by Abby Ayles
“Oh, sweetheart, that is perfectly alright,” Emma assured her. “I was a bit preoccupied last night, anyway. And it is wonderful that you children spent that time with your father.”
Emma gave the children a genuine smile, which seemed to relax Rowena considerably. The children went back to their earlier pleasant chatter, and Emma and Francis finished the meal in silence.
Once the children were finished eating, Emma ushered them back upstairs to begin lessons. Francis considered asking her to wait a moment so that he could ask her in private if she was alright, but he thought better of it.
As he opened his mouth to call to her, the servants came in to clear the table, and he did not wish to give them cause to reignite the affair rumors. Instead, when everyone else left the room, Francis set about his task of packing away Caroline’s things.
He went from room to room, beginning with the downstairs. There were many candelabras and books that had belonged to her that, since they were still being used, he decided to leave where they were.
However, there was one grand candelabra that had been in the drawing room that he could not seem to find. He remembered it because it was gold, whereas the rest of the candle holders and candelabras were silver. It had been passed down to Caroline by her grandmother after she had died, and she had always talked about how much it meant to her.
Francis made a mental note to ask the nanny about where it had been placed after Caroline’s death.
As he stored and put away Caroline’s belongings, he allowed himself a few more tears. Each item he touched still resonated with her life, her energy, and he could attach clear memories to each one.
The way she had laughed excitedly as she instructed the staff on places to put certain things, or at his sour faces whenever she brought out a piece of art in which he had no interest but seemed to bring her great pleasure.
He thought as he inventoried everything, that there might be a painting or two that had been misplaced, as well, but he could not be sure. In truth, he had paid little attention to each painting. Caroline had been the lover of art. He found it uninteresting and pointless, with only a few rare exceptions.
At last, he had finished with the downstairs rooms. He checked the time and saw that it was early afternoon. He had worked straight through lunch. He was not yet hungry, however, so he decided to continue on until supper.
He made his way upstairs, trying to decide in which room to begin up there.
“Do you need something, milord?” a voice asked.
He turned to see Margaret standing there, looking at him with a strange expression.
“No, Margaret,” he said. “I have just been putting away some of Caroline’s things.”
“Oh?” she asked, her voice as strange as her expression. “Would you like for the servants to do it for you?”
Francis smiled.
“No, thank you,” he said. “This is something I think I must do.”
Margaret’s smile was warm, but her eyes were unreadable.
“Of course, milord,” she said, curtseying. “If there is anything you do need, just call for me. I will see to it at once.”
Francis thought for a moment.
“Actually, you can send someone downstairs to put the things I’ve packed away in the attic if you would,” he said. “I have everything stacked neatly just inside the door of each room.”
The nanny nodded quickly and rushed away. Francis watched her curiously. Was everyone now acting strangely around him?
Francis decided that the staff was merely having trouble adjusting to the recent changes in his demeanor. He imagined that it had been difficult for them to adjust to life after Caroline died, especially since they had primarily dealt with her while she was alive.
He thought that maybe the changes in his behavior had made them tense and afraid and that they were not sure how to take his recent attempts at becoming more like his old self.
With a sigh, he decided to start with the room in which most of her belongings were. He had not even so much as stored away her dresses and riding and traveling habits yet, so he started with those.
As with the items he sorted downstairs, he could remember times when she wore each dress. Briefly, as he wiped tears from his eyes, he considered letting his servants put away Caroline’s things, after all. But he felt that he owed her this much.
Perhaps, it would even help him say his final goodbye to his beloved late wife.
He moved on from Caroline’s clothing to her vanity. For a brief moment, Francis felt that he would be unable to continue. As he picked up one of her brushes, he saw that there were still a couple of bright, golden strands of hair wound within the bristles.
He picked up the brush and inhaled deeply and was surprised that he could still smell her floral scent on it. He put down the brush and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, wiping away the tears that had begun to freely fall.
“Goodbye, my sweet Caroline,” he whispered. He kissed the brush before putting in with the other things he planned to take to the attic.
He looked then at her jewelry box. Many of the necklaces and bracelets inside had been given to her, either by her grandmother or her mother. However, he found a couple of rings that he had never noticed that she had.
As he handled each one, the memories of how she told him she got those rings returned to him. He decided that he would leave all the jewelry in the box, just as it was.
