My Soldier Love Ignored Me For Six Years — Then He Inherited A Dukedom And Needed My Help

Part 2

I stepped aside and let him into the cramped cottage.

He looked absurdly large in the small space, his presence crowding the room as he set the heavy, dusty books down on my desk.

I closed the door, blocking out the morning light, and ordered him to sit.

He looked like a man sitting on an executioner’s block.

I opened the first ledger without looking at him.

The numbers were a language I spoke fluently, and they served as a firewall between us.

I told him to start from the beginning and tell me what he thought was wrong.

We worked for three days in a terrifying, silent rhythm.

It was a strange, suffocating intimacy.

Brian did not talk about the war.

He did not talk about the letters.

He spoke only of columns of pence, of grain prices, and of the discrepancies that were beginning to manifest in the handwriting of the steward, Craig Miller.

Whenever the conversation drifted toward the personal, I snapped a command about a tax entry or a ledger reference.

I kept him at arm’s length quite literally by burying him in work.

On the third night, the storm had finally broken.

Brian leaned back, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, and whispered that it wasn’t just incompetence.

I tapped my pen against the page, pointing to an entry from three years ago.

I showed him how Miller had recorded the rent for a farm as twelve pounds with an additional eighteen pounds listed under uncollectible losses.

He had pocketed the eighteen pounds.

I flipped to the next ledger and showed him the sheep shearing records.

He had been underreporting the yield by twenty percent, selling the wool to a mill in Manchester and keeping the coin.

Miller wasn’t just managing the estate; he was systematically bankrupting it so the bank would foreclose.

Brian stared at me, his face pale and his eyes filled with a cold, dangerous fury.

He stood up, pacing the small room like a caged animal.

He knew that if he went to the magistrates, Miller would have the records destroyed before a complaint could even be lodged.

I watched him, feeling the cynicism I had held toward him curdle into a shared, quiet resolve.

I told him we didn’t need the law; we needed an audit.

We needed the original bills of sale from the Manchester mill, which Miller was undoubtedly hiding in the manor office.

I told Brian that Miller was arrogant and would be distracted at the harvest feast the following night.

I suggested we break into the manor office while he played the benevolent host downstairs.

Brian looked at me, his expression shifting from desperation to awe, and asked if I really wanted to break into the manor.

I shrugged, my face a mask of iron, and told him I was an accountant who just wanted the books to balance.

He smiled a rare, crooked smile that reminded me of the boy who had once promised me the world.

We waited until the fiddles were screeching downstairs before we picked the lock to the steward’s office.

I found a false panel in the massive mahogany desk and pulled out a narrow iron lockbox.

Brian wedged his hunting knife into the hasp and wrenched it downward with a violent strength, snapping the brass.

We opened the lid to find the bundles of forged receipts tied with red twine.

But as I reached in to pull the evidence out, my knuckles brushed against something soft.

Tucked neatly beneath the financial ruin of the Blackwood estate was a bundle of letters tied with a faded blue ribbon.

They were unopened.

I turned the bundle over, the candlelight catching the dates on the postmarks.

Why did Miller have them?