Clandestine Read Online Free

according to the sender’s perceived importance.
    Mr. Arthur Knight’s desk captured the man himself: tidy, organized, somewhat pretentious around the edges.
    She surveyed the desktop one last time.
    Nothing.
    Or rather, nothing more than she had expected.
    But there had to be something somewhere.
    Daniel had left her very few clues before disappearing. Just that vague note which led her to the town of Marfield and then on to nearby Haldon Manor, where she was now living.
    Nothing more.
    Did Daniel realize how desperately alone and penniless she found herself? How difficult he had made it for her to return home?
    She thought not.
    Being her brother’s keeper had never been easy. Keeping him out of trouble, out of debt, out of prison even.
    For his part, Daniel was adept at keeping her out of his life.
    What, precisely, was her brother up to this time? The few ideas she did have were terrifying in their scope. None of them ended well. He appeared to have landed himself in a mess of epic proportions.
    The only solution was for Daniel to return home as soon as possible, firmly sweeping this episode under a very heavy rug, maybe placing some hefty furniture on top of it for good measure. Ensuring that no whiff of this ever escaped to the world at large.
    Granted, she had to actually find Daniel before she could do any of that.
    Dismissing the desktop, Kit moved to the drawers, quietly opening one and then another, carefully lifting ledgers and sifting through papers. Documents she had no business looking at.
    You really should not be doing this. It’s not worth the risk , her Virtuous Angel whispered.
    Don’t listen to her. That was her Wicked Angel. We need to find Daniel. Any means justify the end.
    Daniel had always mocked her for turning internal moral dilemmas into silly dialogue between Virtuous Angel and Wicked Angel. Kit preferred to think of it as carefully assessing her options from all points of view.
    One of them had to.
    But then Daniel didn’t seem possessed of a Virtuous Angel, so the whole concept of ‘moral dilemma’ was a bit of an oxymoron for him.
    Kit, on the other hand . . .
    I do understand what is at stake here! Virtuous Angel was indignant. Trust me, I want to return home too. But this is the wrong way to go about finding him. Who says there will be any information in here?
    Wrong shmong. Wicked Angel shrugged. This is our only option. Just keep looking .
    Kit shivered and tugged her red shawl tighter around her shoulders. The intelligence she needed had to be in here somewhere, didn’t it? Had Daniel had any correspondence with Arthur Knight?
    Someone had to know something. She just needed to find the right information, which would (hopefully) lead her to Daniel, which would allow them to (finally) return home.
    Just sneak back into their former lives. No one the wiser.
    That was the most important part, really. No one could ever know about this little . . . episode. Because if someone, anyone , found out . . . about Daniel’s suspected behavior . . . about her time here at Haldon Manor . . .
    Kit swallowed. Hard. Her heart suddenly racing. Panic tasted metallic and cold in the back of her throat.
    Shaking her head, she tightened her jaw. Swallowed. Angled her candle and dug more thoroughly through the desk drawer.
    Arthur Knight, her employer, seemed an upstanding sort of person, unlikely to be wrapped up in the nastiness of Daniel’s life.
    But Kit had learned from hard experience that everyone had secrets. No matter how honest and upright they appeared, every person had something they didn’t wish others to know. Some hidden pain which kept them up at night, mentally picking, trying to close the nagging worry but instead only deepening the wound.
    Kit was so eternally weary of secrets. Lies and half truths and clandestine things one couldn’t fathom.
    Things Kit would never fathom, because there was one truth—and one truth only—she had learned:
    Secrets abandoned you . . . left