She had thought she and her husband were building a marriage and a life together. Instead she found herself on the sidelines of an impending tragedy that she didn't understand.
"Ross, do you have any idea what Mikahl is planning?" she asked, keeping her voice level so as not to disturb him.
"Don't know," he said tiredly. After a moment, he added, "Once I came into his study, and found him looking at some papers that he shoved into a concealed drawer in his desk. Maybe there's something there. Maybe not."
"I'll take a look," Sara said.
Ross was gray with fatigue, but he was not yet ready for sleep. "You won't do something foolish, will you?"
"No. I just want to understand what is happening." Sara's brow furrowed with thought. "Will you mind if I call the housekeeper to sit with you now? She said she'd relieve me if I wanted to go to bed."
Her cousin looked indignant. "Don't need anyone here."
"Well, I need someone to be here even if you don't." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Get some sleep now, my dear. Everything will be all right."
Yet even as she gave the automatic reassurance, she didn't believe it. Sara was not sure things would ever be all right again. She waited until Ross fell asleep, then rang for the housekeeper, Mrs. Adams. After she was relieved of her duty, Sara went down to the study. There were several standard types of concealed drawers, and it did not take long to locate and open the one in Mikahl's desk. Then, her face like granite, she took her husband's secret files upstairs to read.
* * *
It was about three in the morning when Peregrine quietly let himself back into his house. He stopped to look in on Ross and was surprised to see that Sara had been replaced. Presuming that meant that his friend was doing well, he moved on without disturbing Mrs. Adams, who was drowsing in a chair.
He had thought Sara would be asleep, but she was not. Instead she was curled up in a wing chair, wearing a flowing blue velvet robe and with her dark gold hair loose over her shoulders. When he entered, she laid the paper she was reading on a pile in her lap and looked up. In the soft lamplight, her face was not that of a sibyl, but the goddess Nemesis herself.
He paused in the doorway, warning alarms going off in his head, before entering the room and closing the door behind him. "I assume that Ross is improving, or you would still be with him."
"Ross is definitely better," Sara said in a steely voice. "He was able to speak quite coherently. And because of the laudanum, he told me some very interesting things." She held up the sheaf of papers. "Would you care to explain just what you are doing to Charles Weldon, and why?"
He raised his brows in mock surprise. "I see that the honorable Lady Sara has been going through my private papers. I would not have expected it of you."
"Don't try to change the subject! If my standards of honesty are declining, it is probably because of contact with you," his wife said, her voice tight. "Just what the devil have you been doing? And how many people are you injuring in the process of trying to bring Charles down?"
"I am doing nothing to Weldon that he does not deserve," Peregrine said calmly.
Sara's brown eyes flashed. "What gives you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner, Mikahl?"
"You are too civilized, Sara," he retorted. "Anything that is moral for the law is equally moral for an individual—just as a wrong act is not made right because a government commits it instead of an individual."
"I'm not interested in your sophistry! I may be too civilized, but you are an anarchist, and your private war almost got Ross killed," she said, anger rising. "If you want to see Charles Weldon pay for his crimes, why not turn the evidence you have collected over to the authorities? It looks like you have more than enough to send him to prison for the rest of his life."
"Prison would be too easy," he replied, his voice edged. "I want him to suffer. I swore that I would take away everything he valued, and that is what I have been doing."
She lifted the top sheet of paper, listing Weldon's tangible and intangible assets, along with notes on Peregrine's progress. "So I noticed. I see that I fall about the middle of the list, between social standing and barony. But you didn't have to go as far as marrying me. I should think it would have been quite enough to end the betrothal."
"Ah-h-h," he said, thinking he understood, "so that is what has upset you. You are right, breaking the betrothal would have been enough to injure Weldon. I married you because I wanted to."
He had thought that statement might mollify his wife, but he was wrong. She slapped the sheaf of papers hard against her knee. "I admit that I'm not very flattered by my position on the list, but my expectations have never been high. What appalls me is the cost that others are paying for your private war. How many people will be injured by the fact that you are driving the railway into bankruptcy?"