Page 68 of The Lady and the Footballer
If only her father hadn’t had such an interest in the club.
But then she would never have met Colin.
Lord Harcourt hovered in the drawing room doorway, where Lily sat with a book in her lap, although she wasn’t really reading it, for she was waiting to hear what had happened in the game.
“Did we win?” she asked, interrupting her father before he could even begin.
“We did,” he practically growled and she breathed a sigh of relief. “But barely. Something is off.”
He stalked into the room, sitting in the chair across from her. He sat with his fingers interlaced, leaning toward her. “I need to talk to you about this.”
“Very well,” she said, sitting up straight herself, for it seemed that, for once, her father just might be addressing her as an intelligent adult.
“You believe someone is sabotaging the team,” he stated.
“I do,” she said. “I more than believe it. I saw proof.”
“What?” he said, startled. She had wanted to tell him, but with all that had transpired with his threats to marry her off and to remove Colin from the team and his position in the mill, she had nearly forgotten about it. “Who? How?” he demanded.
“Lord Montgomery is after the mill and the club. I’m not entirely sure how he is doing it, but he is trying to bring down the club by using the players. I saw a ledger in his mill. I went there with Colin, which is when we were found together. I was trying to figure out who was after the club, and he agreed to help me.”
Her father blinked.
“I’m not sure where to start,” he finally said, his mustache twitching. “On the one hand, I should be angry that you would put yourself in such jeopardy, but at the same time, I appreciate the lengths you would go to see justice done for something that means so much to me.”
“I’m glad you understand that part of it,” she said softly.
“The team was off today,” he said. “They should have won much more easily. Yes, the Estonians made some exemplary saves, but our club wasn’t moving as the unit that they usually do.”
“You think someone was bribed?”
“I am suspicious,” he said. “Who on the team needs money?”
She chuckled wryly. “I would suspect most of them,” she said. “It is not as though any of them are titled gentlemen.”
Although more than one of them was a gentleman in the sense that meant the most.
“I know it is not Colin,” she said confidently, even as her father eyed her with suspicion.
“How can you say that?”
“I know him,” she said simply. “I have spent enough time with him to know that he is a good man, a loyal one, who would never allow his club or his teammates to come to any harm. I also doubt it is Rhys Lockwood. He was making up shortfalls in what the team was being paid out of his own pocket.”
“Shortfalls?”
“Yes, apparently the players weren’t receiving the full amounts for what they submitted,” she said. “He was making up for it himself. I can hardly see a man take money when he would have to pay the difference anyway.”
“And Lockwood is a bank manager,” her father murmured, sitting back. “He does well enough for himself.”
“What will you do now?” Lily asked.
“I will have to investigate, I suppose,” he said. “Or hire someone to do so.”
“Colin has been looking into it already,” she suggested. “Perhaps he could help you.”
Her father’s face darkened. “Are you sure I can trust him?”
“I am certain of it,” she said, and he paused, shocking Lily that her opinion might actually mean something to him.
