Royston smiled. Good answer.
“Bassett will serve tea now,” Mrs. Haywood said.
“Actually,” Lady Redvers said. “I’d love to listen to something else.”
“Excuse me?” Angeline sounded panicked.
“Chopin, please,” Lady Redvers said.
“But I haven’t rehearsed anything else.”
“A nocturne? A skilled musician as you won’t find it difficult.”
Lady Redvers had a point. If there was one composer pianists obsessed with, it was Chopin. The bread and butter of every musician.
“Please, Miss Haywood,” Lady Redvers insisted. “We’d be delighted.”
He ought to intervene. If he improvised a sudden visit, Angeline wouldn’t need to play. The search would wait. He started to stand up when Havisham talked.
“Don’t be angry with me, Miss Haywood,” Havisham said. “But I need a nice cup of tea. Perhaps we might continue another day.”
“I agree,” Angeline and her mother said together.
As the sounds of porcelain cups and saucers clinking together came, Royston rose from the bench gingerly. The voices and music carried through the vent so well he ought to be careful, or the guests would realise someone was in the adjoining room.
At least, the thick carpet muffled his footsteps.
He gave a quick search to the oak desk that took up a corner of the room. Mrs. Haywood kept everything in perfect order— pencils sharpened and straightened, documents neatly stacked, and books precisely set away. The drawer contained spare pieces of paper. The cabinets were locked, unsurprisingly.
But he’d come prepared. He hadn’t picked a lock in years, but criminal skills were like riding a bicycle— once learnt, they couldn’t be forgotten. Perhaps it was true that once a thief, always a thief.
It took him a few tweaks and attempts to unlock the cabinet. He inched the drawer open, revealing a stack of documents.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered.
A long file of folders filled the cabinet. The labels showed the names of gentlemen in alphabetical order. There had to be a fewdozen of them. Some names were struck out, maybe indicating the relationship with the gentleman had been terminated.
He skimmed through the labels and stopped when he reached the letter ‘H.’ There it was.
Havisham’s folder wasn’t particularly thick, but to make sure Royston was taking the right batch of documents, he went through the content. The earl hadn’t lied. Paid bills in fancy hotels, paid dinners, and some explicit photographs illustrated Havisham’s infidelity in all its gory details.
There were even passionate letters in which the earl declared his undying love for her and his unhappiness with his wife. To his credit, the bills and letters didn’t show any recent dates, so it looked like he was telling the truth about having stopped seeing her.
In another document, a series of numbers were recorded. One hundred pounds, fifty pounds, two hundred pounds… no doubt. Mrs. Haywood had blackmailed Havisham for a while, asking for money regularly. Angeline’s mother did this. All true. She had blackmailed at least fifty gentlemen.
Mrs. Haywood wouldn’t need to blackmail anyone again if she agreed to stop exploiting fallen women and receive an allowance from him. He had the means to provide for Angeline and her mother.
Shaking his head, he emptied the folder and slid the documents under his jacket. After putting the folder back in the cabinet, he searched the other drawers for the infamous list of fallen women. More folders on men, expenses, and bills, but no list of women. More photographs, some rather old. There was a list of addresses and flats around London, and another list of drug suppliers and smugglers at the black market— who knew for what reason? But that was it.
His search turned frantic as he went through as many folders as possible. Nothing else. Plenty of incriminating material, but not a single piece of paper on fallen women.
Footsteps sounded closer. He carefully locked the cabinet, wondering where the bloody list of women could be.
He had barely time to sit back on the piano bench when the door opened.
Angeline swept into view, lovely with her hair twisted in a gentle chignon and a few curls framing her cheeks. Just looking at her calmed his ragged heartbeat. She beckoned him to follow her.
He left the study as the chatter came from the sitting room and followed her to the back of the house.
