Page 89 of An Unexpected Earl

“Unfortunately for you, I’m not mistaken.” He leaned back against the squabs and stretched his legs diagonally across the space between them. “He was furious, you know, that he received nothing more from your father than a pittance of an allowance and a bit of land that produced no income. It wasn’t enough to keep him in cards and drink let alone afford the lifestyle of a London gentleman. Not to mention the indignation of having to manage your inheritance as your guardian.” He chuckled at the irony. “A fortune at his fingertips, but not one ha’penny his.”

“I know all this.” She had no patience for his games. Or the alarm he rattled inside her.

“Ah, but youdon’tknow that he was taking your money even before your marriage, siphoning it off little by little so that you wouldn’t notice it had gone missing, blaming a decline in the accounts on falling revenues and bad investments.”

The blood seeped from her cheeks. Freddie had told her exactly that whenever she’d asked to see the account books.

“But a few hundred pounds here and there wasn’t nearly enough, and when you turned twenty-one, he would lose access to it completely if you asked to manage it yourself. Or if you married.” He casually crossed his legs at the ankles. “Apparently, there was some old childhood friend who’d caught your interest. But as long as Howard had you with him, you see, he could live the same lifestyle as you, use your money to fund his gambling, drinking, whoring—the life of a young gentleman on the town. So he couldn’t let you marry and take all that away from him.”

Pearce.Bitter anger seeped up from her bones. Now she knew why her letters had never reached him. Because Frederick had never allowed them to be sent.

“But he couldn’t delay the inevitable. Your majority was coming, and regardless, you were young, beautiful, and wealthy. Eventually you would have married.” He traced an idle finger across the bottom of the window. “So he found a charming man with no family or ties to Birmingham for you to fall in love with, whom he could pay to pretend to court and marry you. One who would then leave for America as soon as he’d scribbled his name into the church register.”

The earth dropped away beneath her, and she sank against the squabs. What he was telling her was preposterous. Absurd! But he knew about her marriage, details that no one else knew but her and Frederick. And that other document she’d found, the one tucked away with her marriage settlement—

Frederick had paid Aaron to pretend to love her.

She could barely breathe as the nauseating realization swept over her. All this time spent believing…all that pain and humiliation…

Oh God, she was going to be sick!

“You’re lying,” she whispered, gripping the seat beneath her so tightly that her fingertips turned white.

“I’m not. Howard planned it all out perfectly. He arranged for a special license that would allow you to marry inside England to ensure that your marriage would not be legal, then pretended to travel to London while actually shadowing you the entire time. After all, he couldn’t risk that you’d elope to Scotland, where you would have been rightfully married and truly given all your money to your new husband. Where would your brother be then, if the pretender decided to keep your fortune?”

All the pieces were clicking sickeningly into place, and with each one, something ripped deep inside her. Thank God she’d already turned numb, or she would have screamed. She was barely aware of when he reached inside his jacket and withdrew his handkerchief to hold it out to her, as if he were any other gentleman wanting to comfort her. As if he hadn’t just shattered her world.

“You believe that your husband hurried back to Birmingham after your wedding and absconded with all of your money, don’t you? But that never happened.”

“But it did,” she insisted, her voice raw. “I was there!”

“No, you weren’t, not for the money part of it. Howard had conveniently arrived from London at just the right moment to visit the bank manager on your behalf while you remained at home, distraught over being abandoned. Then he told you that your husband had taken everything when no such thing ever happened.”

When she didn’t accept the handkerchief, he shrugged and stuffed it back into his breast pocket.

“You trusted your brother, and in your humiliation, you didn’t want to visit the banker and be pitied. Or laughed at. So you believed the lie.” He pulled back the frayed and dirty curtain that partially covered the window. “But your fortune is still there, still sitting in the bank in Birmingham where your brother has had access to it all along as your guardian.” He sadly shook his head and dropped the curtain back into place. “But unfortunately, a large part of it is now gone. He used it to purchase his seat in Parliament.”

“Not true.” Her numb lips struggled to form the words. “Frederick acquired that seat through his cronies, in return for political favors. There was no money for that. Aaron Northam took everything from me.”

“Not everything. Not your land. Ever ask yourself why that was? If he only married you to get his hands on your money, surely he wouldn’t have left valuable property behind.”

“Because he didn’t have time to sell it. He needed to withdraw the money and leave before I realized what he’d planned.”

“But as your legally wedded husband, he would have had all the time in the world. That land—like everything else—would have become his the moment you wed. He could have sold it even from America. But the property remained yours because Howard couldn’t sell it without your consent. Not even as your guardian.” Varnham shook his head. “Ironic, don’t you think, that in the end your brother got his hands on the land, too, by wrapping it up in that trust? I simply told him that I wanted those men placed into governmental positions. The turnpike was all his idea.”

Her mind spun as fast as the world around her until a sickening nausea overcame her. Until she couldn’t sort through it all. She swallowed hard to force down the swelling anguish and betrayal. “But Frederick hired lawyers and accountants to try to get the money back—Bow Street investigators, sent them all the way to America… Why would he have done that if he wanted to steal my money?”

“Didhe hire them?” Varnham gave her another pitying look, this one so grave that his lips tightened into a thin line. “How do you know?”

Stop looking at me like that!She certainly deserved to be pitied, butnotfor what he was claiming. Because it wasn’t true. None of it! It simply couldn’t be.

Because if it was, then the last seven years had been nothing but a horrible, humiliating lie.

“That’s what I used to blackmail your brother. Not any of those charges that Charles had him arrested for, but what he did to you. You alone have the power to destroy him, his spinster younger sister.” A chuckle rose on his lips. “Your brother’s more frightened of you than he is of any accusations of political corruption.” He smiled tightly as he slumped against the compartment wall in a casual posture that belied the monster beneath. “Now, don’t you feel like a fool for trying to save your brother, when you’re the last thing in the world he cares about?”

She pulled in a deep breath of fierce resolve to keep from spilling tears. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing them.

“You shouldn’t feel ashamed for believing his lies. After all, you’re certainly not the first woman who’s had her fortune swindled away by a male relative. It’s just that your brother did it with so much more flair.”