Page 50 of A Debt Inherited

Roark took up the ledger and turned it towards him. “Read it.”

Kerr looked down.

“George Wickham,” Roark said. “Three notes unpaid. Two promises broken. One creditor bloodied in Wych Street for pressing too closely. That is what I know. What do you know?”

“Pemberley,” Kerr said. “Ten thousand a year, by his account.”

“A Scotsman staking his sense on an English rogue. That’s a novelty.”

Kerr said quietly, “I am not staking sense.”

“What, then?”

“The chance that he knows where money may be found.”

Roark smiled thinly. “That is how every desperate man describes a wager.”

Kerr said nothing.

Roark took up the ledger and marked a line beside Wickham’s name. “A month, then. But the account does not sleep.”

“No, sir.”

“And if Wickham’s Pemberley proves air?”

Kerr met his gaze.

“Scotsman—never gamble with a man who smiles when he’s losing.”

Kerr paused. “You think him a liar?”

Roark looked past him to the door. “I think him a chain looking for a neck.”

* * *

The knocker fell, sharp as a verdict. Price appeared with a folded packet, his thumb black with soot. “From Armitage & Co., sir. The boy said it was delayed.”

Kerr broke the outer seal. Inside was a neat hand upon heavy paper and, beneath it, an oilskin-wrapped parcel. The covering note read:

Mr Kerr,

Pray forgive the lateness of this communication. It concerns a matter which should have been set before you some years past, following the death of Lord Julian Ashby, your mother’s brother. The correspondence was withheld at the instruction of your grandfather, the late 6th Earl of Ashby, who desired that the issue of succession be left undisturbed until the present heir had attained his majority.

The current Lord Ashby has since expressed no wish to reopen family accounts; nevertheless, I take it upon myself to forward the enclosed, believing it may possess some interest to you.

With every assurance of my regard, I remain, sir,

Your most obedient servant,

Henry Armitage

He set the note aside. The oilcloth parcel gave a faint rasp as he unwrapped it. The object within was not a letter but a book—a magistrate’s journal, bound in plain calf, its spine marked Stamford Assizes, 1781–1782. A faded ribbon held the leaves together.

He turned the cover. Inside, a single note in the hand of Mr Armitage:

Contained herein are the personal memoranda of Mr Matthew Beale, Esq., late magistrate of Stamford. The volume was entrusted to the late earl by Mr Beale’s executor in the belief that it bore upon the unhappy death of Lord Julian Ashby and Miss Arabella Pember. His Lordship directed that it remain sealed.

I deliver it now to you, with apologies for the delay and without comment on its contents.