Chapter Two The Duke Who Came Demanding #3
For one moment he did not read. He looked only at the shape of the writing.
Evangeline had always written too quickly, as though her thoughts were racing ahead and her hand had no patience for elegance.
Their governess had despaired of it. Their father had called it undisciplined.
Sebastian had teased her once that her letters leaned forward like horses bolting from a stable.
She had laughed and said at least they were going somewhere.
The words on the paper leaned forward still.
He began to read.
Lady Theodosia, I beg you to believe that I did not sign what they claim I signed.
The room blurred.
Sebastian blinked, once, and forced his vision clear. He read the letter from beginning to end without moving, then read the first line again because some foolish part of him believed repetition might alter it.
It did not.
I did not give him my fortune. I did not consent to the transfer. I did not write those letters in the form they have shown. Someone has taken my hand and made it speak falsely.
He remembered her hand.
Small, ink-stained, impatient. A scar near the base of the thumb where she had cut herself trying to sharpen a pencil with his penknife as a child.
A hand that had clung to his sleeve once when a storm frightened her, then pushed him away the next morning when he mentioned it.
A hand that had written to him from school: Sebastian, if you are truly fond of me you will send the blue ribbon and not tell Papa I lost mine in the pond.
Someone has taken my hand and made it speak falsely.
He lowered the letter.
“Where did she write this?”
“We do not yet know,” Miss Vane said.
“When did Lady Theodosia receive it?”
“We do not know.”
“Who else saw it?”
“My aunt, presumably. Miss Vale may have seen Lady Evangeline when she came here, but not this letter until today.”
He looked at Miss Vale. “You had not read this before?”
“No.”
“But you remembered enough to condemn me.”
“I remembered enough to doubt the version of events that made your sister conveniently mad.”
He turned away because if he looked at her while holding Evangeline’s letter, he might say something unforgivable. Again.
Miss Vane opened the copied settlement page and placed it upon the desk. “There is more.”
Sebastian looked down.
He knew the document immediately, though this was only a copy.
He had seen the original once in his father’s library, placed before him like evidence in a trial whose verdict had already been agreed.
Evangeline’s signature had been there. So had the witness marks.
His father had been standing by the fire.
Mordaunt had been grave and sympathetic.
Ashmont had been pale in the manner of men who perform injury well.
You see, Halgrave, Ashmont had said, voice shaking with admirable restraint. I would have spared her if I could.
Sebastian had been heir then, not Duke. He had wanted to strike him.
He had not.
“Here,” Miss Vale said.
He glanced at her. She had come closer to the desk, though she did not touch the document until Miss Vane inclined her head in permission. Then she turned the page slightly so the light fell across the copy.
“This purports to copy the third page of the drafted marriage settlement and the separate transfer instrument attached to it. The hand is a clerk’s, but the names and figures are legible. Lady Evangeline’s full name is written here as Evangeline Maria Rookwood.”
“That was her name.”
“No,” Miss Vale said. “It was not.”
Sebastian looked sharply at her. “I assure you I know my sister’s name.”
“Her legal name, yes. But not the name she used when signing.”
His patience thinned. “Explain.”
Marianne drew a folded scrap from the packet, not another official document but a small note written in Evangeline’s hand, perhaps preserved for comparison.
“Here. This is how she signed herself in private correspondence to Lady Theodosia. Evangeline M. Rookwood, when formal. Evie Rookwood, when not. In her letters to your housekeeper, according to the copies Lady Theodosia kept, she used Evangeline Mary Rookwood.”
“Maria was her baptismal name.”
“Yes. And did she use it?”
He opened his mouth and stopped.
Evangeline had hated Maria. Their mother’s sister had been Maria, a cold woman with lace cuffs and opinions on posture.
Evangeline had declared at twelve that she would not sign herself after a woman who smelled of vinegar and corrected children’s breathing.
Mary had been a childish substitute at first, then a habit the family indulged because it seemed harmless.
Sebastian had forgotten.
No. Not forgotten. Stored away with a thousand other details made useless by death.
