Mr. Stillworth turned to stare at him. To Lakehurst, he appeared like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t.
“Shall we join the ladies in the parlor? It should be time for afternoon tea—or, if you would prefer, a stronger libation.”
“Yes, let’s do that. I need to think more about what the evidence in this room means to the overall estate, particularly Baydon Imports.”
Lakehurst raised his eyebrows. “I had forgotten about that endeavor with your cousin. I can understand your concern. Much to ponder in this situation.”
He wondered if he should tell him about the man following Lady Darkford in London. No, he didn’t understand the ramifications of the man’s reactions. Best to wait.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
The Tidemarks Arrive
“Why are you in here?” Lakehurst asked Cassie from the study’s open doorway early the next morning. “The more you find, the more distressed you will become,” he said as he walked into the room. “You will not be able to greet Mr. Tidemark with any equanimity.”
“That is precisely the point,” she said.
He looked askance at her. “What do you mean?”
“I want to be angry with him. I want to keep up my disgust for the condition of the estate accounts and the extent of the Gallaghers’ thefts.”
He sat down in a chair at the other side of the round table where she worked, paper and ink beside, her documenting her discoveries. She ignored him as she finished the notes she’d been taking when he entered.
The morning sun streamed in the windows, the heavy dark blue drapes pushed open as far as they would go to allow the most light to enter. It fell across her as she worked. She looked beatutiful. He wondered if she knew how striking she looked, her dark, abundant hair in slight disarray, wild tendrils curling about her face. There was an air of maturity in her face that debutants lacked, and with that maturity, a serenity in her expression as she worked. She smiled slightly as she turned the page of the account book open before her.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked, entranced by how her lovely lips curved up at the sides.
“What? Oh, forgive me. This is all rather fascinating to me. I have to laugh when I see what the Gallaghers got away with. And I am beginning to suspect they were in league with someone else.”
“Mr. Browning, perhaps?” he suggested as he leaned back in his chair and crossed one boot-shod leg over the other.
She frowned. “I had considered him, but I don’t believe so. At least not wittingly. In one of those letters you found the other day, he appeared to question the instructions they gave him that they said were relayed to them by Edmund.”
“Perhaps someone from the village to sell the extra goods they purchased?”
“That is what I’m wondering,” she acknowledged, her lips twisting.
He doubted many society women would allow their features to twist into quite that expression of distaste. It made him smile. He pondered a moment on how to describe it in a book.
He pulled his wayward thoughts back from the hole they’d fallen into, a hole they fell into with increasing ease.
“We should ask Carlyle if someone visited them fairly regularly or if they took a wagon with crates in it away from the castle at any time,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s a sound plan. Do you think they will arrive today?”
“Mr. Stillworth seemed to think so. On the way here, they met up with Ellinbourne. If they want to travel with him, I don’t think he would allow them to tarry unnecessarily.”
She laughed outright. “So true. My brother can be easy going, but not when he is traveling. He can’t sketch while traveling, so he will push on to get where he means to go as quickly as possible.”
“And I do not think the Tidemarks would nay say a duke,” Lakehurst observed.
“Not the way Vanessa fawns,” Cassie said. She pounced her notes, then pushed the pen, ink, and paper to the side.
She sat back in her chair, staring at the ledgers momentarily. “I am concerned for all of this,” she said, waving a hand toward the piles of books and papers.
He tilted his head. “In what way?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “I am afraid that we are not as wealthy as I believed. And haven’t been since before Richard’s death.”
