Read Chapter 17: A Candle in the Dark

The house had finally settled into its midnight quiet. Cordelia had listened from her chamber until the last servant’s footsteps faded, until the grandfather clock in the hall had chimed twice, until she was certain the rhythm of her husband’s breathing—separated from hers by two walls and a lifetime of secrets—had grown deep and even.

She wore her darkest dressing gown, a thing of charcoal wool that whispered against the floorboards, and carried no candle. She knew the way to his study by heart now, every creak of the third stair, every tilt of the floorboard outside the library door. It was a map of betrayal she had memorized in recent weeks, and tonight she would finally read what it contained.

The lock on the study door gave way to the hairpin she had bent earlier that evening, a skill she had learned from a lady’s maid in her youth and never once expected to need against her own husband. The door swung inward on oiled hinges.

Moonlight fell through the tall windows in silver slabs, enough to see by. His desk sat pristine, leather blotter squared, pen tray aligned. She had already searched the obvious places days ago—the shallow drawers, the letter rack, the false bottom in the third drawer that held only old receipts for coal and wine.

Tonight she went deeper.

She ran her fingers along the underside of the desk, feeling for irregularities in the wood grain. Nothing. She knelt, examining the carved legs, the joints where mahogany met mahogany. Still nothing. She was about to rise, frustration burning in her chest, when her knee brushed against the wainscoting behind the desk and it gave—a panel, not quite flush with its neighbors, its edges worn smooth by repeated touch.

Her breath caught. She pressed harder, and the panel swung inward on a concealed hinge, revealing a shallow recess.

Inside lay a small leather-bound box, unremarkable, no larger than her hand. She lifted it out with trembling fingers and carried it to the window where the moonlight was strongest.

The box opened easily. No lock. Perhaps he had thought the hiding place enough.

Within lay a miniature portrait, the sort a gentleman might carry of his beloved. Cordelia’s throat tightened as she turned it toward the light, expecting Amelia’s face—the veiled woman’s sharp beauty, the eyes that had pleaded with her in that ballroom.

But the girl in the portrait was young, no more than seven or eight. Dark hair, darker eyes, a serious set to a small mouth. She wore a simple muslin dress with a blue sash, and she was not smiling.

Cordelia’s hand went cold.

She knew that face. She had seen it in an album at Ashworth Hall, in a daguerreotype tucked among her grandmother’s private things. A child, standing stiffly beside a young woman with the Ashworth auburn hair.

Emmeline Marlowe.

No—not Emmeline as a girl. Emmeline’s daughter. The child who had been sent away, the one the Dowager never spoke of, the one who had vanished from every record as though she had never existed.

Cordelia turned the miniature over, expecting nothing, perhaps a maker’s mark or a date.

Two words stared back at her, written in a hand she knew as well as her own reflection. The sharp, slanted strokes of her grandmother’s pen, the impatient crossing of the *t*, the flourish on the final *r*.

*Avaunt the curse of a broken vow.*

The words meant nothing to her. They were old-fashioned, almost liturgical, the sort of thing one might find carved above a church door or whispered in a prayer against evil. But why would her grandmother have written such a message on the back of a portrait hidden in her husband’s study? Why would she have touched this at all?

And why did the girl’s eyes—even in paint, even in lamplight—seem to look through Cordelia, as though asking a question she could not yet hear?

She turned the miniature over again, studying the child’s face. There was something in the set of the jaw that reminded her of someone. Not Emmeline, whose features she knew only from sketches and rumor. Not her grandmother, whose sternness was a thing of age and grief.

Lord Ashworth. Her husband’s study, her husband’s hidden drawer, her husband’s secret.

She looked again, harder, and felt the air leave her lungs.

The child had his chin. His dark eyes. The same way of holding her head slightly to one side, as though weighing a question before answering it.

No. It could not be. Amelia and her husband had married only three years before Cordelia had met him. A child of eight would mean—

She closed her eyes, counting backward. He had married Amelia at twenty-three. If the child was eight in the portrait, and the portrait was painted when—whenever it was painted—then the dates could align. Amelia could have been with child before the wedding. The marriage could have been hastened. The kidnapping on their wedding night took on a different shadow entirely if—

Cordelia heard a sound behind her. The soft click of a door latch. The whisper of a footstep on the carpet.

She spun, shoving the miniature into the pocket of her dressing gown, but there was no time to close the panel, no time to hide what she had found.

Her husband stood in the doorway, a candle in his hand, still in his shirtsleeves, his hair disheveled from sleep. His face was unreadable in the flickering light, but his eyes had gone dark—not with anger, she thought. Something worse.

Cordelia. He spoke her name without inflection. What are you doing?

She lifted her chin. You know what I am doing.

The panel. He had seen it, of course. He had seen everything. His gaze traveled from the open recess, to her pocket, to her face, and something in his expression shifted. Not hardening. Cracking.

I told you the truth was dangerous.

I no longer believe you know what the truth is, she said quietly. You married me to pay a debt, and I understand that now. But there are other debts, aren’t there? Older ones. Debts your family owes to mine, or mine to yours, or both to Emmeline Marlowe, whose daughter you have hidden in your walls.

He flinched. The candle shook, sending shadows dancing across his face. Emmeline’s daughter is none of my concern.

Then why is her portrait in your hidden drawer? With my grandmother’s handwriting on the back?

Silence stretched between them. She watched him struggle, watched the lies rise to his lips and die there, one after another.

I found the portrait years ago, he said finally. Before I ever met you. It came into my possession through Amelia—she had kept it, and when she—when she was taken, it was among her things. I never knew whose child it was, not truly. Not until after I married you.

And then?

Then I recognized the hand on the back of it. The same hand that signs letters to me, instructing me in the proper management of my wife.

Cordelia’s blood turned to ice. Her grandmother had written to him. Had corresponded with him before the marriage, during it, all along. What else had the Dowager instructed him to do?

You must tell me what she knows, Cordelia said. What she did. Why she has been poisoning herself with that tincture for decades to forget it.

Your grandmother does not forget anything, he said, and there was a bitter edge to his voice that she had never heard before. She merely chooses what she wishes to remember. And she has chosen to remember that your unborn child belongs to her.

Cordelia’s hand flew to her stomach before she could stop herself. What do you mean?

Your grandmother’s gift, he said slowly. Her control over the family’s power. It does not end with her own blood. There were—conditions to our bargain, Cordelia. Conditions I agreed to when I married you. And now that I have come to know you—now that I find I cannot keep one of them—

She stepped toward him. What conditions?

He looked at her then, truly looked, and she saw something in his eyes she had never expected to see. Fear. Not for himself. For her.

The debt I owe your house is not paid with gold alone, he said. And if you go to Cornwall—if you find Amelia, if you learn the rest of it—the next debt that comes due will be one no one can pay.

Outside, a horse whinnied in the street. A hackney coach, drawing up to the door. Three sharp knocks rang through the quiet house.

Her husband’s face went pale.

That will be for me, he said.