Page 21

Chapter Twenty-One

“ N o, wait… he’s innocent,” Robert finally said, voice cutting through the dark like a blade.

Evelyn gasped. “What did you say?”

Robert didn’t answer immediately. He withdrew the letter again which was all creased now, with its edges softened from the press of his own fingers, and stared down at it as though it might change between blinks.

But his voice, when it came again, was steady. “Your father had no part in it. None.”

Evelyn’s mouth parted, but the words refused to come. She blinked against the shock, the confusion, the betrayal of relief.

“This letter I found… it wasn’t orders, it wasn’t collusion. It was a warning. Someone linked him to the attack. He was trying to find out why. ”

Her hand reached for the lapel of his coat. She needed something solid. The floor felt suddenly far away.

“But I… I saw the crest,” she whispered. “His seal was on that letter, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Robert said, lifting his eyes to hers.

“But see here… in this letter, he writes to the Crown.” He paused to search for another letter, then one more.

“In these as well. He wrote several times. He was furious. Desperate. I think he was trying to understand why his name kept appearing in reports and documents he never signed. He suspected his signet had been stolen.”

“Forged,” she echoed what they both were thinking. Her knees nearly buckled. “But he never mentioned any of this to us.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Robert said grimly. “Not if he knew how it would look. You said it yourself, he believes himself untouchable. What would it do to a man like that, realizing he’d been used?”

Evelyn’s thoughts raced. The study’s oppressive silence still seemed to cling to her skin. “So… he was a pawn in this game?”

“Worse,” Robert muttered. “He was a witness who didn’t even know he’d seen something.”

He drew out another letter, one she hadn’t noticed him slip away, and unfolded it. “Here… this is the official reply from the Crown. They agreed. The seal was compromised. The King ordered it changed, publicly, in the presence of high witnesses.”

Evelyn leaned in, her breath warm against his shoulder. She could just make out the neat, stiff script beneath the candle wax blot: …and in accordance with the Office of the Privy Seal and His Majesty’s judgment, your signet must be considered forfeit…

Her breath caught. “So… he is not involved in the death of your family.”

Robert’s voice darkened. “I thought him the worst things a human being could be accused of. And he was none of them.”

The words were flat, bitter, but Evelyn saw more than the bitterness; she saw the fracture in him, the crack of doubt that had been held closed by rage for far too long.

She reached for his hand, curling her fingers into his. “Robert. You couldn’t have known. You had every reason to believe he was?—”

“Complicit. Guilty.” He looked at her. “I came into his house with blood in my mouth.”

“But you’re not leaving it that way,” she said, reassuring him. “This changes everything.”

He nodded, slowly. But then, his brow furrowed, eyes turning inward again. “One question remains.”

Evelyn knew before he said it.

“Who stole the seal?”

They stood there, side by side, as the ancient house held its breath around them.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Could it have been someone close to him? Someone with access to his office?”

“Possibly,” Robert agreed. “Or someone who intercepted his correspondence. Someone who knew enough about your family’s dealings to make the forgeries believable.”

“Someone who wanted both our families destroyed,” she said quietly.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Because the idea had already begun to take root between them. It was not a single person, not a name but a shadow. A presence. Someone clever enough to copy a seal and cruel enough to use it to start a blood feud between noble houses. Worst of all, it was someone who was still out there.

What neither of the seemed to realize was that they lingered there too long.

Even as Evelyn opened her mouth to speak again, a faint sound met her ears.

It was a soft scuffle. A shoe dragging over stone?

A creak that did not belong to the house’s usual nocturnal sighs?

It came from upstairs, or perhaps the servants’ corridor, but it was close .

Robert heard it, too. His head snapped toward the hallway, his eyes narrowing with the precision of a predator. Evelyn felt his body still, every line of him going alert, controlled and terrifyingly calm.

She didn’t need to speak. Neither did he.

They moved in perfect synchrony as they huddled all the letters together and placed them back in the drawer.

He knelt swiftly, with the last letter still hidden inside his coat, and slid the hairpin back not the lock.

The faint click of tumblers falling back into place was almost too soft to hear, but Evelyn heard it.

Her pulse, by contrast, roared in her ears.

They immediately headed out of the study and eased the door shut with a careful hand.

Robert proceeded to lock that as well, then, he rose swiftly.

They crept back through the corridor, careful not to disturb the creaking floorboards that Evelyn knew too well.

