Page 49 of The Big Bad Duke (The Shadows #9)

T he carriage wheels clattered against the cobblestones as they navigated the winding streets toward Payne’s townhouse. Inside, the atmosphere was thick with tension.

St. John gazed silently out the window, the calmest among them, though his brow was furrowed with thought or worry.

Payne sat rigidly in the leather seat, his jaw clenched so tightly that Gideon worried he might crack a tooth. The revelations about Townsend had shaken him to his core, and the full extent of the betrayal was just beginning to unfold.

Leila leaned against Gideon’s side, her hand in his.

He drew soothing circles on the inside of her palm, trying to calm her racing heartbeat, but her pulse still hammered wildly in her wrist.

Though Leila appeared calm on the outside, Gideon sensed that her body was poised for flight. She was so close to getting her brother back, and he understood her impatience.

She didn’t want to wait another minute, much less another night.

However, they couldn’t just confront Townsend in the middle of the night and accuse him of being the Cardinal, the ruthless leader of an unscrupulous secret society.

They needed more evidence than a lovely portrait and Leila’s word. Right now, they were headed to obtain that proof.

They reached Payne’s townhouse quickly; it wasn’t far from Roth’s place. Payne jumped from the carriage before the footman even had time to pull up the step and rushed inside unceremoniously.

Gideon helped Leila onto the pavement, her fingers trembling in his.

She met his gaze as he took her elbow to lead her inside, uncertainty and worry mingling with hope in her expression.

He couldn’t imagine what she was truly feeling at that moment.

“The study,” Payne yelled tersely as he entered the foyer, rushing toward his office. “I have all of Townsend’s documents in there.”

Gideon and Leila followed while St. John went to see his wife in another room.

The moment they entered the study, Payne began rummaging through his papers, pulling out every document Townsend had ever touched. He mumbled something under his breath as Leila’s expression gradually shifted from hopeful to overwhelmed with each document he produced.

It would take more than one night to go through them all.

Gideon focused on the files Townsend had drafted while Payne was abducted, during the time he held the title of Earl of Payne.

“To think I suspected that bastard and ruled him out,” Payne muttered under his breath, shaking his head as he paced the floor.

Leila sat on the floor, the harlot’s dress pooling around her hips, its open cut exposing her thigh, and she didn’t seem to care. Gideon picked up the cloak she had discarded in her haste and draped it over her bare skin.

She looked up at him, uncertainty in her eyes, but that expression quickly shifted to gratitude. She shifted slightly to make room for him on the Persian rug, and he settled beside her, taking a substantial stack of papers in his hands.

The soft sound of footsteps in the corridor alerted Gideon to someone’s approach. He tensed immediately, expecting bad news, but it was only Lady Payne who appeared at the threshold.

Her blue eyes quickly found her husband, who had just settled behind his desk.

“Blake,” she said softly, her voice and gaze filled with concern.

Payne looked up from the document he had been studying, his expression softening at the sight of his wife.

Without a word, he rose from behind his desk and crossed to her in three quick strides.

She reached for his hand as he approached, their fingers intertwining with the unconscious ease of a couple deeply attuned to each other’s needs.

“What happened?” she murmured in a low voice.

Payne whispered something in response and gently tugged his wife away from the room.

When they returned perhaps twenty minutes later, Lady Payne’s entire demeanor had transformed from questioning to determined. She was now ready to work through the night.

She moved toward the desk and settled on the edge next to her husband, taking a bulk of documents from his pile.

Soon, Lord and Lady St. John joined them as well.

The couple had a small babe, barely a month old, sleeping in another room, and Lady St. John occasionally left to feed or soothe the baby.

It was unheard of for a lady of her station to forgo a wet nurse. On the other hand, perhaps this was the better way.

Gideon was not biologically equipped to handle that specific task, but he wished he had spent more meaningful time with his children when they were still alive, rather than delegating their care to the servants.

He absently flipped through a leather-bound journal, his thoughts dwelling on the past that he could not change, no matter how hard he tried. Then he noted something strange. He paused and went back a few pages to ensure that the inconsistencies he found were not imagined.

“Here,” he finally said, his voice cutting through the silence.

“Look at this. The astonishing increase in profit margins on the northern estates… He claimed he sold his art to invest in them, but the timeline doesn’t fit.

Instead, there was a substantial investment from a shipping company that quickly went bankrupt a few months later. ”

He mentioned the name of the company, hoping the others would find additional documents corroborating Townsend’s involvement with them.

Leila moved to another stack of papers, and Gideon joined her to sift through more accounts.

In the next few hours, they uncovered many things that Payne, in his blind trust of his cousin, had missed: phantom investments, suspicious business ventures that disappeared over time, shipping manifests, and other disturbing information.

Payne’s face was grim as he examined a personnel ledger. “My estate managers—the ones Townsend dismissed and convinced me were skimming from me…” He looked up, his eyes blazing with anger. “There’s no evidence here of any theft or mismanagement, is there?”

“So far, none,” St. John replied.

“Of course there is none,” Payne said bitterly, sinking into a chair as if the weight of his realization was too much to bear. “He needed them gone so they couldn’t witness what he was doing. God, how could I have been so blind?”

His wife moved behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He covered her hand with his, squeezing her fingers absentmindedly as he continued to examine the document before him.

There was obvious love between the Paynes. St. John’s had it too, Gideon noticed.

When he married Sarah, it was common wisdom that only a tiny percentage of high society marriages were based on love.

Now it seemed the tide was shifting.

He looked at Leila, his heart making a tiny leap, as it did every time he saw her.

