William reached for the bell. Evelyn caught his wrist. The movement surprised them both; his skin was warm beneath her fingers.
"Don't."
His gaze dropped to her hand. Evelyn released him.
"If you summon Bellamy now, he will know this disturbed us."
"It disturbed me."
"That may be precisely what he wants."
William's voice lowered. "Someone is using your private circumstances against you."
"They are hardly private. An unmarried woman dependent on family is society's favorite public property."
"Not in this house."
The words came too quickly. Silence followed. William looked away first, toward the rain-dark window.
"I mean that no guest under my roof should be treated this way."
Evelyn folded the note carefully. "Of course."
Neither sounded convinced.
They examined the vouchers until after midnight. Several matched the missing relief payments, but the trail remained incomplete. More troubling was what Evelyn did not find: no original document carried Lord Frederick's signature, only copied schedules prepared through Bellamy's office.
"Your uncle may have signed something entirely different," she said.
"And Bellamy attached his name afterward." William leaned back, exhausted. "You have just given me a reason not to despise a member of my family before breakfast. I suppose I owe you something."
"Tea would be excessive."
His quiet laugh warmed the room more effectively than the fire.
The next morning, however, the anonymous note had somehow escaped the study. By luncheon, whispers followed Evelyn through the corridor. In the drawing room, conversation stopped when she entered.
Lady Caroline stood near the mantel, one hand resting on its marble edge. "Miss Parker," she said gently, which was more dangerous than cruelty. "I hope you are well."
Evelyn removed her gloves perfectly. "Should I not be?"
Caroline's eyes flicked toward the other women. "There are unfortunate rumors."
"Rumors usually are."
"That your brother may no longer be willing to support you, and that your sudden intimacy with His Grace has been strategically timed."
The room became painfully still. Evelyn heard a log split in the grate.
"How interesting," she said. "Yesterday I was unsuitable for the front door. Today I am apparently clever enough to engineer a dukedom."
Caroline flushed. "No one said that."
"Not in those exact words."
"Evelyn."
William's voice came from the doorway. Every head turned. He entered slowly, his expression cold enough to silence the room.
"Lady Caroline, if you have something to say concerning my guest, say it to me."
Evelyn's chest tightened. This was exactly the danger: if William defended her publicly, gossip would become certainty.
She stepped between them. "No."
William looked at her.
"No. I do not require you to silence anyone for me."
"They are insulting you in my house."
"And if you crush every insult with a duke's title, what will they say tomorrow?"
His anger faltered. He understood. That made leaving harder.
Evelyn returned to her room and packed before dinner. William found her in the entrance hall, fastening her brown traveling cloak.
"You are leaving?"
"Yes."
"Because of Caroline?"
"Because whoever wrote that note wants my presence beside you to damage both of us."
"Then leaving gives them what they want."
"Staying may give them more."
His breath came slowly. "And what do you want?"
The question struck deeper because he had asked it before. Evelyn gripped her gloves.
"I want to know whether I can stand without borrowing your power."
William's face changed, but he did not stop her. "Then I will not make the choice for you."
Outside, the carriage waited beyond the front steps. Evelyn descended them alone. At the final step, she turned. William remained beneath the doorway, one hand against the frame, exactly where he had stood when he first called her name.
"Evelyn." She looked back. "When you find your answer," he said quietly, "do not mistake my waiting for pity."
Her throat tightened. She entered the carriage without trusting herself to reply.
Only after Westbridge disappeared behind the trees did she open the committee packet she had carried from Bath. A loose sheet slipped into her lap: it was a copied payment voucher she had never seen before. Across the bottom was Bellamy's authorization mark. Above it, in a clerk's hand, were three words that made Evelyn sit upright:
Paid to C. Ashford.
Evelyn read the three words again as the carriage rocked over the wet road: C. Ashford.
Lady Caroline's father was Charles Ashford, a man whose name appeared on half the respectable committees in Bath, and whose daughter had spent two days suggesting Evelyn lacked the breeding to recognize her own place.
But a name was not proof. Evelyn folded the voucher and tapped once on the carriage roof.
"Turn around."
The coachman leaned down. "Miss?"
"Not Westbridge. Take me to Mrs. Foster's cottage."
Two hours later, Evelyn sat at a scrubbed wooden table while Mrs. Foster searched a small box of household papers.
"Mr. Bellamy's clerk gave me this after my first approval," she said, producing a receipt.
Evelyn placed it beside the copied voucher: same amount, same date, different destination. Mrs. Foster's twelve pounds had been transferred through Bellamy's holding account and recorded under C. Ashford.
"Did anyone ask you to sign anything afterward?" Evelyn asked.
Mrs. Foster frowned. "A statement saying I had withdrawn my application. I refused."
"Do you still have it?"
"I kept everything."
By evening, Evelyn had visited two more families listed in the altered records. Both had retained notices: one had a letter bearing Bellamy's signature instructing his clerk to redirect unused charitable balances before the audit; the second contained something better—a receipt naming Charles Ashford as consultant to the estate improvement trust and showing payments tied directly to the redirected relief money.
Evelyn barely slept.
The next morning, she returned to Westbridge. She did not use the east path. Her boots crossed the broad gravel drive, and she climbed the front steps alone with the documents beneath her arm.
The doors opened before she reached them. William stood inside. For one suspended moment, neither spoke. His eyes moved over her face, then to the papers.