She had seen that name before. Her breath caught, the air around her suddenly still. A memory surged. Alex’s tone, a passing mention weeks ago, and a flash of parchment in Rowland’s journal. She’d dismissed it then. She wouldn’t now.
This time, she would not ignore it. She let the paper settle on the desk and rested her hand beside it, steady now.
The room was quiet, but it welcomed her.
She hadn’t been hiding, only waiting to remember who she’d always been. And now, she had found the path forward and the woman willing to walk it.
Chapter Nineteen
The lamplight hadbarely begun to stretch across the floorboards when Georgina returned to the desk. She hadn’t expected the list to shake her, yet it had, not for what it revealed, but for what it demanded.
Rowland’s desk held the familiar sprawl of the folio, its pages spread open and visibly marked by Georgina’s hand with lines drawn, names circled, and margin notes drawing conclusions and clarity. She had marked each reference to S. Mallory with a red pencil line, careful and deliberate. Three transactions, two different signatures, and a delivery firm she’d never heard of:R.T.S.
Beside the folio sat Rowland’s refusal list, the page she had found tucked between old ledgers, as though even in death he’d wanted her to find it on her own terms. She lifted it now with a kind of reverence, not for the paper itself, but for the decisions it represented. Mallory’s name appeared fourth from the top, written in Rowland’s strong, deliberate script. She tapped the edge of the list with the ends of the pencil, her brow furrowed.
Rowland had trusted too few, spoken even less. But when he struck a name, he did so with reason.
She remembered Samuel Mallory, but just faintly. She thought he was a quiet man with a stiff collar and fingers stained from ledger ink. He’d come to dinner once, years ago, back when Rowland still hosted investors and tradesmen. There was tension even then. She recalled entering the study late one evening to find the door not quite closed,Rowland’s voice low but tight with restraint. Mallory’s tone had been smoother, too smooth, as if veiled in courtesy while issuing some kind of demand. Georgina hadn’t caught the words, only the scrape of Rowland’s chair as he rose and said, “This conversation is concluded.”
After that, Rowland never spoke of him again. He’d simply struck Mallory’s name from the accounts and locked away the ledgers for a fortnight.
That memory settled now beside the false signatures and vanished records.
She sat straighter as footsteps approached. A shadow moved in the hallway, followed by the familiar creak of the study door. Alex entered without ceremony, his coat still dusted from the road, a folded note in one hand and an unreadable look in his eyes.
“Seaton sent this by courier,” he said, but he didn’t hand it over immediately. Instead, he scanned the desk, the open folio, and the scattered annotations. He took in the careful chaos she’d created, the evidence of hours spent chasing truth, and something softened behind his eyes. It was the kind of look that reached her before his voice ever could—a wordless acknowledgment that she had become the steadiness he hadn’t known he needed.
When he finally passed her the letter, their fingers touched. He didn’t draw back. Neither did she. For a moment, the study held its breath. The air was alive with the quiet pulse of recognition that had nothing to do with ledgers or lies. How easily his nearness unsettled the order she prized; it was a disturbance she no longer wished to correct.
Georgina unfolded the page and scanned the contents.
“Nothing onR.T.S.,” she murmured. “He’s never dealt with them, never heard of them, and says no reputable port he’s worked with lists it in their ledgers.”
Alex moved to stand beside her, looking down at the folio. “Then it’s not a company. It’s a mask.”
She nodded, her voice quiet. “And someone is using it to move coal.”
A stillness passed between them. Not empty, not hesitant, just full of mutual recognition. The kind that came when two minds reached the same place without speaking.
He studied her, the lamplight brushing gold into the edges of her hair. “Mallory?”
“Possibly,” she said. “But if so, it isn’t with his own hand. These signatures don’t match. And Rowland refused to do business with him.”
Alex’s mouth tightened. “So, either Mallory’s cooperating, or someone is using his name.”
Georgina reached for her pelisse. “Let’s find out which.”
Before they left the study, she rolled the folio with care and fastened it with the blue ribbon she had kept nearby. Alex crossed to the window, watching the clouds move fast over the rooftops. “We won’t get every answer today,” he said, “but we’ll see who flinches when we start asking.”
Georgina smiled. “It would be easier if they’d stop lying outright.”
His answering glance held the faintest curve of amusement, and something warmer beneath it, the kind of warmth that made truth seem far more dangerous than deceit.
He offered his arm, and when she took it, there was no ceremony, only shared purpose.
Alex watched her with something close to admiration. “You always plan to go charging into the unknown, or is that just this week?”
She smiled faintly. “Only when the unknown dares to forge my husband’s documents.”