However, as he was replacing the jewelry pieces, he noticed that Caroline’s wedding ring was missing.
For a moment, he thought that perhaps she had been buried with it. Then, he remembered that the doctor who had examined her body had returned everything she had had on her person except for the dress she had been wearing the day she was shot to Francis when he was finished with his exam.
Now, Francis was perturbed. He thought again about the candelabra and paintings that he had thought were missing and tried to remember whether he had requested those items stored just after her death.
Then, he recalled a conversation he had had with the butler, in which he told him to ensure that the staff knew that he planned to tend to Caroline’s things himself.
Rather than merely brush off the missing items yet again, he ceased his efforts. He rushed down the stairs and called for any of the servants within earshot. The butler was the first to respond.
“Yes, milord?” the man said, looking concerned.
“Get some of the servants and search the house,” Francis said. “I have noticed that several of Caroline’s possessions have gone missing.”
“For what are we searching?” the butler asked.
“A couple of paintings, a golden candelabra, and her wedding ring,” Francis said, thinking carefully.
The butler looked genuinely shocked and, with a quick nod, rushed away to do as his master had asked.
As the servants went from room to room, he paced in the entryway of the house. He wracked his brain, trying to think of anything that could have happened to the items that he might have forgotten. He hoped that he had simply overlooked the items and that the search he had ordered would produce the items safe and sound.
After about an hour, however, the servants came together at the base of the stairs and talked amongst each other for a moment, before the butler approached him.
“There is no sign of the things you described,” he said.
Francis blinked, shocked.
“Search again,” he said. “Look in every corner and crevice, in every single room.”
The servants exchanged worried glances and set off to search again.
As the minutes passed with no word from the servants, Francis became angry.
He could not imagine what could have happened to these things of Caroline’s. They were valuable, to be sure, but it was the sentiment of them that meant something to him. He knew that the house had never been burgled, so what could have happened to the items?
Unbidden, the conversation he had had wit
h Charles came to mind. He recalled that his friend had had to fire his governess for theft.
No, he thought. None of my servants would do such a thing to me, and certainly not Emma.
However, when the servants returned to him another hour and a half later, still empty-handed, the truth began to flood Francis’s mind.
The items had, indeed, been stolen.
“Search again,” he growled.
This time, the staff searched for over two hours, and once again, they had found nothing. By this time, Francis was furious.
Certainly, any of the staff members could possibly have been capable of theft. However, none of them had been leaving the house as often as Emma.
And she was the only one who still had a home of her own to which she could take any illegally procured items to hide them.
Francis curtly dismissed the staff to their duties and stormed off to his study. Once there, he slammed and locked the door. He wanted to think about this rationally and would not be disturbed while he did so.
But even after an hour of pacing the floor of his study, he had not come to any other conclusion.
Emma was the only one with any motive to steal from him. Though she had told him that she was not hurt by the idea of him having to marry someone else, he had admitted to being as unhappy as he was by the notion.
It was not inconceivable that she was just unhappy enough to have taken the items and sold them, if she had not, in fact, taken them to her home.
By suppertime, he was so angry that he could not bear the sight of anyone. He also had not heard Emma come back from whatever alleged errand she had had to run, and he did not feel capable of speaking with her just then without losing his temper.
However, he vowed that he would confront her about it the very next time he laid eyes on her. And, if she was guilty, he would ensure that she would never find any work in the ton again.
Chapter 27
Emma departed for the town as soon as the children’s lessons had ended.
She had thought that she had heard some kind of rummaging throughout the house as she taught, but she paid it little mind. Her thoughts centered around the discovery of the ships that Marcus had told her that their father had.
She had hoped to catch Margaret on her way out to ask her to remind Francis that she would be gone that evening, but Margaret was nowhere to be seen. Emma thought that a bit odd, but she had little time to focus on it.
She had spent the previous night tossing and turning, trying to rationalize how it could be possible that Lucius had managed to continue doing business with those ships without her knowledge.
She had tried to create a scenario in which someone else was operating the ships without Lucius’s knowledge, but the explanation was tenuous at best, and never quite held any real merit.
She had finally had to accept the reality that Lucius had been embezzling from her family, profiting from the business the ships were conducting with the captain to whom she spoke.
On the trip into town, she cursed herself for having not realized what was happening sooner.
