He laid them out in neat piles on a rickety table, then settled a weight on top of each tidy stack. The room’s windows were open now, a strong breeze floating the sheers into the room as if spirits entered on the wind. The last thing he wanted was a mess that might further infuriate his old friend, now an unstable noble who could, at a whim, have him hanged.“This stack,” he placed an open palm over the top, “represents your mother’s invoices for the London house. And this,” he pointed to a much larger stack, with ragged, torn pages, many smeared with what appeared to be dirt and, in one instance, dried blood, “is the stack of...requests for payment from your activities.”“My activities?”Stoneham bit the corner of his upper lip, contemplating. “Yes, sir. The cost of bedding as many as three women at once, four to five times per week, over the course of years, along with the inn expenses and alcohol consumed at pubs and such is...” His voice trailed off and he gestured to the unseemly pile.Rolling his tongue in cheek, Wessington appeared to hold back his words, then said, “But my activities can’t have depleted the Wessington fortune!
