Page 64 of A Relentless Rake

That hope had proven to be nothing but ashes.

“Tell me.” He traced his finger around the glass’s rim. “Did you know who you wanted to give yourself to tonight, the true person beneath the surface?”

She whispered, “Of course I knew.”

“And that’s the problem.” He raised the empty glass to his lips and murmured quietly against the rim, “Because I didn’t.”

Sixteen

Olivia stepped out of the hackney she’d taken from St James house and rushed inside the school. Her eyes were so filled with burning tears that she could barely see the floor in front of her as she raced up the stairs.

Henry’s door was closed. She pounded her fist fiercely against it.

“Henry!” She knocked again and swallowed down the roiling in her stomach. “Henry, I need to speak with you.”

He’d left Vauxhall with her after she’d returned to the supper box and pleaded a desperate headache. He hadn’t been at all happy to leave his friends, but he’d taken her home, where she’d paced for over an hour before sneaking out to find Alec. She’d assumed Henry had gone to bed.

But the silence confirmed he’d gone out again.

“Not this time,” she whispered, turning the anger that Alec had unleashed inside her on her brother. “You don’t get to hide again.”

She took out her master key that unlocked every room in the school and opened his door. Just as she’d suspected, he wasn’t there. Tonight, though, that wasn’t going to stop her from gaining answers.

She snatched a candle from the bedside table and lit it on the banked coals in the small fireplace. The circle of dim light revealed his room just as it normally was…spartan and clean, with everything in its place and nothing left out to make it untidy, right down to the pairs of shoes and boots all in a row beneath the window.

But looks could be deceiving. Wasn’t that the crux of her confrontation tonight with Alec, the one that had shattered her heart?

Tamping down her anguish and latching on to her resolve, she set the candle on top of his desk and began to search the drawers. She couldn’t help herself. She needed to know what Henry had done, if he was innocent or—

Whatwas she thinking? Of course he was innocent! He would never have done what Alec had accused him of doing, what deeds those equations on the burnt paper had led her to suspect. Surely, there had been some kind of mistake.

But the desk held nothing but papers related to his teaching…lectures of all kinds, lists of students, grade books from years ago— Good Lord, didn’t the man throw anything away?

When she’d finished with the desk, she rushed to the armoire, flung open the drawers, and searched it. Nothing. She dropped to her knees to look under the bed.

Her breath strangled. Throw things away? Apparently not.

A small wooden box lay tucked beneath the mattress ropes. She pulled it out into the room and opened the lid. Rolls of papers had been carefully arranged inside the box and tied with pieces of string, along with folded sheets and letters with their broken wax seals still in place.

She selected one of the rolls, pulled off the tie, and spread it open on the floor. Her hands shook as she smoothed out the sheets of papers. Building plans…and not ones she recognized.

She grabbed several more from the box and unrolled all of them, scanning each for the date and any clue of who had commissioned them. Evidence of other commissions, too, lay inside the box. Receipts for actuarial work for several of the insurance groups that had recently formed across London, amortization tables for loans…even recipes in varying amounts copied out for apothecaries to use in making all sizes of medicinal batches. Olivia stared at them, stunned. She wasn’t familiar with any of these documents.

She sat back on her heels in defeat. Henry had been taking commissions on his own and keeping them secret. Based upon the dates, he’d been doing it for years.

She sucked in a pained breath between clenched teeth. Could she trustanyof the men in her life?

Anguish overwhelmed her, and a tear of humiliation slid down her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hand to her bosom. Her foolish heart still beat there, yet she felt as if a hole had been ripped into her chest. Would she ever be whole again?

“Olivia!”

She scrambled to her feet, still clasping one of the rolled plans in her hand.

Henry stood in the doorway, gaping at her. His gaze darted between her and the box of papers piled at her feet. Then it narrowed on the one in her hand.

“What on God’s earth are you doing?” With a quick look over his shoulder into the dark hall to make certain none of the girls or Mrs. Adams was there, he closed the door and tried to snatch the paper from her hand. But she yanked it out of his reach.

“No,” she corrected and brandished it at him like a sword. “What haveyoudone?”