“And they walk together in the mornings, as well, I notice.”
“Yes.”
“It seems odd to me that a woman would spend so much time with a man who is not her husband when she is so newly married.”
“It’s very good of her to make my friends welcome.”
“Yes. And it’s very good of you to be so generous with your wife.”
Phineas could no longer ignore the unpleasant direction of Albion’s comments. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if I were just married, I wouldn’t want my wife touching another man.”
Bile rose up in Phineas’ throat.
“Touching?”
“Yes, your wife is so affectionate and open with Lord Dagenham. Almost as if she has known him for a long time. Her brother must have introduced the two of them, I suppose.”
“Do you know, Albion, I think I won’t go see the Hewlitts today. I’ll leave that to you. I’ll head home now.”
“Yes, Phin.”
Phineas turned his horse toward his house. His chest was tight and his gut squirmed like a basket of eels. It was just as he had felt years ago, standing on the deck of a ship, helpless, waiting for the French to fire their cannons.
He’d feel better once he saw Caro.
“This can’t be right.”
Caroline looked up. “What?”
“This receipt that was tucked in the ledger for the year eighteen-fourteen. Stuck to one of the pages.” William slid his chair over so it was next to Caroline’s. He put a receipt down in front of her. It was for a horse purchased six years ago. The cost was one hundred and eighty pounds. At the bottom was the signatureWilliam Dagenham.
“Was in a tight spot back then. Well, I thought it was tight, but not nearly the chokehold I am in now. Phin offered to buy one of my horses to help me out.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t cheat him. He offered a fair price, and I accepted it. I’m not as sharp as I used to be, but I could swear I sold this horse to Phin for eighty pounds. It was a carriage horse, not a hunter or a racehorse.”
Caroline looked more closely at the receipt. The ink of the numeral one in the hundreds place was a slightly different color than the ink of the eight next to it.
“Do you think it’s been altered?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s stop looking at ledgers and look at receipts instead.”
She left William in the study and went to Mr. Chambers’ office. She had not yet received the key she had demanded, but the office was unlocked and unoccupied. She went in. There was a small cabinet, also surprisingly unlocked, filled with neat stacks of receipts. She gathered up an armful and took them up to the study.
William had piled the ledgers at one end of the table. She spread the receipts out.
“We’ll start with all the receipts for more than one hundred pounds,” she said.
They sorted the receipts into two piles. Caroline sat down, pulling a piece of foolscap toward her and picking up her quill, and as she did so, she jarred the table. Lavinia, who was sitting at Caroline’s feet, raised her head. The unstoppered inkpot jerked and splattered.
“The receipts!”
William snatched up the closest pile.
