My heartbeat stumbled. “This is hers,” I whispered.
Noah didn’t respond, but his silence said everything.
My pulse was hammering as I lifted the lid.
Inside was a velvet-lined compartment. Empty except for one antique box resting in the centre.
The air left my lungs in a single, punched-out breath. I opened the box.
Diamonds caught the light.
Pearls curved in familiar arcs.
Gold filigree.
Unmistakable.
“The brooch!”
All at once, the scattered clues we’d been tripping over for days began sliding into place.
Chapter Thirty
The corridor somehow felt longer on the way back. Or maybe that was just the antique box in my hands suddenly weighing about the same as a small avalanche.
I should’ve felt relieved. We’d found the brooch. The missing piece that had sent this entire wedding spiralling into chaos.
Except finding it hadn’t solved anything.
If anything, it had made everything worse.
Noah walked beside me in silence, and for once it wasn’t the comfortable kind we’d somehow slipped into lately. He looked completely thrown, like someone had reached into the middle of his life and yanked out a foundation brick.
I stayed close behind him, clutching the box and resisting the urge to say something comforting and completely useless like, ‘maybe your grandfather’s secret love child situation won’t be that bad?’
The portraits lining the corridor all seemed to share the same expression: deeply suspicious of moisturiser and happiness.
Under normal circumstances I would’ve told myself to stop being dramatic.
Unfortunately, we were carrying a stolen family heirloom and several decades’ worth of scandal between us, so the mood felt somewhat justified.
We reached Noah’s office without speaking.
The door closed behind us, and suddenly the room felt much smaller than it had earlier that morning.
Noah didn’t go to his desk. He went to the small sitting area instead, sinking into one of the armchairs like gravity had decided to triple just for him.
Finally, Noah spoke.
“Oh my God Holly—” His voice cracked.
He scrubbed his palms over his face, dragging them down slowly, as if the movement hurt.
“Why would Lady Beaumont have this?” he said quietly, looking at the brooch again. “Why would she have any of it?”
My pulse stumbled awkwardly.
Noah leaned back, staring at nothing, the light catching the tension along his jaw.
