Now that her vision had adjusted to the darkness, she could make out a set of stairs on the wall beside the entrance, leading up to a narrow corridor flanked by three doors. James led her to the staircase, and she tried to muffle her footsteps as they climbed. The first door they reached was unlocked, and even in the scant moonlight they could tell that it was a half-empty closet containing a few tools and a discarded bucket.
The second door was locked, and James made even quicker work of this one. Once inside, he lit the lantern he had been carrying. There were no windows to give away their presence. The air in the small room was stale with the scent of parchment and dry ink. She surveyed the shelves, noting the stacks of books and shipping manifests. “What are we looking for?” she asked.
James moved around to the other side of the desk. “Ledgers, correspondence, anything linking the company to Ashcombe or to the men in the library. Anything that seems out of the ordinary.” He pulled open each drawer in the desk with precision, silently searching the contents before moving on to the next, leaving nothing out of place.
This was not the first time he had done this. There was so much she did not know about this man, but he had asked for her trust, and she had promised.
“Find anything?” he asked, eyebrows raised at her scrutiny.
She pretended not to notice. “Not yet.” She moved to the shelves and flipped through the maps and books about trade and agriculture. James returned to the remaining desk drawers.
“Based on the contents of the desk, this is the head clerk’s office.” He moved toward the door. “The other office should belong to the manager.”
He blew out the lantern and checked the corridor before leading them to the third door. Once they were inside, James relit it. A large wooden pedestal desk occupied the center of the room, and the far wall was covered with maps of trade routes by land and sea. Bookshelves lined the back wall. There were too many places to search in their limited time.
“Let’s start with the desk,” James said. They moved to opposite sides of the desk, opening one drawer at a time and examining the papers.
Kate pulled out a pile from the bottom drawer, skimming over contracts, correspondence about possible trade deals, and a shipment manifest. She spread several of them on the desk, scanning for anything that would indicate the company was involved in illicit dealings.
James closed a drawer. “You’re lingering on that pile. At this rate I shall have you hired on as their head clerk before dawn.”
She scooped the papers into a pile and placed them back into the drawer. “And you? Are you hoping to uncover the truth by your strength and charm alone?” She arched her brow.
He straightened and folded his arms across his chest, clearly enjoying himself. “So you think I am strong and charming?”
She gave him a nudge with her shoulder, and he stumbled back, catching himself on the desk. A loud, hollow thud sounded when his hand struck the wood. The playfulness vanished from his face. “There isn’t a central drawer in this desk, is there?”
“I don’t believe so.” She moved the chair in front of the desk and crouched down. “Lantern, please.” She reached up blindly, and James placed the handle in her grasp, as though they had been doing this for years. When she lowered it, the light revealed a small drawer at the far end of the desk’s opening, invisible unless one crouched beneath the piece of furniture. She pulled the small knob. Locked.
She rose. “Lord Brenton, it appears we are in need of your skills again.”
“Which one? My strength or my charm?” He knelt down, pulling out his small leather pouch.
Before long, he rose with a thick ledger in his hands. “What have we found?”
She placed the lantern on the desk as he set the book down and opened the cracked leather cover, moving aside some loose pages tucked inside.
The front pages were filled with columns of names, figures, and locations, though each entry appeared to be little more than a jumble of letters and numbers.
As Kate scanned the first page, then the next, the letters began to form a pattern. She thumbed through the rest of the ledger, finding more of the same.
Whoever kept this ledger had secrets.
Unfortunately for them, Kate knew how to uncover them.
She recognized the structure of the cipher almost immediately, but if she continued, there was no pretending. Showing James what she could do—trusting him with the truth—would risk everything she had worked so carefully to keep hidden.
The most terrifying part was that she wanted him to know. Not Lord Brenton, not the earl, not the man who kept a hundred secrets. James.
The ledger lay before her, the first real chance to discover the truth behind the meeting in the library, the crates in the alley, and Mr. Ashcombe’s murder. She wished she could take the ledger with her and work on it in secret, but that would alert the owner that someone had been there.
Her fingers tightened around the pages. She had to take the risk.
“What is it, Kate? What did you find?”
She steeled herself. “Would you search for some foolscap?” He hesitated, then opened the top drawer he had already searched and pulled out a small stack of quarto sheets. He set them before her, waiting.
She sat, the hard wooden chair pressing against her back, and pulled the inkwell toward her. She took the first sheet of paper, dipped the quill in the ink, and examined the top line of the ledger’s first page. After a moment of study, her quill flew across the page. She was deciphering the fourth line before James finally spoke.
