“Not as much as I did at first. He’s quite a bit older than me. But it’s impossible not to worry when he’s away for so long.” She sighed, and her expression wavered. “And of course, I love him…”
“But...?”
She winced. “I…”
Leopold held perfectly still as he waited for her to continue.
And then, as though she’d weighed an important decision, she sighed. “I often go over my father’s ledgers—to check his sums and whatnot.” She met his stare. “I started doing it when I was young, more for my own sake than his. But he’s come to rely on me.” She shrugged.
Leopold flattened his expression and waited.
“When Dash was home,” she explained, “He left the plantation’s ledgers on my father’s desk, so I took a look at them.” And then worry tugged at her eyes. “But they weren’t like the estate accounts.”
“Why not?”
She blinked, staring straight ahead, as if she was visualizing the itemized lists in the air just over his shoulder. “There were housing costs. Food costs. Tools. Legal fees. And all the expenses of transportation. I went over them three times. But I couldn’t account for…”
“Labor,” Leopold finished for her.
She jerked her stare back to him. “Exactly. But that can’t be right, can it? It—slavery—is not only wrong, but it was made illegal last year. When I asked my brother about it, he simply said things were run differently in Jamaica.” She seemed to deflate at this admission.
So perhaps she hadn’t known, not until recently anyway, and not with certainty.
“Is that why you took me?” she asked. “Does it have something to do with my father’s plantation?”
Leopold sighed, taking a moment to reorganize his thoughts.
Lady Amelia was naïve, spoiled, and only marginally aware of her own privileged lifestyle, but it appeared she was also, in all likelihood, an innocent where Crossings was concerned. Despite this recent revelation, she seemed oblivious to her father’s more nefarious business dealings...
Well, then.
She’d searched him out this afternoon, not to complain, but to ask if her father’s plantation was the reason for this so-called kidnapping.
Leopold rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to decide how much he should tell her. Yes, her father was operating outside the law, but it was more than that. Foxbourne’s many and varied immoral decisions had landed his family in the center of a dangerous web, one more complicated and wide-reaching than the fool was prepared to deal with. Leopold wasn’t surprised that the Jamaican plantation hadn’t adhered to the new laws. In fact, those ships that transported sugar and tobacco could very well be used for some of Crossings’ operations.
Her sodding family must be even more involved than any of them had suspected. And that sort of connection, well, it certainly bore looking into.
But she didn’t know about Crossings. Of course she didn’t.
Red clouded his vision as an almost violent instinct clawed its way through him. He flexed and clenched his hands.
He’d promised to protect Lady Amelia from Crossings, a small part of a much larger plan, but safeguarding this woman was no longer a simple task to be performed out of obligation. Somehow, it had turned into something else.
He would, in fact, take out any person who posed a threat to her.
Her father.
Her brother.
The damned Duke of Crossings.
If Leopold were to tell her the truth, would she believe him? Did it matter?
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” She studied him knowingly. Because she wasn’t empty-headed either, another miscalculation on his part.
But her question provided him with an easy out. And he wanted nothing more than to see her smile again.
He was a far weaker man than he’d thought he was. “Would you like a tour?” he asked.
