The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3)(100)

With a sigh, Isabelle looked at the page from the post and scanned down to the signature. She blinked, thinking she’d imagined it, but it was still there, shining in black ink.

St. James. Her heart pounded, and her eyes darted over the words scrawled there.

Knottsby,

The event we have waited for is happening this evening. Your art collection will be sold at nine o’clock tonight at the Rockport building near the harbor. Come alone.

—St. James

“What?” she whispered, flipping the paper over to search for more. Blank. Nothing.

The event we have waited for. Fallon’s words made it sound as if her father had been in on the theft as well. That couldn’t be. Her own father?

She’d been hit over the head and left for dead. She’d spent weeks in a man’s bedchamber.

Fallon—her heart still screamed his name even with what she knew of his true nature. She’d been wise enough to know he wasn’t a good man and to walk away even though it killed her to do so. Surely her father could see the same. Her father couldn’t be involved with a man like Fallon. She was missing something. Why did he send a note to Father, then? A voice that sounded a great deal like Victoria’s echoed in her mind.

Isabelle wasn’t certain what was going on, but she was sure her father wouldn’t be going to meet Fallon alone. Her breathing quickened at the thought of what she was about to do. But she had no choice. She needed answers. Her hands shook as she looked down at the paper in her hands one last time.

Abandoning the note where she’d found it, she went to the hall, spotting the same footman as before. “I require a carriage.”

“Yes, m’lady. Where will you be going this afternoon?”

“Thornwood House,” Isabelle said as she pulled a shawl from a nearby table and tossed it around her shoulders.

“The Mad Duke’s home?”

“Yes,” Isabelle stated, her confidence in her quickly hatched plan increasing by the second.

The duke’s younger sister, Isabelle’s dear friend Roselyn, was surely still away with her new husband, Lord Ayton. But it wasn’t her friend she needed just now—it was the use of her black muslin day dress. The one Roselyn had used to spy on her husband. There would have been no need to take an article of mourning attire with her on a wedding trip. And what were friends for if not to loan out their clothing in times of need? And this was surely that.

For the first time in her life, Isabelle wanted to know the truth—not just some dreamed-up version of events that she pieced together in her mind. Tonight she would follow her father and finally discover the ugly reality of the gentlemen in her life. They’d kept her in the dark in matters that concerned her. They’d kidnapped her. They’d lied to her. “No more,” she whispered to herself.

Nine o’clock tonight at the Rockport building. She would be there, and she would certainly be attending alone.





Nineteen


Dear Isabelle,

I’m sorry. If there were stronger words than those that captured the pain I’ve caused you, I would say those as well. I never deserved having you in my life. It was a fact I knew well, but I was weak in the one area where I should have been strong. You were hurt as a result of my carelessness, and I’ll carry that knowledge with me forever. Someday, long from now, I will see you waltzing at a ball in the arms of an honorable gentleman, and I hope to see you smile. It won’t be a smile for me, of course, but I long for it nonetheless. I will always love you—

? ? ?

Fallon lifted the paper from his desk and wadded it into a ball in his fist, tossing it across the room into the fire. His words sizzled, popped, and then turned to ash just like all the others he’d written since she had walked out the door. His love for Isabelle, just like so many other secrets in his life, would never be spoken aloud. It was over.

*

The wind blew through the rough-hewn doors of the old stone building, stirring whirls of dirt on the floor. Soon it would be time.

Fallon glanced out the nearest window. The street outside was still quiet. Knottsby’s carriage had arrived only minutes before, and Fallon’s men had sent the driver on around the corner. Fallon wanted only Hardaway and Knottsby inside the abandoned building with him—Knottsby to identify the art as the originals and Hardaway because he enjoyed violence.

Wooden columns stood scattered across the open space, but it was otherwise as empty as it had been for years. On clear nights, the clerestory windows lit the building enough for an exchange of funds or an interrogation. Fallon knew the space all too well. Tonight, however, the clouds kept the corners of the room shadowed, which worked in the Spares’ favor. The three of them could easily wait out of sight until the paintings were brought inside.

“I came alone as instructed, but I see you didn’t,” Knottsby said as he joined Fallon beside the window.

“Never,” Fallon replied as he scanned the street once more. One of the Spares lingered in a doorway at the bend in the road, but there was still no sign of Grapling.

Hardaway moved in behind them and greeted Knottsby. “We have men stationed around the building. Nothing will move in or out of here without our notice.”

“Always on top of things,” Knottsby murmured.

Not always, or tonight would be quite different. He would have seen through Grapling years ago. He would have met Isabelle under different circumstances, and perhaps she wouldn’t despise him. It seemed the only thing he could manage in his life was a successful operation.