For Your Arms Only by Linden, Caroline (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

at the book in her hand again. There was no mistaking the anguish in his face. “I know you love your father, and it does you great credit. But that book will only lead to heartache. Trust me, Cressida.”

“You don’t want to see him again, do you?” she said in blank amazement.

After a long moment of silence, Tom sighed. “No.”

“Why?” She was shocked. “You’ve been with him for so long! You might have left us at any time. We cannot pay you for the work you do, and—”

“I don’t want money,” he snapped. “Not your money, at any rate. It’s not that. It’s just that…Well, have you not noticed that things run smoother when the sergeant’s not around?”

Cressida pressed one hand to her forehead and paced away. “I know. I know, Tom! But what can I do? He’s my father.” She chastised herself daily with those words. If not for the lack of money, her wicked, selfish mind thought, they would get on quite fine without Papa. There would be no quarrels over silly things. Callie had completely lost the cowed expression she’d come to wear in Papa’s presence. There was peace in the household, and Cressida couldn’t deny, to herself, that it was nicer than the boisterous strife Papa spawned wherever he went.

“I know.” Tom came up behind her. “You’re doing a fine job keeping things together, but perhaps we could get on better if we stop waiting for him to return and go on as if he might, in fact, never come home.”

“You think he’s left for good this time,” she replied in a flat tone.

“He might have done, yes.”

“You’re wrong.” She opened her eyes and looked out, down the winding drive to the road. “He didn’t take every last penny in the house. Granny still has her locket and earrings, and if he meant to abandon us, he would have taken them.”

Tom’s hand touched her arm, then fell away. “Perhaps it was a sudden decision.”

“When he’d had a promising interview for a position he wanted?” She shook her head. The road was empty. Major Hayes was long gone, and so, still, was Papa. “He meant to come back. I know it, Tom. And therefore, since he hasn’t, it’s likely something has happened to him.”

“Aye,” he agreed on a sigh. “I suppose it is. But that book—” He frowned at the journal she had tucked under one arm. “That book won’t bring you peace. Take my advice and put it back where you found it.”

As his footsteps echoed and faded away, Cressida continued to stare out at the deserted road. There was no help from that direction, as usual; not yet, anyway. The journal was important. She was sure of it. But unfortunately, she was just as sure that Tom was keeping something from her.

Chapter 12

It was, as Alec had expected, a tedious job. For two days he painstakingly matched bills to the ledger items, shaking his head from time to time at the way Turner spent money. No humble soldier’s life for this fellow, with receipts for fine handkerchiefs, china, and wines. Turner bought like a man with a healthy income and no worries about the morrow. The only thing missing from the ledger was proof of his income. Alec added up almost three hundred pounds’ worth of outstanding debt, but several times that amount had gone out over the last three years. Where was Turner getting money?

He turned his attention to the entries for money received. They were far fewer than the entries for payments made, but after a while Alec thought he had them sorted out pretty well. Turner collected a modest investment income on behalf of his widowed daughter, as well as his army pension and a small annuity of his mother’s. In the last two years there were frequent but not regular payments from “W. Pren.,” with no other description except the word “Ludgate” written in tiny script under the last of those entries.

Even added together, all this income didn’t balance the expenditures, but he had to start somewhere. It took only a little effort to discover that a printer named Willard Prenner operated out of a small shop in London off Ludgate Hill. Alec had a guess why a London print shop might be paying Turner, but when he told Miss Turner he was going to London to see Prenner, he didn’t tell her what it was.

“I shall come with you,” she said at once.

“You shouldn’t trouble yourself. I expect it will be a rather dull trip.”

“But my father hasn’t been seen since he went to London. What if we should discover something that would lead right to him?” She moved to the edge of her seat, her golden eyes alight with determination and eagerness.

“It seems unlikely,” Alec said, again keeping his thoughts to himself. He couldn’t shake the growing feeling that George Turner had disappeared for reasons that might be best left unknown. The debts, the inexplicable income, the odd letters seeking plum positions…they all added up to a man not quite as honorable and unassuming as his family obviously thought him. Miss Turner no doubt pictured them rescuing her father from unjust imprisonment or a sick house; Alec was beginning to suspect they would find Turner, if they found him at all, holed up in a pub with a new name and a sad tale to win him some flush new friends. Alec had no patience for that sort of man, and thought his family might even be better off without him. But he had been charged by Stafford to find the man, and find him he would, if at all possible. And if he could find Turner without a witness, Alec wouldn’t hesitate to remind the man, forcefully, of his familial obligations.

“But it might. I want to come with you.”

Not for the first time, Alec wished he could suppress his interest