Page 22 of Fortune’s Final Folly

She set the files aside and removed the lid from the next box.

“If you keep the faith, fortune always follows.” He returned another box to its place on the shelf.

The son of a duke was far more likely to find fortune than a woman born in Cheapside. Fortune was practically bred into men of the upper class. Joshua’s idea of faith and Kate’s view on it were very different. Faith was something that allowed her people to make it through long, stormy nights with no heat and little to eat, knowing that tomorrow would bring nothing different than the day before. Still, those of the working class raised themselves from their flea-ridden beds, dressed in their worn clothes, and trudged through their day, only to return to their beds hungry and cold once more the next night.

She shook her head to clear her maudlin, dour thoughts.

What would her father say if he were alive to witness her faithless musings?

Besides, Joshua could no more be held accountable for the circumstances surrounding his birth than she was.

They were both fortunate in their own ways.

“Ah-ha!” Joshua held a folder above his head. “Here it is. And in record time.”

He placed the file on the table in front of her and retreated.

“Go ahead, look at it,” he prodded.

Kate glanced over his shoulder, wishing she felt even a small measure of the excitement clearly shining in his expression. She was uncertain what was worse: not finding the file they sought, or discovering it didn’t hold the answers she longed for.

She ran her fingers along the edge of the file and over the word: Elliott/De Vere – Via Mr. Caleb Abelston, Solicitor (The Duke and Duchess of Shrewbury).

Except for her own surname, she recognized none of the others.

She reread the label, praying something would spark her memory, but…nothing.

She’d never heard the name De Vere, nor was she acquainted with a Mr. Caleb Abelston. And the closest she’d come to meeting a true duke was Joshua, and he was only the second son of a duke.

“I do not know any of these people,” she confessed. “What of you?”

“Abelston was my uncle’s friend. He passed away not long after I left for Oxford.” He stepped forward and reached over her shoulder to flip the file open. His fingers grazed her cheek as he pulled back. “Mayhap there is more information inside.”

She swallowed at the same time a shiver ran down her spine. She attempted to forget how close Joshua stood. If she reclined even an inch, her shoulders would touch him. She’d never longed for such an intimate touch with a man before, but in that moment, Kate wanted more, so much more than the mere accidental graze of Joshua’s hand.

She wanted the touch to be purposeful and unending, not momentary and unplanned.

Instead of giving in to the urge to think and do something that had nothing to do with her precarious situation, Kate began to read the top page in her parents’ file. It held little more than the location of her father’s vicarage and their residence above the schoolroom. The next page detailed a schedule of payments made, beginning in April 1803, and continuing quarterly until about a few years ago.

“I was born in December 1802.”

“The last scheduled payment recorded was the month before my uncle’s passing.”

“We were correct in our assumptions,” she said, pointing at the date at the top of the page. “My parents said they moved to Cheapside from the countryside a couple of months after I was born. This is dated February 1803.”

“Mayhap it is linked to your father’s vicarage?”

“I do not think so,” Kate replied, flipping to the next page. “What would a duke have to do with an impoverished vicarage in Cheapside?”

“Not his Cheapside appointment, but his past one…in the country. Did he ever speak of where it was or what shire they moved from?”

She shook her head. “My parents preferred not to speak of the past.”

She had believed that her parents had suffered through a miscarriage, and that was why they doted on her and were overly concerned with her safety. They’d treated her as if she were as fragile as a perfectly sculpted statue. And as valuable, as well.

The next page listed several names and a direction:

The Duke and Duchess of Shrewbury