She opened the top drawer, the one for letters, bits of ribbon, and, wrapped in an old lawn handkerchief, her mother’s brooch.
It looked harmless, memory made into metal. Diamonds in a tidy pattern, the small dark stone at the center like a drop of night.
She carried it to the window. The light there was honest. She eased the clasp open and held it in her palm, back facing up. At first, it was only smooth gold and careful setting. She tilted it. The shift of light revealed more.
There it was. A diamond inside a diamond, no bigger than her smallest fingernail. Inside it, faint and exact, the outline of a raven.
Her hand closed on its own. She set the brooch on the sill, bracing herself against the frame.
If the Order marked its pieces, and this was one, how had her mother come by it? Bought quietly, as Mrs. Penstone’s cousin had done? Given knowingly? Passed in ignorance? Used to shelter a secret? If she told Gabriel now, would he hear the question behind the words and wonder not about a brooch, but about the woman who had worn it, and the daughter who kept it?
The truth cut clean.
She laid the brooch on its handkerchief and folded the cloth once over it. Not hidden. Not displayed. A promise to the past, a debt to the present.
Gabriel would listen without interruption. He wouldn’t accuse. He’d measure the shape of her fear and weigh the Order against the woman who’d raised her without breaking either. The thought steadied her and troubled her equally.
Not yet. Not until she understood what she was asking him to carry.
Night gathered outside. She lifted the brooch again, holding it as she might hold a bird too small for the world. She didn’t look at the engraving. She didn’t need to. It was already fixed in her mind.
“I’ll tell you,” she said into the quiet, “when I know whether I’m asking you to doubt my mother, or me.”
She wrapped it, slid it back into the drawer, and closed it to the stop. Her hand lingered at the knob.
She blew out the candle by the window and let the harbor’s pale light take its place against the glass, a small silver promise that morning would come and with it, another chance to be brave.
Chapter Nineteen
Morning came quickand clean. Leticia woke with the shape of a raven still sharp behind her eyes and the weight of a brooch she had already put away. She dressed with steady hands, tied her bonnet, and checked herself in the glass as if checking a stitch. Plain enough to pass in a crowd. Ready.
In the hall, Lady Eastbury paused with a basket of notes and a smile that knew more than it asked. “You will not keep the town waiting, I see.”
“Only the important parts,” Leticia said.
“Take my carriage. Cotton squabs are better than aching feet.” Her aunt kissed her cheek and pressed a small paper packet into her hand. “Lemon pastilles. Do not offer them to Colonel Barrington. He cannot be trusted with sweets.”
Leticia laughed and tucked the packet away. The sound eased the tightness under her ribs.
Gabriel arrived within the hour. His hat was in his hand, and there was that careful look he wore when he meant to be both thorough and kind. They exchanged good mornings and the kind of glance that said the rest could wait until they were moving.
He hesitated on the steps. “I have word from Barrington.”
“Now?”
He held it so she could read along with him. The hand was brisk. The message was not long.
A plain brown gown and a brown wig were found in a cabinet in theretiring room. Left in haste. The porter swears the door was locked earlier. I will expect you both.
The ground settled beneath her. “So, she planned for the disguise and planned to shed it.”
“She also planned a key,” Gabriel said. “Or had a helper.”
They did not say Denholm. They did not say anyone. They climbed in and let the morning take them down High Street while the town opened its doors around them.
Barrington received them in his study with a cheerful complaint about the lack of decent coffee and the abundance of decent muffins in his house. Mrs. Bainbridge had sent the latter. He made a show of offering one and ate it himself, which Leticia suspected was the result he wanted from the start.
Felix Townsend stood at the mantel with a small stack of papers and the look of a man who had run since dawn and meant to keep running. He bowed. “Lady Salisbury. Lord Ashcombe.”
