.
William frowned and tugged again.
Something caught inside.
“What?” Gabriel asked without looking up.
“Nothing.”
William shifted the drawer and tried again. It opened another inch before catching against something near the back. Reaching inside, he found a folded sheet of paper that had slipped behind the contents and worked it free.
He nearly set it aside without looking, but something about the handwriting made him pause.
“Gabriel.”
His friend glanced over as William unfolded the page. There was no signature, only Algernon’s name written at the top.
Algernon,
William paused at the salutation. Most correspondents would have addressed his brother as Your Grace. Whoever had written this knew Algernon well enough to dispense with formality, and apparently well enough to rebuke him for his temper.
I have chosen to write because conversation with you has become increasingly difficult of late. Your temper prevents us from discussing the matter rationally, and I will not continue attempting to reason with you while every disagreement is treated as an attack.
William frowned and sat a little straighter.
“What is it?” Gabriel asked.
“I am not certain.”
But whatever this was, it was no ordinary correspondence.
The two days I spent in the country afforded me more time to think than I expected, and I confess I returned more troubled than when I left.
We have allowed this situation to continue too long. You must understand that everything can be lost if this is mishandled. Everything we have protected, everything we have sacrificed, will amount to nothing.
By then, Gabriel had abandoned the books and come around the desk. William scarcely noticed. His attention had fixed upon the next paragraph.
You must make a decision regarding the prisoner at Bryn Hir. He cannot remain there indefinitely. The estate is remote, but remoteness is not the same as safety, and every additional day increases the possibility that someone will discover what has been done.
William stopped reading.
For several seconds, neither man spoke.
Gabriel finally broke the silence. “Did that say prisoner?”
William read the passage again, hoping absurdly that the word might somehow change.
It did not.
William’s grip tightened around the page. “Bryn Hir.”
The name dragged at a distant memory. It was an old estate in Wales that had belonged to his mother’s family before passing to Algernon, so remote and so rarely used that William could not remember the last time anyone had even mentioned it.
Yet someone was being held there.
And whoever had written the letter believed Algernon was responsible for deciding what happened to him.
William stared at the page while everything they had learned began arranging itself into a pattern he desperately did not want to see.
Lord Eastmere had left White’s in Algernon’s carriage.
Augusta had attempted to send Rosalind searching after a nonexistent woman. Algernon had lied about leaving London.
Now there was a prisoner being held upon his estate in Wales.
“William?”
He barely heard Gabriel. His attention had fallen to the bottom of the letter, searching for some indication of who had written it, but there was no signature. Nothing except the same unfamiliar hand.
Except it did not feel entirely unfamiliar.
William tilted the page toward the candlelight. “I have seen this handwriting before.”
“Where?”
“I do not know.”
It was not the letters themselves he recognized so much as the endings of certain words. The final strokes curved upward before trailing away in a manner that tugged maddeningly at his memory.
He searched for the connection and found nothing.
With a frustrated breath, William lowered the letter, and his gaze wandered across the room until it caught upon a pair of boots beside the bookcase.
Something about them made him pause.
Algernon often left his riding boots in the study when he changed before dinner, but his brother was almost absurdly particular about his clothing. These were too worn to be his, scuffed around the heels and still dusty along the soles.
William crossed the room and picked one up.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.
“I do not know.”
That was the truth. Some instinct had drawn him toward them, the same uncomfortable sense that had made the handwriting feel familiar. He turned the boot over once before glancing inside.
Two letters had been stamped discreetly into the leather.
E.C.
William went completely still.
He did not need to search his memory for those.
Edmund Carlisle.
He had seen the same initials upon books Lord Eastmere had loaned him, upon correspondence, even upon the silver traveling case the earl had carried for as long as William could remember.
Gabriel must have seen something change in his face because he came closer. “What is it?”
William could not answer immediately.
Behind him, the unsigned letter remained open upon Algernon’s desk.
You must make a decision regarding the prisoner at Bryn Hir.
He looked from the initials inside the boot to the letter, and the possibility he had been resisting became almost impossible to deny.
Lord Eastmere had disappeared after entering Algernon’s carriage. His boots were in Algernon’s study, and somewhere upon a remote estate in Wales, Algernon was being urged to decide the fate of a prisoner.
William slowly lifted his gaze to Gabriel. “I think we know where Rosalind’s father is.”
Gabriel’s expression changed. “Bryn Hir.”
William nodded.
For weeks, they had been searching London for a man who might never have been there at all.
A coldness settled through him as his gaze returned to the letter.
You must make a decision.
He had been so relieved to finally have a place to search that he had almost overlooked the far more frightening implication of those words.
William was already moving toward the door. “We need to find Rosalind.”
Gabriel followed. “And then?”
William thought of the carriage. The lies. The boots abandoned in his brother’s study.
Then of Rosalind beside the pond, telling him she would find her father without him.
His hand tightened around the letter.
“Then we go to Wales.”