Page 30 of A Legacy of Lies

She crossed the room on unsteady legs and took it up. The paper felt damp, as though carried through wet grass. She broke the seal with trembling fingers.

Pay me or I speak. Your duke will learn what you are.

The words sprawled ugly across the page, blunt as a threat hissed in her ear. Her knees weakened. He had been here. Inside Hartleigh. Inside her room.

The note slipped from her grasp. She caught it before it fell, pressing it against her chest as if to hold the danger still. Then she lurched to the hearth and thrust the paper into the flames.

The fire caught greedily, curling the edges, blackening the letters stroke by stroke until nothing remained but cinders. A bitter stink rose, dirt, wax, and fear consumed together.

Her throat tightened. Tears pricked, sharp and sudden, but she swallowed them down. “I will not give him the satisfaction,” she whispered. “At least flames keep their secrets.”

Yet even as she said it, she felt the hollowness behind the words. If he could leave this, he could leave worse. If he found one door, he could find another.

The flames guttered low. Ash drifted up and scattered. Clara sank to the edge of the bed, hands gripping her skirts, her heart galloped with every imagined footfall in the corridor. The storm rattled the casement, but it was the house itself that felt unsafe now, its shadows complicit.

*

The household dispersed when the meal was done. Eleanor leaned on Edith’s arm. Percival lingered to see the lamps trimmed. Clara had fled first, steps measured, eyes lowered, and unease pressed closer than the storm outside.

Nathaniel had not let the day pass in idle speculation. Percival had walked the house with him, candle in hand, showing him every jib door in Hartleigh. One by one, the hidden latches yielded, each passage accounted for, until they stood in the corridor Nathaniel could not forget.

There is none here, my lord, Percival had. I have shown you all that exist.

Yet Nathaniel had set his palm to the wall where he remembered a seam. Chill plaster gave nothing back. He had crouched low, found the smear of mud at the skirting stone.

Then explain this.

Percival could not.

The memory stung sharper now, with Clara’s pale face at supper vivid in his mind. If the house concealed its own passages, if she concealed truths of her own, then neither Hartleigh nor his heart were safe.

The household slept. Only the storm kept vigil, muttering at the windows. Nathaniel lit a candle from the dying fire in his study and stepped into the corridor.

Every board creaked too loud, every shadow stretched longer than it should. He moved past portraits that loomed high in their gilt frames, mouths drawn tight, as though the ancestors disapproved of his trespassing. He told himself it was a fancy, yet the unease from supper clung.

He thought of the search with Percival, the panels that yielded nothing, and the smear of mud that offered no answer. The house hid its secrets as fiercely as the woman who haunted it.

The flame wavered near a drafty alcove. He steadied the candle. Hartleigh belonged to him in name, yet tonight it felt otherwise, as if he walked not as its master, but as an intruder.

Ahead, a faint sound. A door closing. Soft steps along the passage.

He quickened his pace. The light caught her, Clara, pale, sleeve tugged down, moving as though she might vanish into the wall if only she walked softly enough.

“Miss Whitmore.” His voice was quiet, steadied by effort. “You keep late hours.”

She halted, her fingers tightening in her skirts. “I… couldn’t sleep.”

Her voice betrayed her. Not with a tremble, but with its very control, the way one spoke when hiding something behind the words.

Nathaniel stepped closer. Candlelight gilded her profile, casting shadows along the hollow of her throat. Her gaze did not lift.

“I thought you valued honesty,” he said.

“I do.” Her chin lifted, but her stance remained closed, turned half away.

He hesitated, letting silence stretch between them. “Then don’t make me doubt what I’ve begun to believe about you.”

Her breath caught. The words were quieter than an accusation, heavier than a question. They pressed against the space between them.