The moonlight was gone now, swallowed by a passing cloud, and the darkness felt thicker.

She could feel Robert at her back, his hand brushing against hers every few steps to guide her along without a word.

The sound behind them came again. Faint, shuffling. Perhaps nothing. But perhaps everything.

They reached her door. Her hand touched the knob, but she hesitated. She turned to him. He leaned forward, his voice low, barely more than breath.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

She blinked, startled by the gentleness of it. He was not a man who said such things easily… if ever. The words wrapped around her like warmth in the cold, entirely unexpected and impossibly intimate.

“You don’t have to—” she began, but he shook his head once.

“I do.”

Her lips parted, but again, no words came. Not the right ones. She stepped back into the threshold of her chamber, eyes still locked on his.

Robert reached into his coat and tucked the hairpin safely into an inner pocket.

“I’ll return it,” he said, that familiar dry edge back in his voice, softer this time. “Eventually.”

She was still smiling as she closed the door gently behind her, leaning against it just for a moment. Even a minute later, her heart still hadn’t slowed.

Evelyn stood before the long mirror, her reflection cloaked in the shimmer of candlelight and silk.

Her gown was a deep emerald green, the sort of shade that demanded to be noticed: lush, bold, and gleaming like forest leaves after rain.

It hugged her figure with unapologetic elegance, the neckline sweeping just low enough to make her mother sigh and her father grumble.

She fastened the final earring with deft fingers and tilted her head, scrutinizing the image before her. A duchess, certainly. But also a woman on a mission, a woman who was half huntress, half diplomat, entirely unwilling to be ignored.

The knock came as she smoothed her gloves. Two firm raps. She turned just as the door creaked open, and there he was. Robert stopped just over the threshold.

She felt the shift in the air before she saw his expression—like a stillness that spread from his chest to his fingertips.

His gaze traveled slowly, intently, from the sweep of her shoulders to the curve of her waist then met her eyes with something unspoken behind his own.

She watched the flicker of breath he didn’t take, the pause that told her all she needed to know.

“Oh dear,” she said lightly as her lips curved. “Don’t tell me you’ve come to inform me of a sudden illness. Or perhaps you’ve remembered some pressing engagement involving brooding in a dark corner with a glass of scotch that will make you utterly unable to attend this ball?”

His mouth twitched… almost a smile. “Tempting.”

“Mm, I thought so.” She stepped closer, hands clasped before her. “It’s just… this is rather a difficult dress to waste on my mother’s compliments and other gentlemen’s leering. If you abandon me now, I shall be forced to flirt outrageously with some poor man just to make up for your absence.”

He arched a brow. “You say that like it’s a threat to me. ”

“Isn’t it?”

Another flicker at the edge of his lips, but then his voice dropped to that maddeningly calm timbre. “You look radiant.”

She stilled. It was not the teasing nor the sarcasm she had expected. It was that quiet sincerity that completely caught her off guard. His gaze didn’t leave hers, and it held something more than admiration. It was fierce loyalty, as if he would go to war simply because she had asked him to.

“Well,” she said, trying to reclaim her footing with a tilt of her head, “if you’re going to be charming, I may lose my reputation entirely.”

He stepped inside, closing the door with a soft click. “You’re under the impression you still have one because you seem to have forgotten that you are a ruined woman… ruined by me. ”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is this your way of apologizing then?” she teased. “You’re going to endure society and music and watered wine for me?”

He moved closer, the black of his evening coat as stark and sharp as ever. He hadn’t donned anything fashionable or festive, of course not , but he had shaved, and the crispness of his attire suggested he’d made an effort.

“I would endure worse for you,” he said, and it was not flirtation.

It was fact. Evelyn felt her pulse skip, the teasing on her tongue evaporating. But he didn’t let the moment linger.

“Besides,” he added with a shrug, “someone has to keep all those leering eyes away from you.”

She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling. “Jealous, Your Grace?”

He offered her his arm. “Possessive.”

Her breath hitched, but she masked it with a smile and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.

“Then let us go,” she said sweetly, “and ruin a perfectly good evening together.”

“As long as there are no quadrilles.”

“Oh, there will be quadrilles.”

He groaned, quietly and for her ears alone, as they stepped into the corridor. And Evelyn smiled, for even among the glittering artifice of the ton , she would not be alone tonight.