Page 65 of A Relentless Rake

He stiffened and glanced down at the papers. Faced by the evidence piled on the floor, he let his shoulders sag, caught. “I’ve been taking commissions and not telling you,” he admitted quietly. This time, when he reached gently to take the paper from her hand, she grudgingly surrendered it. “We needed the money.”

“You never shared any proceeds from these with the school,” she challenged. “I would have known.”

“For God’s sake, Olivia! I’m a grown man, not a child with an allowance.” He shot her an angry look and bent down to put the papers back into the box. He flipped the lid over, but the mess of papers and rolls stopped it from closing. Heedlessly, he shoved it all under his bed. “I’m allowed to earn my own income.”

Anger churned inside her so strongly that it sickened her. Any money she’d ever earned had been given back to the school, to keep the doors open and the scholarship girls with a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. It had been two years since she’d bought a new dress or owned a pair of gloves or hat that wasn’t secondhand. She hadn’t spoiled herself with any kind of outing to art shows or the theatres, no treats like chocolates or perfumes…nothing.And all the while, he’d been out wasting every penny he’d earned.

All behind her back.

“Not if it puts the school at risk,” she shot back, refusing to let him cow her.

“I haven’t done anything—”

“Iknowwhat you’ve been doing.” She dug deep to find enough courage inside her to challenge him, but even then, it emerged as little more than a whisper, “I know about the Admiralty Club.”

He paled instantly. Then he forced a stiff laugh. “Of course you know.Thatcommission I told you about. You helped me with it.”

He turned his back to her and crossed to the armoire, shrugging out of his jacket as he went.

No.She wouldn’t allow him to ignore her or treat her like a simpleton. Not any longer. “Not the renovations from two years ago.” She squared her shoulders in preparation for her second fight of the night. “The recent plans for the club.”

He froze, his hand stilling on his cuffs as he unbuttoned them.

“The ones you reworked on a copy of the old renovation plans, most likely from that box beneath your bed.” Her voice was so full of pain and betrayal that it was barely more than a rasp. “The ones you filled with equations on exactly where the walls were at their weakest.”

He slowly turned toward her and asked carefully, “How do you know about those?”

As she stared at him, the truth washed over her like ice water and froze the blood in her veins.Dear God… He’d just confirmed her darkest suspicions, and the fresh stab of betrayal was heartrending.

“What you did,” she whispered, horrified, “those plans…the explosion…peopledied!”

He closed the distance between them and grabbed her upper arms. Panic darkened his face. “Don’t you say a word—don’t youdaresay one word,” he warned. “I did what I had to do.”

“You helped murder those people!” She tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong.

“No!” His face twisted like a monster’s. “I never planted the bombs. I had nothing to do with that.”

She winced as his hands tightened around her arms. “You gave them information they used to—”

“I didn’t know what they were planning,” he insisted. “I thought they were going to buy the place and renovate it or tear it down. All they asked of me was to work some equations, to calculate the weakest points in the club’s structure. That’s what I did. Numbers. I gave themnumbers. That’s all.”

She was going to be sick! He’d taken mathematics, something beautiful and elegant, something nearly sublime in its mix of creativity and practicality, and he’d weaponized it. Creation had become destruction at his hands.

“Who?” she pressed. “Tell me their names and—”

He shook her hard to silence her. “You areneverto ask me about them, understand?”

She cried out. The sharp sound cut through his panic and startled him into loosening his hold.

Regret flashed over his face, but it didn’t replace his fear. She wasn’t seeing her brother—she was staring at a trapped animal.

“Why, Henry?” she choked out. “Why would you do something like that?”

“Money,” he admitted, stepping back and raking his fingers through his hair. “To save the school, to give us a livable allowance, to stop the creditors from beating down the front door and casting us into the street. We’re in debt, Olivia. The kind that will put both of us into debtors’ prison.” He bit back a curse. “The school can’t afford to remain open much longer.”

Lies.All lies!She knew it in her bones… But so many lies and deceptions swirled around her now that she couldn’t fight her way through their tangled net to the truth.

“That can’t be,” she corrected. “I’ve seen the accounts, met with the bankers—”