Senara stared with horror at the stone before her. Not just at how little she meant to Rory, though it still stung. But Ainsley . . . he wouldn’t be drawn into Rory’s scheme. Not for her.
Would he?
The silence stretched long, thin, taut. It felt like an eternity later that Ainsley gusted out a breath audible even over the rain and said, “If I help you, do you swear to stay away from her?”
Rory’s laugh slid into her ears like poison. “You have my word.”
“Is that supposed to satisfy me? We both know how much your word is worth.”
“Now, Henry, don’t go insulting me or I’ll change my mind.”
Ainsley made a low, frustrated noise. “Just tell me what you need.”
Rory chuckled. “Just feed me a bit of reliable information, that’s all. They have specific questions, you see. Questions that I can’t make up the answers to or they’ll know and cut me off.”
Silence. And then another heaving breath. “Such as?”
Senara let her eyes slide shut. No. This couldn’t be happening. Ainsley wouldn’t turn on Sheridan just to try to spare her a future with his cousin. She couldn’t possibly be that important to him.
Or maybe . . . maybe she was just an excuse, like she’d been to Rory himself. Maybe it was the money tempting him. Maybe he’d gather the information they wanted but then not turn it over until Rory cut him into the deal.
A gust of wind tore through the Gardens, sending rain sluicing off leaves and onto the path. The patter turned to a drumming, overpowering any other sound. Senara pressed closer to the wall, trying to hear Rory over the noise.
“. . . archives. They didn’t realize it until the bloke vanished, and now they can’t trace who paid him. Was it Sheridan?”
Archives? Senara sent her mind back through all the tidy lists she’d made over the last weeks, all the things the others had asked her to note. Lady Emily had mentioned a concern about the archives—not in Senara’s hearing, but Beth had relayed it later. That someone was doing all the copy work for her family. Which meant someone else knew everything they did. Sheridan had lit up at that, proposed that they ought to be the ones to leverage it—but Telford and Oliver had insisted it was an unnecessary expense and not quite aboveboard, respectively. But that didn’t mean the marquess hadn’t done it anyway.
“I have no idea,” Ainsley said evenly. Though he would. He knew everything Sheridan did. “But I’ll see what I can discover. What else?”
“They’re still a bit miffed that some bloke initially hired by Sheridan but then recruited by them was arrested last month.”
“Lorne.”
“Yeah, that sounds right. Anyway, they’re convinced Sheridan has more people out there working from different angles. They want to know who they are.”
Senara pressed her hand to the ivy-covered stone behind her. Sheridan didn’t, in fact, have anyone else working on this—Lord Telford and Oliver had both asked him point-blank if he had, within her first day home. He’d assured them both that they were now the only ones researching the questions from his end. And she couldn’t imagine him lying to his best friend.
But Ainsley said, “Of course he has. At least three that I know of. I’ll have to poke through his papers to get you their names and how to reach them.”
Three? Senara frowned. Had Sheridan lied to his best friend?
Rory chuckled. “I knew you’d come through for us, old boy. How quick can you get the information to me?”
“It shouldn’t take long. A day or so. Where are you staying?”
“Penzance. No rooms to let here, so I’ve been ferrying over. I can come back tomorrow.”
“Better make it the day after. I don’t want to have to rush and risk getting caught snooping. Sheridan is all the time in his room, hovering over his materials.”
She squinted through the rain, as if that would help her make sense of the words coming from behind the wall. Sheridan was scarcely ever in his room.
And she was an idiot.
It wasn’t his employer who Ainsley was playing for a fool—it was his cousin. He was feeding him misinformation, and no doubt he’d report back to Sheridan what he’d said and promised, so they could devise what to tell him when he came again.
Well, that made sense, then. He wasn’t sacrificing anything, much less his own standards, for her.
For a moment, something akin to disappointment flooded her. But she banished it quickly. She didn’t want Ainsley to compromise his morality for her. She’d have been disappointed in him if he had, especially when it would endanger them all.
She just wanted to mean something to him. To anyone. That was all.
“Fair enough. I’m supposed to check in with them again on Saturday, so that’ll be fine. But, Henry—make sure it’s all accurate or our families will be the ones to pay for it. These people . . . they pay well, but they don’t mess around.”
“Understood.”
Was it? Because Senara’s throat went tight at those words. What was he doing? It was bad enough that all of them here were at risk, clashing with the Scofields outright. Why in the world would Ainsley put his own family in the cross fire, too, when he wasn’t even there to protect them?
The cousins said their farewells. Senara debated whether to try to dart away, but if one of them came back through the arch, he’d see her for sure. Better to wait here and trust that the rain would force them to keep their heads down and keep them from looking all around.
It was Ainsley who came back along this path. But he did look around, and he spotted her in about half a second. Quirked a brow. Stepped off the path to her side.
She didn’t know what she meant to say to him. Not until she opened her lips and the whisper tumbled out. “Why would you risk your mam for him?”
But Ainsley only smiled. “By the time Rory delivers the information I give him to the Scofields,” he whispered in return, “my mother and his, and his sister, too, will be on their way to France, under Sheridan’s protection.”
She wasn’t sure if it was relief she felt, knowing he wasn’t betraying them, or some second sort of twisted disappointment that he really was as good as he appeared. Which cast her in such sharp contrast.
His brows drew together, and he came half a step closer. “Miss Dawe . . . what have I done? To offend you?”
And even better—here he was, clearly ready to apologize, when she was the one on whom all the blame rested. She shook her head. Stepped away from him, onto the path. “Nothing.”
“Senara.” He was at her side, pleading in his voice. As if it grieved him that she was upset. As if she mattered. “Clearly there’s something. You wouldn’t speak to me all day yesterday. Please—I only want to be a friend to you.”
That twisting, burning feeling clamped her in its teeth again. She came to a halt, looked up at him, and let it have its way with her words. “All those things your cousin said about me, the things he insinuated—they’re true.”
He blinked, but that was the only response he made.
The only one she waited around to see, anyway. In the next second, she darted away, down another path. If he tried to say anything more to her, the rain ate up his voice.