Cray blinked. “I expected a negotiation.”
“I daenae haggle over truth.”
Cray accepted the money and tucked it into an inner pocket, then reached beneath his coat and pulled out a slim oilskin envelope. He set it down on the table between them and slid it across with two fingers.
“You’ll want to open that somewhere private.”
“What’s in it?”
“A copy of the letter used to damn your father. And the name of the man who forged it.”
Alasdair’s throat tightened. He reached out slowly, the tips of his gloved fingers brushing the damp envelope. “Yer certain?”
“I wouldn’t risk crawling out of the gutter for anything less,” Cray said. His tone wasn’t sentimental; it was flat, matter-of-fact. “That letter passed through more hands than I care to count. I handled it myself once. I even saw the seal—faked it clean as anything. The forger’s name is in there too. He was a clerk who wanted out. Poor bastard didn’t last long.”
Alasdair stared at the envelope in his hands. It was light. It didn’t feel like it should be heavy enough to hold the weight of a ruined legacy. And yet, his pulse pounded as if he were holding a burning coal.
“What made ye come back?” he asked suddenly, glancing up.
Cray looked startled. Then he shrugged. “Men like me don’t sleep easy. Thought maybe I could pass this to someone who still had teeth. You’ve got teeth, Redmoor. And a cause. That’s a rare thing these days.”
Alasdair studied him. “Ye ken this will nae end quietly.”
“No. It won’t.” Cray’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “But at least it’ll end.”
A pause passed between them. Neither man touched the cooling coffee on the table.
Alasdair stood first. “If I never see ye again, I hope it’s because ye’re someplace safe.”
Cray didn’t answer, only gave him a short nod and turned back to the fogged window like a man already retreating into shadow.
Outside, the air smelled like smoke and wet stone. Alasdair walked briskly, keeping the envelope pressed close to his side until he reached his waiting carriage.
Inside, in the privacy of that small, velvet-lined compartment, he slit the envelope open.
There it was.
The forged letter that had condemned his father.
And the name scrawled below it, the signature of a man long dead, the clerk who had faked the missive that accused his father of treason.
Gregory Vale.A name that meant little on its own, but now, in context, was a smoking gun.
Alasdair read the letter once, then again, his eyes tracking every word, every phrase designed to mislead. The fire in his chest roared higher with each pass.
He might be tired.
He might have lost the woman he loved.
But he would not rest until Kittridge was brought down, and when that day came, perhaps, just perhaps, he could ask Elizabeth to look at him again.
Not as a husband lost to vengeance, but as a man who had finally made things right.
Chapter Thirty-One
“You have to do this,” Elizabeth told herself as she stepped down from the carriage in front of the Grisham townhouse.
Her gloved hands were in fists, and her jaw clenched as she prepared herself to see not only her sisters, but also Lady Grisham.