“We’re gonna need you to write a sweet letter begging your lover to save you.” Farley thrust a pencil into her hand.
More laughter from Buck, and she glanced up. Farley wasn’t as young as she’d thought he would be. But perhaps, just as living on the docks had caused Ollie to look younger, it had aged Farley prematurely.
She hovered the tip of the pencil over the blank sheet of paper, but as she went to write, Buck asked Farley a question that stopped her in place.
“Is he really Arthur’s brother?” he asked, his tone somewhat derisive, disbelieving.
The way he said it, it sounded like… like theyknewArthur, like they were familiar with him—possibly friendly.Jeremy’syounger brother, who’d died a captain of the British military.
Thoughts and memories started clicking around in her brain like pieces of a puzzle, things she’d heard in passing along with the few scraps of information she’d been told outright.
“That he is. Got a right long stick up his arse though.”
Arthur Gilcrest had been captured in an ambush. An ambush where a fortune’s worth of ammunition had been stolen.
Jeremy had cut off her family shortly after Arthur’s death, over a year later.
Click.
This. This was the answer. All these months, she had never known why, what had happened between Jeremy and her brothers. These questions had plagued her for so long.
Lucas had been Arthur’s commanding officer, and he had been the one in charge of investigating the ambush. The military had eventually come to suspect treason.
These thugs, gang members who were part of a smuggling operation,knew Arthur.
The day Jeremy came to offer for her, Lucas must have told Jeremy he suspected Arthur was a traitor.
That day, when she’d told him that Ollie shouldn’t have to turn his back on his brother, Jeremy had said…That’s why… But then he’d stopped. He’d told her he’d never wanted her to have to decide, that it wouldn’t have been fair. She’d been half-right to guess that Jeremy had not wanted her to have to turn her back on her brothers—which hadn’t made much sense in the context of that conversation. But the choice wouldn’t have been between her brothers and herself. It would have been between her brothers andJeremy.
Jeremy hadn’t wanted her to have to choose between her family and the man she loved. That was why…
Oh Jeremy!
Arthur had always been Jeremy’s weak spot. And when faced with something so contemptable as the accusation that Arthur had betrayed his own countrymen, Jeremy hadn’t been able to believe it.
Lydia nearly sobbed as she grasped the truth. The purchase of Ludwig Bros. Shipping hadn’t been about cleaning up the docks at all. It had been all about clearing his brother’s name.
And that was not going to happen. Because Arthurhadbeen a traitor.
“What are you waiting for?” Farley nudged her arm, his foul breath nearly making her gag. She shook her head.
Lydia’s realization had left her stunned and unable to think about anything else.
“I… I don’t know what to write.” The sound of her own voice jolted her back to the present.
A plan. She needed a plan, and in order to come up with one, she needed to keep her wits about her.
Farley drew up a chair and sat down, crossing his legs and lounging in a manner that was far too relaxed for the situation.
“To my Darling Earl of Tempest,” he dictated and then dropped his foot and leaned forward. “Go on, now. Write it.”
She did just that, in flowery, looping letters. She realized as he watched her that his eyes had an unfocused quality whenever he glanced down at her words.
He was uneducated.
“Now what?” she asked innocently.
“If you wanna see me alive again, you go to the Tuesday warehouse at sunset tonight. Alone. If ya do anything stupid, they’ll kill me.” And then he sniggered. “If ya ever wan’ another taste o’ me you best do what they want. And sign it, yer loving lady.”
