At last, he knelt and lifted the lid.
Mary’s belongings lay inside in careful order. Mrs. Turner’s doing, no doubt. He found a folded grey gown, a shawl mended neatly at one corner, two caps, a blue ribbon, faded nearly white, a small bundle of letters tied with thread, which were all ordinary—just notes from a cousin, a receipt, a scrap of verse copied in an uncertain hand.
Andrew examined each item with care and found nothing. There was no confession, no name and no proof.
He searched beneath the lining, inside the sleeves of gowns, between folded linens, and found nothing but the plain remains of a woman who had owned very little and lost even that.
Then, at the bottom of the chest, he found a book and took it out. It was a worn little volume of poetry, with the corners softened and several pages dog-eared. He opened it without expectation. The spine cracked faintly.
A letter slipped out and fell to the floor. Andrew went still. For a moment, he did not reach for it. The paper lay face down upon the boards, folded once, sealed no longer but still markedfaintly where wax had been broken. When he lifted it, he saw the impression.
A raven.
It wasn’t cleanly preserved, but it was clear enough.
Ravenshaw.
His pulse slowed until it seemed each beat came with effort. The letter was addressed in a firm masculine hand.
Miss Mary Collins.
Andrew unfolded it. The words within were brief.
Mary,
You will be silent.If you have any regard for the child you carry, you will not speak my name to Sinclair, to his servants, or to any other living soul. Do not mistake his charity for power. He cannot protect what he does not understand.
If you force my hand, the child will not live long enough to trouble either of us.
Remain where you are. Say nothing. Destroy this.
R.
The room seemed to empty of air. For several seconds, he could hear only the faint rasp of paper beneath his fingers and the distant caw of rooks beyond the orchard. Sunlight lay thin and cold across the floorboards. Dust moved in it like ash.
There was no room left for doubt. The father had blood, rank, and a wife who could never know.
A married viscount. Daniel Carrington, the Viscount of Ravenshaw.
Andrew’s hand closed slowly around the letter, not crushing it, though the desire to do so passed through him with violent force. Mary had kept this hidden in a book, perhaps too frightened to destroy it, perhaps hoping someone would one day find it if she did not live. She had been right to be afraid. She had not been foolish, nor weak, nor needlessly secretive. She had been threatened. And Andrew, in keeping her secret, had allowed another lie to take root around Frances.
He rose.
The old blue room, silent since Mary’s death, seemed suddenly full of her fear. He felt it in the folded gowns, the faded ribbon, the little book left behind. He felt it in the words on the page, in the cold certainty that the child sleeping downstairs had been marked for danger before she had even drawn breath.
No more.
He would not expose the baby to gossip if he could prevent it. He would not throw Mary’s name to the wolves of society. But Ravenshaw would answer for this. The man had hidden behind his wife, behind Andrew’s silence, behind the vulnerability of a dead woman and an infant no one could defend.
Andrew folded the letter carefully and placed it inside his coat. Then, he went to the window and looked out across the estate, toward the long road that led back to London.
Frances deserved the truth. And now, at last, he had proof enough to give it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Andrew was shown into Lord Ravenshaw’s drawing room at three o’clock precisely.
The butler who admitted him was a solemn man with powdered hair and the wary eyes of a servant accustomed to the unpleasant business of pretending not to know his master’s sins. He took Andrew’s card, bowed with great correctness, and led him through a hall arranged with all the polished elegance of a house determined to appear respectable.