Miss Vale did not look triumphant. That irritated him less than it might have.
“A forger,” she said, “might copy the baptismal record or formal draft and suppose Maria was correct. A woman signing under distress, if she signed at all, would likely use the form most natural to her.”
“That proves little.”
“It proves something.”
He could not deny it.
She pointed to the lower portion of the page. “Second. The witness here is marked as Sir Edmund Calverton. The date given is the fifteenth of June.”
“I see it.”
“Parliament sat that day. Sir Edmund spoke in the Lords. Lady Theodosia marked the report.” She withdrew another paper, a clipped page from a newspaper, folded around a column.
“He could not have witnessed this signature at Mordaunt’s office at noon and spoken in Westminster at the same hour unless he had acquired uncommon powers. ”
Sebastian took the clipping. It was old, yellowed, and marked in Lady Theodosia’s vigorous hand. Calverton — present. Therefore false? Or falsely dated.
He read it twice. His stomach tightened.
“Documents are sometimes dated after signing,” he said.
“Indeed. Which raises the question why this one required a false date.”
Before he could answer, she moved to the figures.
“Third. The sum transferred does not match the amount in the margin calculation. See here. The main body refers to fifteen thousand pounds. The side calculation totals twelve thousand five hundred, with deductions marked but not explained. Yet the ledger scrap references three separate disbursements that together approach the lower amount, not the higher.”
“A clerk’s error.”
“Perhaps.”
“Clerks make errors.”
“Honest clerks make messy errors. Dishonest clerks make useful ones.”
Sebastian stared at the page.
He hated her then. Not truly, perhaps, but with the force of a man who sees a stranger placing lamps one by one in a corridor he has kept dark for years.
Each observation was small. None alone would overturn the past. Together, they pressed against the story he had inherited, repeated, doubted, and failed to destroy.
Evangeline had denied signing.
The name was wrong.
The witness date was impossible or suspicious.
The sum did not match.
And he, Sebastian Rookwood, who had prided himself on never accepting a steward’s report without checking the rents, never signing an estate account without verifying the arithmetic, never permitting a tenant’s complaint to be dismissed because a land agent found it inconvenient, had accepted his sister’s ruin because men in sombre coats had placed paper before him and told him grief had made her unreliable.
He had been young, he thought.
No. That was a coward’s refuge. He had been young, but not a child. He had been angry, ashamed, frightened for the family name, furious with Ashmont, furious with Evangeline, furious with their father, and perhaps most unforgivably relieved when others claimed to know what ought to be done.
Miss Vale watched him.
He wondered how much of his mind she could read from the tightening of his hand upon the chair back.
“You said you saw the signed transfer,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Did you see her sign it?”
“No.”
“Did anyone you trusted see her sign it?”
He said nothing.
“Did the witness swear before you?”
“No.”
“Did your sister ever admit signing it?”
“No.”
“Then what did you see?”
The answer came slowly because it cost him more than he wished to admit.
“I saw a document bearing her signature.”
Miss Vale’s gaze held his. “And you were told that was the same thing as truth.”
The anger went out of him so abruptly that he felt cold.
He placed the letter down before he damaged it. “You speak as though all this is settled. It is not. A wrong name, an odd date, a questionable sum — these are not proof of a conspiracy.”
“No.”
“Then you admit it.”
“I admit they are pieces. I do not yet know the picture.”
“And until you do?”
“Until I do, I do not hand the pieces to the family that once failed to assemble them.”
He almost smiled then, though there was no humour in him. “You return, with admirable persistence, to accusation.”
“And you return, with admirable persistence, to possession.”
Miss Vane moved between them with the subtlety of a woman who knew when a fire required banking rather than extinguishing.
“Enough. We have established that Lady Evangeline’s papers are neither simple nor safe.
Your Grace, you believe Lantern House holds property belonging to Halgrave.
We believe Lady Theodosia preserved evidence concerning a woman who may have been wronged.
The two beliefs are not irreconcilable.”
“They are if you refuse to release the papers.”
“They are if you intend to remove them.”
“I do.”
“Then they are irreconcilable today.”