Page 72 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
Blast it, he wanted this whole damned debacle over and done with. It was the last of the loose ends he’d left to tie up, the one that would right the ship he had endeavored all these years to steer straight. And yet—
He’d have preferred Mercy’s company for the occasion. No one in their right mind would ever think it the sort of outing a woman ought to be on, but Mercy would have loved to join him.He had wondered, once, what sort of man he was becoming. The answer had become clear: who he was meant to be. The man he had always stifled, stuffed so full of lectures on propriety and what was and was not done. He had buried who he truly was beneath so many layers of starch and pompous arrogance that he hadneverseen himself clearly. But Mercy had. Perhaps she always had.
And he thought—he thought it likely that he would never hear his father’s voice in his head again. He would never hear his own, echoing those same ruthless words that had marked so much of his life.
There was the temptation to add in a quick detour to Charity’s home, which itself was only a short walk to the tavern. But it was still broad daylight, and there was no way of knowing whether or not Fordham might pose any sort of real, physical threat. He bit off a sigh. No—Mercy relied upon his good judgment, and he had to exercise it here. She was safe and sound with her sister, and the very minute he’d apprehended Fordham, he’d go for her.
A scratch at the door of the study caught his attention, and a footman cracked the door to announce, “Mr. Sumner for you, my lord.”
Damn. Another unnecessary delay. “Mr. Sumner,” he said as the man entered the room. “I was just on my way out. Can this possibly wait?”
“It could, my lord,” Mr. Sumner said, adjusting the thick folio wedged beneath his arm. “But I think you would rather it did not.” With one hand, he gestured toward the opened door, a sort of vague beckoning motion.
And slowly, with a shuffle like that of a chastened child, in walked Fordham.
Thomas vaulted up from his chair so swiftly his knees cracked the underside of the desk before he was able tostraighten them properly. “Y—y—y—” His tongue tied itself even as his hands curled upon the edge of the desk, his blunt nails carving divots into the precious, lovingly varnished mahogany. God, he wished Mercy were here at this moment, to place her hand upon his arm and anchor him. To sooth the clatter of disordered thoughts clamoring to escape, tumbling over one another. At length his throat relaxed and his tongue loosened enough to say in a seething hiss, “You have some damned nerve to come before me.”
“My lord, please,” Mr. Sumner interjected, “I would beseech you to exercise restraint.”
Fordham had cowered away from what he had interpreted as an imminent attack, throwing his hands up to guard his face despite the fact that even Thomas’ pure and perfect rage could not have carried him across the room so quickly.
“Explain,” Thomas said, his voice a guttural snarl to Mr. Sumner. “Explain to me right this moment why you have brought this—thisthiefhere before me instead of dragging him before a magistrate?”
Mr. Sumner blinked, his unflappable demeanor still unshaken in the face of Thomas’ rancor. “Naturally, my lord, due to your insistence that this matter be handled with all possible delicacy, I thought it ill-advised to involve the authorities without your explicit consent. As Mr. Fordham approached me, I surmised that there was no particular need to apprehend a man who had, as you can plainly see, voluntarily surrendered himself.”
“What the hell do you mean, he voluntarily surrendered?” Thomas inquired.
“Just exactly that,” Mr. Sumner said. “Mr. Fordham arrived at my office several hours ago. Under the circumstances, he suspected—correctly, I expect—that he would not be well-received had he approached you on his own.”
He’d have been lucky to keep all of his teeth firmly attached to his jaw, Thomas allowed to himself.
“Instead, he approached me to aid him. As a sort of intermediary, you understand. It is not unknown where you are presently residing, nor to whom this residence belongs. Mr. Fordham deduced that I, as Mr. Fletcher’s solicitor, might be able to offer him assistance.” Sumner gestured at the chair arranged before the desk. “Might I sit, my lord?”
“If you must.” Thomas braced his palms upon the surface of the desk, resisting the impulse to vault over it and go for Fordham’s throat. “Fordham can bloody well stand.”
Which was well enough, he supposed, since Fordham—a mousy, nondescript man of some middling years—seemed not eager to put himself within throttling distance of Thomas besides.
Mr. Sumner’s folio landed with athwackupon the surface of the desk, and he began to rifle through the papers therein, arranging them into some manner of order. Piles and piles of them, set out at perfect angles. “If you’ll allow me one moment, my lord, to prepare myself,” he muttered.
“It seems to me you’ve had more than a few already. Hours, you said.”
“Well, yes,” Sumner hedged. “There was quite a lot to manage. It is always best, I have found, to present a solution rather than a problem. I daresay it is one of the reasons Mr. Fletcher has kept me in his employ for so many years. Ah—there.” Like a consummate perfectionist, he twitched the edges of the last stack of documents so that it was evenly spaced alongside the others. “This is your solution, my lord. Your fortune restored.”
“I beg your pardon?” Thomas asked. “How much of it?”
“All of it, I should say,” Mr. Sumner said. “And some extra besides, owing to the investments and annuities in your namewhich were dissolved, which ought to have accrued”—he paused to glance over his shoulder at Fordham—“three months of interest?”
“Four,” Fordham said in a tight, shrill voice. “Four months.”
“Four months,” Sumner amended. “Naturally, when Mr. Fordham arrived at my office, I demanded an explanation of him. I am given to understand that like many gentlemen, Mr. Fordham found himself the victim of certain vices—”
“Gambling,” Thomas snarled, and Fordham gave a jerky nod. So he’d assessed it correctly, once he’d assembled a proper timeline of events, collected every bit of information he could get his hands on at the various institutions at which he ought to have had accounts.
“Never found the appeal in it m’self,” Sumner said. “But it’s a tale as old as time. A gentleman finds himself established within a gaming establishment, wagers a little more than he ought, then significantly more—”
“Then he embezzles from his employer,” Thomas suggested icily. “His employer’s mother. His employer’ssisters. Forcing said employer to rely upon the largesse—such as it is—of a neighbor even to have the hope of managing the journey to London for the Season.”
“I tried to pay it back,” Fordham said, and his teeth clattered with nerves. “I tried—a bit here and there, whenever I eked out a win. I thought so long as the balances were correct when I sent the quarterly accounting, you’d never know the difference.”