She also felt terribly guilty for having not believed Marcus after Lucius had tried to pull more wool over her eyes by being so indignant at the suggestion that the ships existed in the first place.
She had almost believed Lucius’s explanation that Marcus’s mind was slipping, and as such, had allowed Lucius to continue his fraudulent behavior that much longer.
She said a silent prayer to her parents, begging their forgiveness for her being so blind. She also prayed that she would be able to keep her emotions under control, though she very much doubted that would be the case.
She was furious, both with herself and with Lucius.
When she arrived at the office, she stormed through the lobby, not checking to see if Lucius was currently speaking with someone.
“Excuse me, miss?” the man at the desk called. Emma barely heard him, though, and paid him no mind.
She kept walking right past him, straight down the hall and walked, unannounced, right into Lucius’s office.
At the sound of his office door being flung aggressively open, Lucius jumped. There was, indeed, a man sitting on the other side of the expansive desk, apparently discussing business matters with Lucius.
Emma was too angry to care that she had interrupted something.
“Excuse me,” she said, smiling coldly. “I really must speak with Mr. Rowley this instant. It is rather urgent.”
The man looked shocked, and she expected him to rebuke her for having the audacity to disrupt business between men.
Instead, however, he rose from his chair, murmured something inaudible to Lucius, and rushed out of the door.
Feeling momentarily shamed by her bold behavior, Emma did not meet the man’s eyes as he exited the office. Once he was gone, however, she stepped the rest of the way into the office and loudly closed the door behind her.
Lucius seemed to be more shocked than the man who had been there moments earlier. His face was white and beads of sweat began to form on his forehead.
“Miss Baker, I dare say that is highly unorthodox,” he said, fumbling for his handkerchief in his coat pocket.
“And I dare say that my reason for being here is in need of a bit of an unorthodox approach,” she said.
Lucius looked to be a mixture of frightened and angered. He gestured at her to sit, but she shook her head.
“I do not believe that I will ever make myself comfortable in this office again,” she said. She was trying to keep her composure, but she was trembling with rage.
Little to Emma’s surprise, Lucius put on his most pleasant, hospitable face.
“Please, Miss Baker, sit,” he said. “Is this about Marcus’s phantom ships again?”
“Phantom, indeed,” Emma scoffed. “And no, I will not sit, thank you.”
Lucius feigned a wounded expression.
“Miss Baker, we have been over this,” he began.
Emma cut him off.
“And I have learned something quite interesting since our last conversation,” she said.
Lucius’s expression changed, but only slightly. Only his eyes gave away that he might suspect what it was that she knew.
“Oh?” he asked, trying to inject as much placation into his voice as he could.
“Yes,” Emma said. “It would seem that those ships do, in fact, exist.”
“Now, Miss Baker,” Lucius said again. “I do not see how you could possibly still believe those ships exist after everything I have shown you.”
Emma pulled the papers that the captain had given her from her pocket.
“Then, perhaps, you wish to tell me what it is that I am supposed to be seeing here,” she said, thrusting the papers across the desk toward Lucius.
Lucius read the papers carefully, making Emma more furious by the minute. He maintained his calm, patronizing expression as he scanned the pages.
“These are obviously forgeries,” he said flatly.
“Indeed, they are,” Emma said. “I spoke with the captain who has been engaging in the business dealings with my father’s ships, and he said that all the signatures for the payments and orders are mine.
“And I certainly could not sign off on anything having to do with ships that allegedly did not exist, could I?”
At last, Lucius’s feigned bewilderment began to fade. To Emma’s surprise, however, it did not melt into fear or panic. Instead, Lucius Rowley’s face contorted into something else Emma had never seen before.
Unlike the outrage and anger she had seen upon her last visit, this expression was one of cool, smug satisfaction. Had she not already been so angry, she might have been frightened by his face.
As it was, however, she merely stood silently, waiting for him to speak.
“Well,” Lucius said. “It seems that you have done a great deal of poking around in places no woman has any business in.”
Emma glared at him.
“You know very well wh
y I am the one tending to my family’s affairs,” she said.
“Indeed,” Lucius said, nodding in a mocking manner. “But what on earth were you doing in such a dangerous place as the docks? Do you have other business matters in that area?”
Emma bit her lip to keep from screeching at the implications of his words.
“I hardly think that my business there is any of yours,” she hissed. “Especially considering the current situation.”