The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen Book 4) by V. C. Lluxe

Author:V. C. Lluxe [Lluxe, V. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Punk Rawk Books
Published: 2025-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RAE FOUND THE books were badly kept, incomplete, sloppily added to when they had been added to at all.

On nearly every page was the amount of the debt her father had incurred to Fateux, and it kept getting larger. It would be written in strong black ink, practically carved into the page, underlined and circled, a reproach.

But it annoyed her.

Yes, she was positively surrounded by men who reproached themselves.

What good was that guilt in the end if it didn’t spur them to some action to reverse what they had done? She supposed she could be sympathetic to her father, however. Perhaps she had fallen victim to this same helpless worldview. After all, for so long, until precisely the moment she had decided to leave London, she had been the same.

Just a sad, helpless leaf, blown this way and that, pitying herself and her situation, hoping that some rescue was on the horizon, some way out of the depths of the dark water where she was currently drowning.

She had said to the duchesses that she was no fool, and that she would be foolish to turn down their assistance.

But last night she had realized she didn’t want to be rescued.

Rescue meant that she was always and forever that sad, helpless victim. Rescue meant that she would always and forever rely on others to save her.

She was going to rescue herself.

It was only that, as of yet, she had no true idea how.

She knew only that she must get some idea of how bad the situation was. She must see it accurately, but not from the view of helplessness. No, instead, she must assess it all coldly and gather all the difficult facts. And then, once she knew all the things that must be addressed, she could begin to formulate a plan.

The first step was to assess the money.

She would not be a wealthy countess. She would not take blood money to lie and style herself as someone she was not. She would be herself, the ruined daughter of a hapless and destroyed knight, and she would live in that truth and make the best of it.

It was all there was, she realized.

Living a pretty lie was always just that, in the end. A lie.

The good news was that the debt was wiped out. Fateux had forgiven it when he’d taken her as payment, after all. And anyway, Fateux was dead, and so were all the debts that had been owed him.

So, that amount of money no longer mattered.

Rents were due soon.

She had to search all through the books to get accurate numbers of what they might collect. She did not wish to know what the rents should produce, after all. She instead wanted to see what would be collected, for she knew that there were tenants who might not be able to pay or who might wish to negotiate something besides coin, perhaps they might give some of their harvest or a milk cow or something of that nature.

It took

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.