Read Chapter 21: The Unlikely Ally

The coach lurched over a pothole, and Clara bit her tongue against a curse. Outside, the grey dawn light was bleeding through the curtains of the cheap hackney Julian had procured after they'd abandoned their own horses two miles outside London. The warehouse stink still clung to her clothes—salt, rot, and fear.

"We cannot go to Whitehall," she said, more to break the silence than anything. "Not with Eastleigh's people watching the usual routes."

Julian sat across from her, his cravat undone, his jaw tight. "Then we go to the one man who knows the military records better than any clerk."

"Who?"

"Colonel Ashworth." He met her eyes. "He is the one who wrote to us about Umbridge's land claims in the first place. He lives in a cottage outside Richmond. Out of the way."

Clara's stomach tightened. "And if he is in Eastleigh's pocket?"

"Then we are no worse off than we were in that warehouse." Julian's voice was flat. "But I do not think he is. He was father's friend. He has been writing to the family since before I inherited the guardianship."

She wanted to argue. Every instinct screamed that trusting another man with her family's secrets had brought them to this pass. But the alternative was wandering the streets until Umbridge's men found them, and the memory of that damp warehouse wall crumbling under her fingers was still too fresh.

"Very well."

The cottage was a modest brick affair, ivy-choked and leaning slightly to one side as if the weight of its owner's years had bent it. Colonel Ashworth answered the door himself, in shirtsleeves and an old regimental waistcoat, a pipe going cold in his hand.

"Ashworth." He blinked at them, then at the mud on their boots and the shadows under their eyes. "Good Lord. You look like you've been to war."

"Close enough," Julian said. "May we come in?"

Inside, the colonel poured brandy with a trembling hand and listened without interruption as Julian laid out the shape of it—the cipher, the map, the sapphire, the copper vein, Umbridge's warehouse ambush. When Julian finished, Ashworth set down his glass and stared at the hearth for a long moment.

"I owe you both an apology," he said at last.

Clara's hand tightened around her cup. "For what?"

The old soldier's face crumpled into something like shame. "I came to London to hide a scandal of my own. My nephew—the one I sent to Cornwall—he ran up debts in my name. I have been selling off every scrap I own to cover them." He rubbed his eyes. "I wrote to you about Umbridge's land claims hoping you would investigate and pay me for my trouble. I did not tell you the whole of it because I was ashamed."

Julian's jaw was stone, but Clara found herself leaning forward. "And now?"

"Now I see the shape of the beast you are fighting, and it is a shape I know." Ashworth reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a battered snuff box, which he did not open but turned over and over in his weathered fingers. "Umbridge served under your father, Lady Clara. In the Peninsula."

Clara's breath caught. "He never spoke of him."

"No. He would not have." Ashworth set down the box. "I was there when it happened. We were holding a supply route outside Badajoz. Umbridge was a quartermaster then—a good one, sharp with numbers, but greedy. He had been skimming from the commissary for months. Your father discovered it. He did not court-martial him—he was young, and your father was merciful—but he cashiered him, sent him home in disgrace."

"Disgrace," Julian repeated slowly. "That would be enough to curdle a man's soul for thirty years."

"It curdled worse than that. Your father also wrote to the man's father—a baronet in Shropshire—and told him the truth of it. The old man disinherited Umbridge on the spot. Left everything to a cousin." Ashworth's eyes were dark. "Umbridge has spent his whole life since trying to claw back what he believes your father took from him."

Clara felt the answer form in her chest like a stone. "He is not trying to buy the estate. He is trying to take back a life he believes my father stole."

"Exactly." Ashworth nodded. "And he will not stop until he has it, or until he is dead. The copper is merely the instrument. The revenge is the purpose."

Julian was pacing now, a caged animal in the small room. "Then we need to expose him for what he is. If the War Office knew he was a cashiered quartermaster dabbling in fraudulent land claims—"

"They would not care. It is a peacetime matter now." Ashworth shook his head. "What you need is proof of his current schemes. Something that ties him directly to the coercion of your family."

"He took the cipher and the map," Clara said. "But those only point to the vault. The sapphire—he does not have it. None of us know where it is."

"Then he has a problem," Ashworth said slowly. "Because according to the papers I saw before I left Cornwall, Umbridge has borrowed heavily against the value of that sapphire. He used it as collateral for loans to fund his own estate improvements. If he cannot produce it, his creditors will tear him apart."

Clara exchanged a glance with Julian. This was new.

"Who holds those papers?" Julian asked.

"A lawyer in Exeter. Umbridge's own man, ironically. He thinks I am merely a curious old soldier." Ashworth's eyes gleamed with something like mischief. "I paid him a visit before I came to London. Claimed I was thinking of purchasing a property Umbridge was selling. He showed me the debt schedule."

"Can you get us those documents?" Clara asked.

"I can get you to the man who holds them." Ashworth stood, suddenly brisk, the old soldier surfacing through the shame. "But you must be careful. Umbridge will have watchers on every road out of London by now. He knows you escaped the warehouse."

"He thinks we are foolish children," Julian said quietly. "He believes we will run to the authorities and be dismissed."

"Then let him think that." Ashworth crossed to a small writing desk in the corner and pulled out a sheet of paper. "I will give you a letter of introduction. The lawyer's name is Pemberton. He owes me a favour from the war—I saved his son's life at Salamanca. He will see you."

Clara took the letter when he offered it, her fingers brushing the rough paper. She looked at Ashworth—at the lines of old shame on his face, at the way his hands still trembled slightly. He had lied to them, manipulated them, set them on this path for his own gain. But he had also risked everything to help them now.

"Why?" she asked. "Why risk Umbridge's wrath? He could destroy you."

Ashworth smiled thinly. "Because I served under your father for six years, Lady Clara. He was the best man I ever knew. And I have spent the past month dishonouring his memory with my own cowardice." He looked at her, and there was something raw in his eyes. "Let me do this one thing right."

Julian was already moving toward the door. "We need to leave before dawn breaks fully. If Eastleigh's people—"

"One more thing." Ashworth held up a hand. "The study. Your father's study at Ashworth. I remember a ledger—a marbled green cover, kept in the lower drawer of his desk. When I visited four years ago, he showed it to me. It detailed the debts Umbridge owed to various tradesmen in the region—debts he was collecting on through a series of intermediaries."

Clara frowned. "Why would father have kept that?"

"Because that is the kind of man he was. He did not report Umbridge to the authorities. He kept the evidence close, in case he ever needed to use it." Ashworth's voice dropped. "If that ledger still exists, it will prove Umbridge's scheme to buy the estate was planned years ago. It will show a pattern of coercion and deceit."

"It will not bring down a peer of the realm," Julian said. "But it might muddy his claim enough to buy us time."

"Time is all we have," Clara said quietly.

She folded the letter and tucked it into her bodice. The sedan chair in the attics still awaited—they had not been home since the warehouse, and Eastleigh's people were still thick as fleas in the corridors. But that was a problem for later.

First, they needed to get out of Richmond without being seen.

She looked at Julian. "Ready?"

He nodded once, grimly.

"Then let us go and find ourselves a lawyer."