CELINE
This was not going at allthe way I had intended. Not in the least.
He wassupposedto be worshiping me in the boudoir, not digging through dusty old documents between bites of tart.
Though, if I was being honest, he looked… rather adorable. He hunched over my small, feminine desk with his hair mussed and the spectacles slipping down his nose as he paged through yellowed ledgers.
I admired him freely from my perch, resting against the edge of the desk beside him. He was too distracted to notice my indulgent smile.
“If you told me what you were looking for, I might be able to help.”
“I’m not certain what I’m looking for. I’ll know it when I see it. Do you have that note you mentioned?”
I pulled it from where it was bookmarking one of the more recent ledgers and handed it over.
He studied it with interest, holding it up to the firelight as if there were secrets to be gleaned. “I see what you mean, about the writer being left-handed. But the smudges go the wrong way. When I write, the ink smears to the right. This goes to the left, like they set something damp on it and pulled it out from underneath it.”
The easy refute had me feeling more than a little silly. He wasn’t irritated. He didn’t lecture. He wasn’t looking at me at all, but rather studying the page for clues. He treated it as though it was more than a random slip of parchment, tucked into a random ledger nearly a decade ago. The fact that there was no date and little more than an initial didn’t lead to an outright dismissal.
I had followed this man around for a week. I had all but branded him a murderer. And he took my evidence seriously? He was helping me?
“There’s no date. But you said it was tucked into the most recent ledger when you found it?”
“Yes, just under the cover.”
“Do you know of any other Ws he might have known? The names in here appear to be false names your husband chose in jest. Unless there is a lord of ‘unfortunate toupee,’ that I am unfamiliar with.”
“That will be Lord Weatherby. I hadn’t considered others, but yes, certainly.”
“We’ll need to consider given names and surnames, titles as well. Can you make a list of any that you can recall? I can try to match them against the official copies of the ledgers that we keep in the office.”
He plucked the spectacles off and cleaned them absentmindedly with a cloth he magicked out of some pocket or other.
“You’re really just helping me with this?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?” He finally turned his magnetic gaze back on me. The question was clear in the tilt of his brow. He genuinely had never considered an alternative.
“I accused you of murder…”
His lip quirked up in a self-deprecating smile. “I am hardly a saint, Celine. It’s not as though I never thought of calling Rycliffe out. The night I learned what he had done, the day I found her, the evening I lost her. A few thousand times in between. It was a good notion, in truth. It’s lucky you never went to the authorities with your suspicion, or I’d surely have been hanged. Now, can you recall any names?”
“I… you’re a strange man, William Hart. You know that, right?”
“I do.” He tapped the parchment spread before him with an impatient finger.
“I think he had occasional dealings with the Earl of Westfield… There was Sir Wilhelm Jacobs.”
This was more difficult than one would believe. To recall the faceless masses of the ton.
“Adriane’s brother, Weston LaMorte. I suppose he might have been angry enough. Though I’m not certain he was overly invested.” William added him to the list.
“His Grace the Duke of Sutton–his Christian name is Winston, Mr. Wesley Parker… Lord Wyatt…” He wrote each with a decisive hand while I racked my brain, searching for the names or faces of anyone who could have known Gabriel. “There was a woman who owns a brothel. Victoria. I don’t know her real name or her surname. It’s possible she was involved.”
His gaze snapped to mine, ink spilling across his list. “Gabriel was visiting a brothel? While you were married?” His tone had turned sharp, snappish, and his eyes darkened.
“No, he stopped all that after we met.”
“Right,” he agreed, disbelief clear in his voice.
