“Go, Trick. Now. Tonight.” She’d have to postpone the children’s party, but so be it. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he said slowly. “I’ll go alone. Tomorrow.”
Twenty-Five
AFTER SUPPER,Kendra found herself mounted on Pandora, heading toward the cottage for the second time that day.
She slanted a glance at Trick riding beside her. She’d tried halfheartedly to talk him into taking her along to Scotland, but he was absolutely against it.
Well, perhaps it would be a relief to be free from him for a while. Free from those disarming kisses that made her lose her head. Free to catch up on her sleep. Free to think about whether she wanted to try again, because the agony of that first night was becoming harder and harder to remember clearly.
Still, part of her was reluctant to see him go, so she’d clung to him like a sticky bun all the afternoon, while he completed the tasks that stood in the way of his leaving.
The full moon reflected off the cottage windows as they approached. “I had no idea of the extent of your responsibilities,” she said through a yawn.
“I just want to drop off some papers.”
Her eyes felt gritty. “And after that?”
Trick slid from Chaucer and reached to help her down. “I still have much to do before I can sleep.”
She tethered Pandora and followed him inside. “You’re pushing yourself.” She closed the door and leaned against it, watching while he lit a single candle. “I know you must be worried for your mother—”
“I’m not particularly worried.” Finished, he felt for the key above the fireplace.
“She’s dying!”
He shot her a look as he unlocked the desk. “You said yourself her writing is beautiful. A woman on her deathbed would have a shaky hand, or dictate to someone else.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from his surcoat and slid them into the bottom drawer.
“Perhaps she did dictate it.”
“It was her own hand—I’d bet my life on that. Aye, she’s up to something.” He shut the drawer and relocked it. “I’ll play along with her game, just in case I’m wrong, but she’s a conniving—”
“You cannot know that, Trick. Not after all these years.”
“Time will tell which of us is right. But I won’t live in hope that she’s changed.” He shoved the key back between the stones and began to blow out the flame, then suddenly stopped. “Damn, the hats and pipes. I wonder what else I’m forgetting? Wait here—I’ll be back.” He set the candle on the mantel, and before she knew it, the door had slammed behind him.
She stood still for a moment in guilty indecision before walking slowly to the fireplace. Teetering on her toes, she reached for the key, finding Trick had placed it too high for her reach. She dragged the desk chair close, climbed atop it, and nudged the key from its hiding place.
Jumping down, she rushed to the window. Moonlight illuminated the grounds. Trick was nowhere in sight. Seconds later she had the bottom drawer open and was pawing through its contents.
On top were the notes he’d just dropped off and those he’d concealed there earlier today. Not to keep them from her, obviously—he’d made no secret of the drawer. Surely he wouldn’t care if she looked.
Or so she told herself.
She swept the candle off the mantel to examine more pages of descriptions like the one she’d helped Trick make of the Puritan today. She smiled at his writing: very bold, the letters scrawled, clearly written in haste.
Carefully she set the candlestick on the desktop, then put the papers back in the drawer and peeked beneath them. An accounting of some sort. A record of his takings? Quite detailed, including descriptions of individual coins. Today hadn’t been the first time he’d run across counterfeits. Underneath that…
She pulled out another stack of papers, some of them older and yellowed. Written by the same hand, but more carefully, the words painstakingly formed, neat and even. They reminded Kendra of the letters she used to send to her parents as a child, letters written and rewritten before a final, perfect draft was carefully copied.
Choosing one at random, she read.
Pain and sorrow forevermore dwell
Inside the deepest bowels of hell.
Betrayal has yet took from me
