The name landed in the silent room like a stone in still water.
Sterling's smile held, but the color drained beneath his florid cheeks. "A sad business, that," he said carefully. "A great house brought low by its own dishonesty. I confess I never thought to hear the name spoken again in polite company."
"Nor did you wish to," Arthur said. He drew the ledger from beneath his arm and held it where the gathered company could see. "This is Lord Crestwood's own account book, written in his own hand in the months before his ruin. He kept a record, Sterling: the true accounts of his estate, and a second column tracking monies drawn from his coffers in secret, against his seal, without his knowing."
Sterling's glass trembled just slightly in his hand.
"He suspected the theft for the better part of a year," Arthur went on, his voice carrying clear to every corner of the hall. "And before he died, he set down the name of the man he believed had taken it: the man who diverted his fortune through a false account, forged his seal, and then laid the blame for the missing money upon Crestwood himself, so that when the house fell, that same man might purchase its estates and lands for a song, and grow rich upon the ruin." He opened the ledger to the marked page and read the name aloud: "Lord Sterling."
A great gasp went around the room. Every eye turned upon the florid man by the fire, who stood now with his ruddy color gone gray, his easy smile collapsed into something cornered and small.
"This... this is absurd!" Sterling sputtered. "The ravings of a dishonest man, scribbled to excuse his own crimes! You would take the word of a convicted fraud over a peer of standing?!"
"I would take the word of figures," Arthur said. "These accounts have been examined by three lords of unimpeachable reputation, and by the bankers who held the Holloway account through which the money passed. The dates match. The sums match. The forged entries against the Crestwood seal have been compared against the genuine, and the difference of hand is plain to any eye."
He closed the book.
"You did not merely profit from an innocent man's fall, Sterling. You engineered it. Stole a fortune, and then you bought a fortune more from the wreckage you made."