Page 79 of To Resist a Scandalous Rogue
“Footmen were watching her building, but it’s possible.”
“Has anyone asked questions about her, either to you or in your hearing?”
Finlay’s lip curled. “Townsend.”
“Townsend?”
“He has been assisting my campaign with fundraising.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “He’s been asking questions about Charlotte. About her identity. He made me suspicious, and I asked Torres to find out if there was a connection between them.”
“Wise move, Fin. Torres will see that this mystery is solved. For all we know, she may have done something to warrant Mr. Townsend’s interest. Maybesheis a threat to him.”
He pondered this for a handful of seconds and wiped it from his mind. “No. I trust her. She’s good, Allie. I know it.”
His twin smiled, her gaze warm. “Then I know it, too.”
Instinctively, Finlay grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. “I have missed you.”
“And I you,” she murmured into his shoulder.
He released her and rotated to yank on the bell pull.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“As much as I want to dash away to Charlotte’s flat, I have a musicale to prepare for.” He nodded at Norris as he entered the room. “But I’ll leave early to visit her.”
“Good.” Alethea smiled at his valet and turned to the door. “Oh wait!”
Both Finlay and Norris jerked their heads to her.
“Do you have it?” When he frowned, Alethea mouthed, “The diary.”
He looked to Norris and gestured to the door with his chin. After the man had exited, Finlay shared, “It’s locked away.”
“May I have it?”
Finlay searched her gaze for a long moment before he turned to his dressing room. He returned a minute later with the leather-bound book clutched in his hands. Damn, but why did it seem to have a heartbeat? Probably because it contained all the details of their father’s duplicity, of his late countess’s heartache, and the truth of their bastard births. Such secrets often had a malignant life of their own.
Alethea reached for it almost reverently, her tear-filled eyes glued to the cover. She stroked the worn leather before her hand curled about it like a claw. “This blasted book will haunt us no longer.”
She stalked to the fire burning low in the grate and tossed the diary into the blaze. Finlay came to stand next to her, watching as the flames grew and licked over the cover, turning it black. As the oranges and yellows fanned higher, soothing relief descended over him, replacing the stress and uncertainty that had clung to him like a millstone around his neck. All his father’s lies and misdeeds, the scandalous, deplorable secrets his mother had been forced to keep, were quickly turned to ash.
Alethea stared, as if hypnotized by the flames. “We are not our pasts. No matter the deception and scandal that heralded our births, we can choose to live our lives free of such artificiality.” She looked up at him, her mouth trembling. “You have a chance to be happy, Fin. Do not give up that chance so easily.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Had the sun always been so bright? So harsh? Charlotte blinked against the radiance, angling her chin so her bonnet blocked the majority of the rays. She might have hidden away for the last two days, but she certainly hadn’t transformed into an estrie, the vampire from Jewish folklore that used to frighten her as a child, so should the sun be so punishing?
But then, perhaps, it was already leveling judgment.
As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she glanced up and down the block. Her gaze landed on a solitary figure who stood near a tree on the corner. The man’s stance conveyed worry…and regret. Her lips trembled as she attempted a smile for his benefit. Jimmy had been so kind, but she hoped the footman would not interfere.
A rough hand gripped her elbow in a punishing hold. “It’s about time you came out of your hidey-hole,” a reed-thin man quipped, grinning with yellowed teeth at another man who stood behind him.
Dread smothered her when she recognized the second man as the one who had accosted her in the street those weeks past.
“Where’s your big Scotsman to defend you now?” he drawled, a sneer darkening his leathery face.
The men dragged her to a nondescript carriage parked just down the street and thrust her inside. The conveyance was rumbling down the street before she could push herself up and onto a squab.
