Through the Smoke(46)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Thank you, my lord. But…”

His eyebrows slid up when she didn’t finish.

“I do not want to be a problem for you.”

A rare smile broke across his face as he fingered a lock of her hair. “Be a problem? Dear Rachel, you feel like the antidote.”

Their eyes met for a second but then he pulled away. “If you will excuse me, I have a commitment in town and must change.”

As soon as the earl left, Rachel pulled on a heavy cloak, slipped out the back and walked to town. It took over an hour to get there, which meant it would also take considerable time to get back. But she was desperate to accomplish two things: She wanted to pay Elspeth a visit, and she wanted to go to her former home and pick up the ledgers. Before her mother died, she’d seen for herself that the bookshop hadn’t been making a profit. She’d been over and over the accounts. It was that one extra payment each month that had sustained them. So who’d been helping Jillian—and why? Had she been receiving hush money? Is that what that one payment had been?

If Rachel could determine that, maybe she could also learn enough about the mystery of Katherine’s death to prove Lord Druridge wasn’t responsible. She didn’t want to do anything that might besmirch the memory of her dear mother, which was why she’d let the matter go until now. It was easier not to think about it, or to assume that mysterious income had no correlation to the fire. But if her parents had done something wrong, she didn’t want to perpetuate their mistake. The memory of that argument between Lord Druridge and Mr. Linley had been wearing on her. She couldn’t ignore what she’d discovered, not if it might stop an innocent man from being hanged.

Her errands were simple. She hoped they’d also be quick because she felt a deep sense of foreboding when she reached the edge of town. Other than her former neighbor, Mrs. Tate, she had no friends in Creswell. She hated the thought that she might run into the blacksmith’s apprentice. Lord knew how much his opinion of her must’ve changed. She didn’t want to see Mr. Cutberth either. Or anyone else. She no longer trusted them, and they no longer trusted her. When she’d proclaimed her innocence mere weeks ago, no one would believe her. Imagine what the villagers thought now, after hearing she’d been installed in the room adjoining Lord Druridge’s. Her most recent accommodations would seem to suggest that they’d been right about her.

For all she knew, even Mrs. Tate had turned on her. Considering what the poor woman had probably been told, Rachel couldn’t blame her.

Keeping her hood up and her head down, she blew out the lantern that had guided her steps so far. Any household facing the main thoroughfare had to put out a lamp from dark until eleven, so she no longer needed her own. She preferred to conserve her oil and stick to the shadows. Although it was dark, it wasn’t late. She could easily encounter someone she’d rather avoid if she wasn’t careful.

She could smell chimney smoke and food cooking, see light gleaming around the shutters of even those cottages that were off Creswell Proper, but as she made her way to her former home, the streets were, thankfully, quiet.

The shop had been locked with a heavy padlock and chain, and someone—the earl’s solicitor?—had posted a notice that trespassers would be prosecuted. The sight of it looking so forbidding reminded her of how drastically her life had changed in the past month. But there was no time to dwell on her losses. At least Geordie was in an enviable situation.

Voices rose on the night air, coming from down the street. It sounded as if two men were walking her way, so she ducked into the alley. She had to go around to the house anyway.

The small, wooden cottage where she’d grown up was as dark and empty as the bookshop. The memory of returning, so recently, to find her mother dead made Rachel’s breath catch as she stepped into the garden, but she pushed the pain aside. She’d come here for a reason; she couldn’t think too much or she’d get nowhere.

She had the key out of her pocket, ready to open the front door, when she realized that a key wouldn’t be necessary. The door wasn’t latched, let alone locked. But that wasn’t how she’d left it. The day the earl rescued her from the mine, he’d brought her home to pack a bag and collect her brother. She’d locked both the house and the shop.…

A prickle of unease crept up her spine. Someone had been here since. Was it Mrs. Tate on some innocent errand? Or was it a thief? Had someone stolen their simple furnishings, and what had been left of their candles and coal?

That was hard to believe of the high-minded people who’d turned on her. But she supposed anything was possible. Maybe her former friends thought she owed them whatever was left.

The door creaked as she pushed it wide. “Hello?”

She heard nothing in response. No one’s here, she told herself—and yet she hesitated, too nervous and unsettled to go farther. She feared what she might find, but she’d stowed the ledgers under the loose floorboards in the bedroom. If she didn’t get them now, maybe she never would.

Inside it was even darker than outside, but she didn’t want to go to the time or trouble of relighting her lamp. She left it at the entry so she could grab it as she left and slipped into the main room. She should have been able to navigate such a familiar place with ease, but it no longer felt familiar. The smell—cold and damp without a fire for so long—wasn’t even the same. She bumped into several objects that weren’t where they were supposed to be before she managed to reach a window and open the shutters.

The moonlight that filtered through made it possible to see why she’d been having difficulty. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. The entire place had been ransacked.

Why? From what she could tell, nothing had been stolen—except, maybe, the ledgers. She’d hidden them in the bedroom, but she had no idea how thoroughly it had been searched, whether or not someone had found those loose floorboards.

Careful not to trip, she made her way to where she and her family had slept and opened the shutters in that room too. Someone had scattered and overturned everything here as well. Obviously whoever it was had gone through the whole house.

What had they been looking for?

She feared it was what she’d come to claim herself. Perhaps she’d been right to return. Perhaps the ledgers held some clue as to who had fired Blackmoor Hall—or at least could offer the earl proof that he hadn’t done it himself.

The floorboards hadn’t been disturbed, but her chest tightened in spite of that.