Read Chapter 19: The Trophy Recovered

The rain had ceased by midnight, leaving the cobblestones slick and gleaming beneath a thin veil of cloud. Helena stood at the window of her father's study in the Ashworth townhouse, watching the street lamps gutter in the wet wind, and tried to ignore the heat of Julian's presence two feet behind her.

"You are certain he keeps it there?" she asked, not turning.

"The Eclipse Cup, yes. Eastman is a collector of trophies he did not earn. He displays them in his study like a shrine to stolen glory." Julian's voice was low, measured. "I had my man observe the house for a fortnight. He does not keep it in a case—too proud, too careless. It sits on the mantel, in plain view, as if daring someone to remember it once belonged to your father."

Helena turned. In the lamplight, Julian's face was all sharp angles and shadow. "And if we are caught?"

"Then we are caught together."

"That is not reassuring."

"It was not meant to be." He smiled, a thin, tired thing. "But I have spent the better part of my life learning how to enter rooms I was not invited into. Trust me."

She wanted to argue. Trust was the one currency she refused to spend on him. And yet she had agreed to this—dressed now in dark wool, her hair pinned tight beneath a plain bonnet, a crow's shadow in her father's own house—because the evidence Ned had given her pointed to Eastman's study containing more than stolen silver. It contained paper. Accounts. Names.

And she needed names.

The carriage let them out two streets from Eastman's residence. They walked the remaining distance in silence, Julian's hand occasionally brushing the small of her back to guide her around puddles. Each touch burned through the fabric of her coat, and she hated how her body had begun to anticipate them.

The house was a hulking Georgian mass of dark brick, its windows shuttered, its garden wall low enough to climb. Julian went first, vaulting the iron gate with a practiced economy of motion, then offered his hand. She took it—briefly, firmly—and came over beside him.

"The study is on the ground floor, corner room, facing the garden," he murmured. "His bedroom is above. The servants sleep on the top floor. If we are quiet, we will be gone before anyone knows we were here."

"And if we are not quiet?"

He did not answer. He simply moved toward the window, drew a thin metal tool from his coat, and set to work on the latch. She watched his fingers—long, steady, capable—and remembered them cupping her chin in the library, tilting her face toward his. She shoved the memory down.

The latch gave with a soft click. Julian eased the window open and swung a leg over the sill, then extended his hand to her again. She hesitated only a breath before taking it.

The study smelled of beeswax and old cigar smoke. Moonlight filtered through the curtains, catching on the glass fronts of display cases lined with cups and plates and engraved silver—all of them, Helena knew, prizes that had once adorned the mantels of other men's houses. She did not stop to examine them.

The mantel was bare.

"It is not here," she whispered.

Julian stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the empty space where the trophy should have been. "It was here. I swear it."

"Your man was mistaken, or Eastman moved it." She bit back the accusation curling on her tongue—that he had brought her here on false pretenses, that this was the game all along. But there was genuine shock in his face, a crack in his usual composure that looked remarkably like vulnerability.

"Wait." He crossed to the writing desk and pulled open the top drawer—unlocked, a man's arrogance. Inside lay a stack of correspondence. He rifled through it, his jaw tightening with each page he discarded. "He moved it to keep it safe. The bill of sale is recent." He held up a sheet, the ink fresh. "He intends to sell it. To a private collector in France."

"Then we are too late."

"No." Julian's voice was hard. "The sale is not yet complete. Eastman is waiting for the price to rise. The trophy is being kept in the vault of his banker, Templeton and Sons, until the transaction closes." He looked at her, something fierce and unreadable in his eyes. "But the bank is on the other side of the city, and we are running out of time."

Helena's mind raced. The trophy was one thing—sentiment, memory, her father's legacy. But the papers in this desk could be worth more than any cup of silver.

She began to search.

"What are you doing?" Julian asked.

"What I came to do. If the trophy is in a bank vault, we cannot reach it tonight. But Eastman keeps records. Accounts. The names of his partners." She pulled open a second drawer, then a third, her fingers skimming over ledgers and receipts. "If I am to bring him down, I need to know who else is involved. Ashcombe. Others."

