Page 52 of The Lady and the Footballer
The man had been exhausted.
She had seen it in his eyes and had immediately regretted calling him out at this hour of night when he had to work the following day.
At least now he could get a bit of sleep.
She, on the other hand, was used to late nights, as oftentimes, social events her family attended could go well into the evening. Of course, she had the luxury of sleeping until she pleased.
She sat in one of the hard wooden chairs and spread the ledger open beside the flickering lantern before her.
She could only hope the light would hold for a couple more hours.
Lily opened it back to the page listing the players and then began flipping through the next few sheets of paper to see if there was more information.
Was there ever.
After the initial list of players, each player had an individual page, with their name underlined and a list of items below.
They appeared to be expenses – dinners, kits, travel.
She guessed Lord Montgomery would use those expenses to frame the players, or at least the ones he couldn’t bribe. Lily knew Colin wouldn’t want to believe it, but she had often heard of players being paid to sway a game one way or the other. Even those with the best intentions would have difficulty turning down a significant sum when it could make such a difference to their families. Colin was being paid to play, and while he wasn’t being asked to go against his own team, he was still breaking the rules. What difference would it make to some of the men who was paying them and for what but to make the ball go a different way now and then?
Lily flipped back to the first page, noting that two columns were added to the end of the page next to the player names, some with check marks and some without. But what did they mean?
She saw a mark by the names of about half the players and some of them – Joey, the injured player, being one – had an X in the second column.
She had her suspicions but couldn’t be sure.
She looked over at Colin, who was snoring just slightly enough to be endearing. She needed to speak to him about this but didn’t want to wake him. Instead, she would continue studying the book, so they may not have to steal it.
But just as she lifted the page to turn it, the light fizzled out.
Leaving her in complete darkness.
Colin woke with a start, completely confused about where he was and what he was doing.
The cushions beneath him were uncomfortable, and the room was dark around him.
The only thing orienting him was the lavender floral scent hanging in the air, one he would recognize anywhere.
“Lily?” he called out.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice growing steadily closer along with muffled footsteps. “I was across the room when the light went out.”
“Needs more gas,” he muttered as he swung his feet to the floor off the sofa, recollections of the night’s events returning to him.
“I was reviewing the ledgers before I lost the light, and I think I discovered something, although I can’t be certain,” she said before the sofa dipped next to him as she sat, likely closer than she even realized. However, her eyes had probably adjusted slightly to the light by now.
“What is it?”
“My theory is that Lord Montgomery has been determining whether he can bribe players,” she said. “If he can’t, then he is sabotaging them. For example, Joey had a tick and an X beside his name. Perhaps Lord Montgomery realized Joey would be above bribery, so he took him out of the game instead.”
“But if he were approaching players, surely some of them would have said something by now.”
“Perhaps he was doing so without raising suspicion,” she said. “Your name had a tick next to it in the one column.”
“And I was never asked.”
“No. But somehow, maybe he knew that you would not accept the bribe,” she said, and he hated the question he heard in her voice.
