Carmichael was quiet for a moment. Not the silence of a man who had no answer, but the silence of a man deciding how honest to be.
“A woman with no established name, no family, no position, whose history prior to Penharrow’s custody she cannot document,” he said finally, “against a peer of the realm with a signed letter from a dead man and a household accounts ledger. In Chancery.” He looked at Oliver steadily. “Her testimony would be heard. I do not want to mislead you about whether it would be believed.”
Oliver stood.
He did it because sitting still was no longer something his body was prepared to do. He moved to the window and stood there looking out at the gray London street, the carriages and the mud and the thin winter light, and he put his hands behind his back because they wanted to be fists.
Penharrow had thought of everything. Of course he had. A man who had kept a woman imprisoned for fourteen years and made it look like nothing had thought of everything. He would have had these papers prepared the moment he realized Megan was gone. Perhaps before. Perhaps he’d had the contingency ready for years, for the theoretical occasion when someone finally came looking.
“There’s no proof of Bryce’s daughter,” Oliver said, withoutturning from the window. “The real Thomas Bryce—if there was a Thomas Bryce—may never have had a daughter. It would be worth looking.”
“I have already instructed a clerk to begin enquiries.” Carmichael’s voice was precisely the same. “It will take time. Welsh parish records are not uniformly maintained, and if Bryce is a common enough name in the relevant county, the search will be extensive. We are looking for a record of a daughter’s birth that either exists and conflicts with Penharrow’s narrative or does not exist at all. Either would serve us.”
“How much time?”
“Weeks. Possibly months.”
Oliver turned. “The court moves in three to six.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Carmichael for a long moment, and Carmichael looked back at him with the expression of a man who understood the problem perfectly and had already been sitting with it for three days.
“There’s something else,” Oliver said. It was not a question.
“There is.” Carmichael turned a page in the folder. “The petition requests a court injunction preventing the ward from being removed from the jurisdiction while the matter is heard. If granted—which is likely, given that she is already demonstrably absent from her guardian’s household—it would mean that if Penharrow’s men locate her, they would have a legal basis to detain her pending resolution of the case.”
The words landed in the quiet room like stones dropped into still water.
A legal basis to detain her.
“He’s not trying to win in court,” Oliver said. “He doesn’t need to win in court. He only needs to get her back.”
Carmichael said nothing, which was answer enough.
Oliver retrieved his hat from the chair where he’d set it. His mind was already moving through what came next. The thingshe needed to do, the people he needed to speak to, the particular problem of explaining to Megan that the man who had owned her for fourteen years had found a way to reach her through the law itself.
That was the conversation he was not, even slightly, looking forward to.
“Find Bryce’s records,” he said. “As quickly as you can. And find me a Chancery barrister who owes someone a favor, or who dislikes Penharrow, or both. There must be someone.”
“I will make enquiries.”
“Good.” He moved toward the door, then stopped. “Carmichael. The injunction. When would it be granted?”
“If he applies formally.” Carmichael checked the folder. “This week, if he acts quickly. Possibly by Friday.”
Today was Tuesday.
“Then we have three days,” Oliver said, and walked out into the cold.
Dorothea was alonewhen he arrived in her apartments, which was almost worse. He’d wanted Megan not to be there. He’d counted on it during the carriage ride home, rehearsing what he needed to say to his grandmother before he said any of it to Megan, but the emptiness of the chair beside the fire landed in his chest like a stone all the same.
“She went for a walk in the garden,” Dorothea said, without looking up from her book. “The south terrace. Annie is with her. She is perfectly fine.”
“You knew I was coming.”
“I heard your boots on the stairs.” She set the book down and looked at him properly, and whatever she read in his face made her straighten almost imperceptibly in her chair. The particular sharpening of an old woman who has spent eighty-one years reading the faces of the people she loves and has become verygood at knowing when it matters. “Sit down, Oliver. You look terrible.”
