The Duke Came Home Early and Found His Fiancée Forcing the Maid to Confess to a Theft She Never Committed — But When He Opened the Ledger, He Discovered His Future Wife Was the Real Thief

 PART 6

They reached Vain Hall the following afternoon, the carriage rolling up a long avenue of elms toward a handsome but weathered stone house that spoke of a family clinging to appearances more carefully than their finances could comfortably support. Witcom rode with them, his leather case now heavy with depositions and copies bearing Magistrate Gray’s seal. Rosalind rode with them still, though she had grown quieter as the journey progressed, and Thaddius suspected the prospect of facing Clarissa again, this time with the full truth in hand, sat uneasily with her despite the strength of their evidence.

A footman, uncertain what to make of a duke’s unannounced arrival with a solicitor in tow, showed them into the drawing room. Clarissa was already there, seated near the window in traveling clothes, a trunk visible through the open door beyond, half-packed.

“Thaddius.”

She rose quickly, her composure notably more strained than it had been at Highwood, though she recovered it with visible effort.

“I had not expected you to follow me here. I am, as you can see, preparing to depart for the continent. My aunt has long invited me to stay with her in France, and I think it best, given everything.”

“Not before you have seen what I have brought,” he said quietly, and something in his tone stopped her mid-sentence.

He nodded to Witcom, who stepped forward and laid the papers upon a small table between them, one by one, with the careful, unhurried manner of a man accustomed to presenting evidence that required no embellishment to speak for itself.

“The estate ledger from Highwood,” Thaddius said, “with the leaves that were cut from it, recovered from the coat of your family’s man, Mr. Fenwick. Six bank drafts bearing my forged seal, drawn on Holloway & Sons in Bristol, paid into an account in your brother’s name. A note in your own hand and your own blue ink, instructing Fenwick to collect those funds with discretion. The confession you laid on my desk, in the same ink. Fenwick’s sworn deposition. And Miss Mallow’s private record of the household accounts, kept independently these six months, matching the true figures against every altered entry, and stamped by the magistrate at Bath as an exhibit.”

Clarissa’s eyes moved over the documents, and whatever remained of her composure finally gave way, her face draining of color as she looked from one paper to the next.

“I do not know what you imagine these prove,” she began, though her voice had lost the confident edge it had carried at Highwood.

“They prove that funds were drawn slowly from my estate over two months, disguised as ordinary merchant payments, and paid into an account bearing your brother’s name. They prove my seal was used without my knowledge to authorize drafts I never signed. And they prove that when suspicion first arose, you moved to see an innocent woman blamed for it before I had returned home even a day early enough to interfere.”

“You do not understand what drove me to it.”

Something raw had entered her voice, stripped finally of its careful polish.

“My brother’s venture failed entirely. The debts fell to my family, and I could not see us ruined. Not when our marriage was so close. Not when I believed the sums could be quietly repaid and returned to your accounts before anyone need ever know they had been touched at all.”

“And Rosalind?” Thaddius’s voice remained even, though something hardened in it now. “What had she done, that you were willing to see her accused of theft, brought before a magistrate, and ruined, rather than confess the truth yourself?”

Clarissa said nothing to that. Her eyes fell to the floor, and the silence that followed answered the question more plainly than any excuse she might have offered.

It was Witcom who finally spoke into the quiet, his tone brisk and businesslike, entirely unmoved by the emotion in the room.

“Lady Clarissa, the magistrate at Bath has found a case sufficient to be laid before the Assizes. You are entitled to answer it there, in a public court, before a jury, with Mr. Fenwick in the witness box, and with your brother’s name on the account that received the money. The law will ask who held the money before it asks who held the pen. I would advise you to consider carefully what that means for your family.” He paused. “There is an alternative. His grace is the injured party, and it lies within his power to decline to lay the matter before the court, on conditions. The return of the stolen capital in its entirety. A full legal release, forfeiting any further claim upon his grace. And a signed acknowledgement, in your own hand, that Miss Rosalind Mallow was falsely accused, and that the accusation was known to be false by the person who made it.”

Clarissa’s father, the Earl of Vain, drawn by the commotion, had appeared in the doorway during this exchange. His face was growing grayer as he listened. It was he who ultimately stepped forward and spoke the words his daughter could not bring herself to say.

“My son’s name is on that account,” he said. His voice was scarcely above a whisper. “I will not hear it read out at the Assizes. We accept the release. The funds will be returned, every sovereign of them, and the acknowledgement signed, and whatever else is required to see this closed without further scandal to either family.”

Clarissa did not look at Thaddius again as the documents were prepared and signed, her earlier composure replaced by something quieter and more defeated. Thaddius felt no particular satisfaction in it, only a tired relief that the truth had finally been laid bare where it could no longer be disputed.

“I am sorry,” Clarissa said finally, so quietly he almost did not hear it, “that it came to this.”

“So am I,” Thaddius said, and turned toward the door.

Rosalind fell into step quietly beside him, the acknowledgement bearing Clarissa’s signature folded carefully away in the small chest she held in her arms, the matter at last settled.

In the carriage, rolling back down the long avenue of elms, neither of them spoke for a long time. Witcom had taken the box seat beside Silas, tactful as a man who bills by the hour and knows when to save it. The silence between them had changed, though. It was no longer the careful silence of two people weighing one another’s testimony, but something softer, still unfamiliar. Thaddius found himself watching her hands, folded once more over the chest in her lap, and thinking that in a week of travel, of inns and counting houses and magistrates’ chambers, she had never once complained, flinched, or claimed more than her share of credit.

“What does it feel like,” he asked finally, “to be proven right?”

She considered the question seriously, in the careful way she considered everything.

“It feels like the first night in a long time,” she said at last, “that I shall sleep without rehearsing what I would say to defend myself.”

Thaddius was silent for a moment. Then, quietly: “I should like you to know what that looks like, from here on. You were never going to have to face it alone.”

Rosalind Looked At Him, And For The First Time Since The Stable Yard At Highwood, There Was No Wariness In Her Eyes At All