Julian hesitated, then joined her, his own hands moving through the stacks with a quiet efficiency. They worked in tandem, two shadows passing objects between them, their breaths the only sound in the room.

Then her fingers closed around a bundle of letters tied with red ribbon.

The paper was old, the ink faded. She untied the ribbon and spread the first page across the desk. Her breath caught.

"What is it?" Julian asked, moving closer.

She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the signature at the bottom of the page. It was not Eastman's. It was not Ashcombe's. It was a name she knew from her father's own mouth, spoken only in whispers of grief.

The Marquess of Selwood.

Her grandfather.

"Helena." Julian's voice was soft, urgent. "What are you reading?"

She looked up. "The truth, I think." Her voice came out strangely calm. "My grandfather sold my father's debts. He was the one who began the collapse. Not Eastman. Not Ashcombe. My own blood."

Julian's face went pale. "That cannot be right."

"It is right here." She held the page toward him. "His signature. His seal. A letter to Eastman, promising to clear the Ashworth debts if Eastman agreed to—" She stopped, reading further. "If Eastman agreed to discredit my father publicly. To destroy his reputation so thoroughly that the Ashworth name would never recover."

The room seemed to tilt. She felt Julian's hand close around her arm, steadying her.

"Helena. Look at me."

She forced her gaze up. His eyes were dark, earnest, and for once she could not read a hint of calculation in them.

"Whatever this is," he said, "whatever your grandfather did—it is not your sin. It is not your legacy. You have spent every day of your life fighting to redeem a name that was stolen from you. Do not let this letter convince you otherwise."

"And if my own family is my enemy?" She heard the break in her own voice and hated it. "If the conspiracy goes deeper than Eastman? Than Ashcombe? Than you?"

He flinched at the final word, but did not release her arm. "Then you face it. You face it with the evidence you have collected, and you face it with people who believe in you." His voice dropped. "I believe in you."

She should have pulled away. She should have told him that his belief meant nothing, that he had already admitted he would choose his own interests over hers when the time came. But standing in the darkness of her enemy's study, holding proof that her own blood had betrayed her, she found she could not.

"Someone is coming."

The voice came from the doorway.

Helena spun. A servant stood in the threshold, a candle in one hand, his face slack with surprise. He was young, liveried, clearly not expecting intruders.

Julian moved before she could react. He stepped forward, placing himself directly between the servant and Helena, his hands raised in a placating gesture.

"Sir," he said, his voice smooth as oil, "I apologize for the intrusion. I am Mr. Julian Wentworth. I have business with Lord Eastman that could not wait until morning."

The servant blinked. "Mr. Wentworth? His lordship is not expecting—"

"No, he is not. And I should not have come." Julian's laugh was easy, self-deprecating. "The truth is, I have made a terrible error of judgment. I hoped to speak with him privately about a matter of a wager I lost. But I see now that this was foolish. Very foolish."

"Y-you should not be here, sir." The servant's voice was trembling, uncertain.

"You are quite right. I should not." Julian reached into his coat and produced a folded note. "Please deliver this to Lord Eastman. It explains everything. But I must ask—do not mention that I was in his study. He would be very angry with me, and I with you. A mutually assured silence, you understand."

The servant looked at the note, then at Julian, then at the shadows behind him where Helena stood frozen. But she was wearing dark wool, pressed against the bookcase, and the servant's candle did not reach her.

"I—"

Julian pressed the note into the servant's hand along with a coin that glittered in the light. "Thank you. I will see myself out."

He was moving toward the door, toward the servant, forcing the man to step aside or be bowled over. The servant stepped aside.

Julian paused at the door and looked back—not at the servant, but at Helena. His eyes found hers in the darkness.

"Wait," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Do not move."

Then he was gone, leading the servant away from the study, away from her, buying her time.

She stood in the silence of the stolen room. The letter was still in her hands. The trophy was in a bank vault. The conspiracy reached her own blood.

And the man she had sworn not to trust had just walked into the lion's mouth to protect her.