“Curse you, whelp, how many times do I have to tell you that Loge is gone to Rothisbones?” Jasper asked. “Tierney is a ruthless murderer. Don’t bleeding go anywhere near his sorry hide.”
“He saw Loge the day he disappeared,” Hart countered. “I wasn’t wrong in going to see Tierney. He said Loge had become involved in moneylending with him because he was keen on making his own coin outside of The Sinner’s Palace. On the day he disappeared, Loge went to settle a debt with the Earl of Haldringham. He never returned.”
“And you believed a snake like Tierney?” Jasper shook his head. “Lad, Asher Tierney wouldn’t know the truth if it tupped him.”
“You may not be wrong about that,” he admitted. “But I made a plan to prove or disprove his story and, if at all possible, to find the truth of what happened to our brother.”
“Is that why you’ve the daughter of an earl here?” Jasper demanded.
Hart looked to Wolf. “You promised not to tell him until I was ready.”
“I didn’t tell him. Lady Octavia recognized her,” Wolf said.
Bleeding hell.
Hart had not anticipated Jasper already knowing.
“I’m in love with her,” he blurted, for beginning with that truth would likely blunt the sting of the rest of what he had to say.
“Just as I thought,” Jasper said grimly.
“I hope you’re planning to make an honest woman of her,” Rafe added.
“Aye, may as well shackle yourself to the petticoats like the rest of our brothers,” Wolf taunted him, grinning.
The notion of tying himself to Emma did not feel like a burden. Although he had always believed the parson’s mousetrap was not for him, he was beginning to find he had been wrong about a lot of bleeding things.
Just about everything, beginning with his addle pated notion he should use Emma as a pawn to pry the truth about Loge from her father.
“If she will have me, it would be my honor,” he said honestly, his throat going thick with emotion at the prospect of making Emma his in truth. His wife. His bride. “But after I reveal what I’ve done to her, I doubt she’ll forgive me.”
“And what is it that you’ve done to Lady Emma?” Jasper asked.
He took a deep breath and began at the beginning.
* * *
Emma joltedawake to the startling realization that she was alone. She cast her eyes around Hart’s chamber, frantically searching for him, but it was empty, what appeared to be late-afternoon light streaming across the carpets from the window, a sign of how long she must have slept.
She sat up in bed, blinking the slumber from her eyes. She had fallen asleep at his side, still fully dressed, exhausted after going two days with precious little rest. The intensity of her relief that his fever had broken and his wound appeared to be healing had finally lulled her into slumber.
But now, he was gone.
Where? And why? He had to have precious little strength after being so ill for two days.
She rose from the bed and smoothed some wrinkles from her gown. Her hair was a disastrous mess, but she would attend to it later. For the moment, her greatest concern was finding Hart. He ought not to be gadding about in his weakened state.
She slid on her borrowed slippers and left the room, the last few days of tending to Hart having given her a greater sense of the arrangement of halls and private rooms within the gaming hell.
Although she could not be certain where he had gone, she decided to begin at the office where his brothers had been presiding during Hart’s illness. If he was not within, then surely, one of them would be. None of the guards were about, so she approached the door, surprised to find it ajar.
Hart’s familiar voice rumbled from within, the end of his words trailing to her. “…I doubt she’ll forgive me.”
Emma paused at the threshold.
“And what is it that you’ve done to Lady Emma?” asked another voice from within.
One of his brothers, she supposed. Perhaps the eldest.
But then she froze at the realization Jasper Sutton had said Lady Emma. Not Emma, as she had simply introduced herself to him and his wife. Was he speaking of her? But how could that be? Not even Hart knew her full given name. Indeed, it had been weighing heavily on her mind during his illness that she should have been honest with him and told him she was the daughter of an earl.
Now she remained still and quiet, eavesdropping on the conversation within.
“I bought her father’s debts from Tierney,” Hart said, his familiar, beloved voice still weary from the illness he had suffered. “After I had them, I learned everything I could about Haldringham. It didn’t take long to discover he had a daughter who’d been recently ruined along with two others to marry off, that he had no means of repaying his debts. Fortunately for me, since the death of his wife, not only has the earl taken to gambling away everything at the green baize, but he’d also become a patron of The Garden of Flora. I spoke to Sophie and arranged for her to present Haldringham with a means of eliminating his debt. After I knew she was amenable to my plan, I called in the earl’s debts. The earl was desperate, and Sophie gave him the way to earn the funds quickly by selling his eldest daughter’s innocence at a private auction.”
“Lady Emma’s,” said one of his brothers.
“Aye,” Hart agreed. “Lady Emma’s.”
“And you made certain to be the man who bought it.”
“I did,” Hart said.
Emma could scarcely move. Her heart felt as if it had cracked into thousands of tiny, jagged, irreparable shards.
Good, sweet heaven.It was too horrid to believe. Her mind could scarcely make sense of what she had just overheard. Hart had lied to her. And not only had he deceived her, but he had used her as well.
He had schemed so that her father’s debts would be called in prematurely, knowing Papa would have no way of satisfying his creditors. But as if that was not bad enough, Hart had also arranged for her to go on the dais at The Garden of Flora. He had orchestrated everything, like a puppet-master so cleverly plying the strings.
And she had fallen neatly into his trap.