Was that love, this feeling he had for her? Or was it lust, perhaps heightened by the dangerous circumstances they were in? Would it vanish once they returned to a quiet, comfortable existence?

More importantly, would that comfortable existence ever be enough for Gideon? So far, it never had been.

Did Leila feel the same conflicted emotions toward him?

The thought terrified him.

Her life had been completely upended. When it eventually returned to normal—whatever “normal” meant for her—would there even be space for Gideon?

He didn’t know the answers to these questions. But he did know how he could make the next stage of her life easier, allowing her to finally enjoy her time with her brother after all the hardship. He only hoped her brother was still alive.

“Look at this,” Leila said quietly, shifting closer to Gideon.

“My mind isn’t as clear right now, but I think this is the Cardinal’s handwriting.

He’s communicating with his business partners using the earl’s seal, wouldn’t you say?

And the date is after Lord Payne had already escaped from his abduction. ”

Gideon squinted at the correspondence. Leila was entirely correct.

“It seems like that’s exactly what’s happening,” he confirmed.

“Payne, it appears Townsend was essentially running the Brotherhood using your finances and your seal. That’s the information I uncovered while investigating you as the Cardinal. ”

Payne sidestepped Gideon’s suspicions, moving closer to examine the letters Leila held.

“You’re right,” Payne said with a sigh. “This is a few months after my return. But I actually gave him permission to use my seal. When I returned, I was so overwhelmed, so broken. I begged him to help me transition back into running the earldom. I gave him access to everything—my accounts, my seal, my complete trust.”

“What a snake,” St. John muttered.

“I think we have enough information tying him to the Brotherhood now,” Gideon said. “Especially when paired with Norfolk’s documents and all the information I’ve gathered over the past year.”

Leila stood abruptly. “Do you know where he lives or any of his residences?” Fire burned in her eyes, ready to confront the culprit.

Payne let out a sound that was part laugh, part self-deprecating snort. “I am paying for his residence. Here,” he said, pulling out a lease agreement. “Mayfair. The finest address money can rent.”

“Well,” Gideon said, “that, at least, is good news.”

* * *

Within the hour, Leila, Gideon, Lord Payne, and Lord St. John stood outside an elegant townhouse in one of London’s most prestigious neighborhoods.

The windows were dark, and the front steps, though swept clean, showed no signs of recent use.

A sense of foreboding settled over Leila as they observed the residence from a discreet distance.

“I don’t think anyone lives here,” St. John voiced the thought that lingered in everyone’s minds.

“I don’t think anyone has lived here for a while,” Payne noted bitterly. “Money well spent.”

“I will make sure it’s truly empty,” St. John said eagerly.

“I will join you!” Leila exclaimed, already moving closer to the carriage door, but Gideon squeezed her hand.

“It’s not advisable for either of us to be out in the open at the Cardinal’s residence, Leila,” he said. “Someone could be watching this place.”

“Gideon, please,” Leila pleaded, her words and eyes desperate. Her face burned, and her breaths quickened at the thought of Emir possibly being somewhere inside, hidden, while she remained too afraid to enter. “I need to be there, to look for him!”

“It won’t do you any good to be caught in there, especially if he’s not even there. How will you find him then?” Gideon insisted.

“St. John is a professional,” Payne assured her. “He will be very thorough.”

“They’re right,” St. John agreed. “I promise, I won’t leave a single stone unturned.”

He jumped out of the carriage and flitted away like a shadow, disappearing behind a bush.

He was quick, silent, and nearly invisible in his dark clothes.

As much as she loathed to admit it, Leila would stand out like a beacon in her bright harlot’s dress. Not to mention, it would hinder her movements and foil her escape.

Still, it wasn’t easy sitting in the carriage while her brother could be just a few feet away, held captive.

She tried to imagine their reunion, picturing his winsome grin as he dismissed her worries, just as he always did. “I am never hurt, Abla. Yet you always worry.”

“That is my right as your Abla to worry,” she would reply, as she always did.

She had promised him they’d escape the Cardinal’s grasp before he reached his fifteenth year. His birthday was just over a month away, and she was determined to keep that promise.

And once they were free… she didn’t know what would happen next.

They could smuggle their way back to the Continent, find their way back to Smyrna.

Though Emir was now more proficient in French and English.

Perhaps they could settle in France, despite the unpleasant memories tied to that place. She couldn’t avoid every location associated with painful memories; otherwise, she would run out of places to call home.

Maybe they could stay in England, close to Gideon.

He had all but offered her a position as his mistress…

No.

She couldn’t do that.

If she were alone, without Emir, perhaps she would consider it. As for the sin, she had already committed enough in the name of fear and survival to justify one more in the name of love without her conscience nagging at her.

Emir would probably not mind it either. But she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye, and she would feel uncertain about her future, worrying whether Gideon would decide to marry someone suitable in a few years.

She had experienced enough uncertainty in her life—enough humiliation to last a lifetime.

She deserved better.

And Emir deserved stability. He deserved to be proud of his Abla.

Just then, St. John returned and slipped silently into the carriage. “Just as we expected,” he said. “The place is deserted and has been for a while.”

“Have you checked for secret passages and trapdoors?” Leila asked nervously.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied instantly. “I haven’t left a single stone unturned.”

Payne rapped on the roof of the carriage irritably, and it jolted into motion.

“We need to find him,” he gritted through his teeth. “But he could be anywhere—the countryside, another city, even abroad by now. It will take a small army to find him.”

Gideon and Jarvis exchanged a knowing glance, and a smirk twisted Gideon’s lips. “Good thing I have a little army at my fingertips.”