If she told her father, she feared he might throw up his hands and abandon Anne entirely. It would be his last excuse to write her off.

She pressed her lips together. “Yes, it is complicated. I will wait a few days, no more, in the hopes that together we can find more information and give them both something solid.”

He inclined his head. “I would not dream of interfering in how you manage your family.”

She narrowed her gaze at him. “I see what you are doing, trying to absolve yourself of your lies.”

“I’m not. Yes, I had my reasons. I believed them to be the right reasons to keep the truth to myself. But my intentions and the results of what I did are separate things.”

She folded her arms. It was so difficult to remain angry with him when he was being so…so reasonable. She fought to do so. “They are.”

He drew a long breath. “Let’s get dressed. We can go to the library together and I’ll show you everything I have there. Then we can decide what to do next. Together.”

She nodded as she followed him back into his chamber to retrieve her gown. But even though the conversation about his lies was over, she couldn’t shake the feeling of the betrayal. And wished that her husband had cared enough about her to tell her the truth.

Chapter 20

Jasper should have been reviewing the handful of journals he had pulled out during his search, double-checking the notations that could relate to Maitland. But he wasn’t. Instead his focus kept shifting to Thomasina.

She sat cross-legged on the big rug in the middle of the library, her head bent over one of the journals, her gaze flitting back and forth as she tried to find a truth within his brother’s many lies.

Hurt still lingered on her face. Fear. Anger. She had always been so open in her expression of her feelings. There was no artfulness to her at all, no lie. He liked that. And yet it made his betrayal all the more painful.

But here she was, sitting in his parlor, helping him. For her sister, of course, but she had been…gentle when she hadn’t had to be about Solomon and his bad acts. Jasper had been holding tight to those secrets for so long, he actually felt better now that he’d loosened his grip. Now that someone knew the truth about his brother’s actions and the humiliation that lingered around every corner. He felt less…alone than he had been in years. Decades.

Ever.

She glanced up. “There is nothing,” she said, and her disappointment was heavy in her tone.

He nodded. “That’s the same conclusion I’ve come to over the past week or so. The diaries detail my brother’s empty existence. But if Maitland is in these pages, he is hidden well. Which makes me think…”

He trailed off, because he could hardly say the horrors that lingered in his heart. The words that would take all goodness from his brother’s memory.