As if in agreement, the lamp flickered, once, twice, the flame shrinking small and sullen. A draft crept along the floor and breathed across her fingers. The whispers thinned, not coaxing but cautioning, a hush settling with a start, like a palm had been pressed across a mouth.
Isabella set the box on the desk and pulled her hands away. When had she become a woman who would open a drawer and read a man’s private correspondence? Who would try to unlock his possessions and rummage through his life?
When she had come under his roof, under his power, she answered herself.
She stared at the box. Almost did she turn away. Then she set her hand upon it again.
Rhys had wanted her here at Harrowgate. He had tried to entice Papa and when that had failed, he had enticed her. He was a man with secrets, as was his right. He had no obligation to share them with her. Unless they involved her, and she felt certain they did.
Her thumb stroked a scarab at the corner of the box.
She should leave it. The right thing to do was leave it. But courtesy was a luxury, safety was not.
She could not be sure that his secrets, in the end, would not do her harm.
Her fingers disobeyed common sense and decency. She drew the chain over her head, freeing Papa’s key. It slid into the escutcheon with indecent ease.
From the corridor came the creak of a floorboard, a weight shifting just beyond the door, like a warning, one she had heeded when last she held this box in her hand. This time, she chose to ignore it, the key biting cold between her fingers.
The turn was smooth, the click soft as the lock yielded.
At the sound, the draft grew hot, the whispers bolder, clear in their disapproval. Which made her want to view the contents all the more.
Heat suffused the brass as if the box sat in full sun. She lifted the lid.
Inside lay a careful stack of letters. The paper was creamy wove, edges worn from handling, the ink gone tea-brown with age. On several of them, a second slant of cross writing ran over the first. All were written in a feminine hand, an elegant, right-leaning copperplate, with narrow ovals and capitals looped like ribbons.
Guilt surged. She closed the lid. Opened it the smallest crack. Closed it again.
But written words were witnesses. Ink told tales. Just as Rhys’s letters to Papa and Papa’s replies had offered her clarity and certainty, so, too might these letters offer her insights.
She opened the lid and the name on the topmost letter caught her eye. Rhys.
Curiosity surged. She set the box down, drew forth the top letter, and read.
* * *
Harrowgate, 4th October 1830
* * *
My dearest Rhys,
I write at once, though I scarcely know how to set down what must be told. Your aunt, our sweet Helena, is gone. A fall upon the stair. The physician says she missed her footing and, oh, my dear, I cannot bring myself to say more. Your uncle is quite undone. Your cousin, though no child and older than yourself, cannot be brought to sense. She wanders after him, calling for her mother.
We shall manage until you can be spared, though your father insists you must not be sent for, that you have examinations and obligations, and all that business men make of propriety when their hearts are breaking.
Forgive so plain a recital. If I knew how to soften it, I would.
Your most affectionate Mother
P.S. Your father bids me add that you are to attend to your books and keep to your hours. He will write in a day or two. If you have need of anything, send word to me directly.
* * *
Isabella read the woman’s grief in the lines she had written and those she had not, the kind of grief that comes when news arrives and there is nothing to be done but bear it. She pictured a boy in a narrow school chamber, a single candle guttered low, the letter open beneath his hand, reading it then as she read it now. But for him, the world had tilted under news he could not fix.
She lifted the next from the stack. The hand was the same, clear and feminine, the descenders long and steady. The wafer’s red shell had cracked and reset when someone had opened it before. She smoothed the fold and read.
