Page 91 of His Improper Lady

“You actually saw the crack in the wall?”

“Not in the same way I’m seeing you. I see it in my mind. If I asked you to think of someone—the duchess, say—you could picture her in your head even though you couldn’t physically see her. That’s how I saw the hidden door.”

“What about what you did last night? How did you know that the wall wouldn’t collapse or where we should climb?”

How was she to explain her odd ability to Tom? He had accepted her skill at detecting lies and dangers from people. But communing with the world around her? She didn’t understand it herself. “I cast out my senses, looking for the possibilities of escape, the places where an abnormality can help me or hurt me. If something is useful to me, a good possibility, I see light on it. That’s what I got from that wall we walked across. But if it’s a negative possibility, a danger, it’s dark, not dark like the nighttime, but more like a void. When we jumped that street, I knew we could do it because I could see the line of light stretching across it.”

To her relief, Tom didn’t look unbelieving; he merely nodded thoughtfully, as if filing away the knowledge. He was quiet the rest of the way to their carriage at the arranged meeting place, but after they settled into their seats, Tom asked, “What is it that you think Falk knows?”

Desiree shook her head. “I’m not sure. But I am certain there was something he wasn’t telling us. He’s hoping we’ll pay him to find out. He might know something important about my parents’ leaving. Both Mrs. McGee and Pax said Falk hung around my mother’s house a great deal. He could have overheard or seen something.”

“Hopefully we’ll get some answers out of Paxton,” Tom said. “This puts him right back into the list of suspects.”

“Yes. I didn’t understand that flash of something being ‘off’ with him when we first met him, then changing so quickly. But I realize now that his reaction wasn’t to me or my situation. It was when you introduced yourself. Your name, the agency’s name, alarmed him. But that went away when he realized we were there about an entirely different matter.”

“I’m not so sure that your father’s name is a different matter. Paxton and Gregory are both looking for what is presumably a will written by your father. You’re looking for him. Maybe you were right, and he is back in England.”

“Writing wills and spying on me?”

“It makes no sense,” Tom agreed. “But maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do. Make sense of it.”

The carriage rolled up in front of Paxton’s house, and as they disembarked, they saw Lloyd Paxton coming out his front door. He stopped when he saw them, saying, “You again?”

“Yes, we have a few more questions. It shouldn’t take long,” Desiree told him.

Paxton hesitated for a moment, then let out a sigh and said, “Come in, then.” He led them into the house but remained standing. “I can’t stay long. I have an appointment later this morning.”

“It will be quick if you tell us why you want Alistair Moreland’s will.”

Desiree saw the same panicked shift in Paxton that had been there briefly before, but this time it clung to him, blurring and darkening the edges of his being. “How could you—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We just talked to Falk,” Tom told him. “So we know you hired him to break into our office to take that envelope. You needn’t worry that you’re going to be involved in a theft or any other scandal. We just want to understand why Miss Malone has been caught up in it.”

“I say, young man, this is a damned impertinence. It’s none of your business,” Paxton blustered, but he could not maintain his belligerence, and he sagged, resignation in his face. “But I suppose it will be common news anyway if the will goes into probate. Alistair apparently wrote a new will before he went away, and he left it with his lawyer. I knew he had planned to, but I wasn’t sure he’d gotten around to it before he took off.”

“What was in it?” Desiree asked gently. There was such a look of defeat on his face that she could not help but feel some sympathy for the man.

“Alistair was supposed to leave me a piece of property. I was in something of a bind, you see. Gambling debts, so of course I had to pay—gentleman’s honor and all that. Alistair bought some land from me because I needed the money. The place had been in my family for years, so it was a bit hard to let go of it, but I had nothing else that was worth enough money. Alistair was such a decent chap that he said he would leave the property to me when he died so that it would come back to my family.”

“Why are you looking for the will now? Why not back when he disappeared?” Tom asked.

“Well, it wouldn’t have been any use to me back then, would it? Alistair was alive. But now that his son means to have him declared dead, it’s different. Besides, I didn’t know it even existed until that Blackstock fellow wrote me.”

“What did Blackstock’s letter say? Did he tell you what was in the will?”

“No. Only said that he’d sent it to Moreland’s business. Well, at first I thought he must have meant Alistair’s man of business, but he knew nothing about it. Then I realized he must have meant your agency. Makes sense, when you think about it.”

“Why?”

“There must have been something havey-cavey going on, wouldn’t you think? Otherwise, why not send the thing to Alistair’s heir? Clearly, he was suspicious that something would happen to the will if he sent it to Gregory. He’d kept it secret all these years. There must have been something he didn’t want out. And why else would the letter have all that about him dying and his guilt.”

“Blackstock was feeling guilty? Of what?” Tom asked.

Paxton shrugged. “He was very vague about it all. And his writing was little more than a scrawl, deuced difficult to read. But he said he was dying and he wanted to clear his conscience. There was something about betraying his word to his client.”

“Did you keep that letter?” Tom asked, remembering Paxton’s behavior with Alistair’s earlier letter.

“I did.” Paxton gave him a smug look. He stood up and left the room, returning moments later with a folded note, which he handed to Desiree.