Read Chapter 12: A Trap in the Study

The house had finally settled. Below Eleanor’s window, the last footman’s lamp had vanished into the servants’ wing a half hour past, and the grand old Beaumont mansion had taken on that particular silence of a building holding its breath. She counted her own heartbeats against the ticking of the mantel clock—sixty, then ninety—before she slipped from her bed and pulled the dark wool dressing gown over her nightdress.

Isabelle’s letter had spoken of “the reckoning in the earl’s own hand.” A ledger, she’d written. Not the one the solicitors kept. His.

Eleanor had mapped the study’s location from the garden side that afternoon, noting which windows faced the square and which faced the mews. The corridor on the second floor ran past the earl’s private chambers to a smaller door at the end—oak, unremarkable, fitted with a brass lock that looked older than the house itself. She’d watched Lady Margaret’s maid enter that door with a coal scuttle that morning, which meant either the lock was rarely engaged, or the maid carried a key among her ring.

Eleanor had lifted that ring from the maid’s apron during the afternoon tea service. It had been almost too easy. The girl had been so flustered by the spilled cream that she hadn’t noticed a single, practiced hand at her waist.

The lock turned with a soft click that felt louder than a cannon shot. Eleanor eased the door open and slipped inside, closing it behind her before daring to breathe.

The study was larger than she’d expected, lined with bookshelves that reached toward a plaster ceiling painted with faded cherubs. A massive desk dominated the center of the room, its surface arranged with the precision of a man who feared disorder. She moved toward it, her bare feet silent on the thick carpet, and began with the top drawers.

Letters. Receipts. A silver inkstand. Nothing that resembled a private ledger.

The bottom drawers yielded the same result. She ran her fingers along the desk’s underside, feeling for a hidden latch, then checked the bookshelves for volumes that might swing open on a hinge. Nothing.

Isabelle’s words circled her mind: *where the roses are not planted.*

Not here, then. The study held no roses—painted or otherwise. But this room would contain the man’s secrets nonetheless. Eleanor turned in a slow circle, cataloging every surface. The fireplace. The decanters on the sideboard. The portrait above the mantel.

It was the portrait that stopped her.

She’d seen it from the doorway, had registered it as another ancestor in a long line of powdered Beaumonts. But now, in the weak moonlight filtering through the tall windows, she recognized the woman’s face. The same dark hair. The same slight downturn at the corner of the mouth. The emerald necklace at her throat caught the light, throwing a green glint across the darkened room.

Isabelle.

Not the portrait Lady Margaret had shown her in the gallery—that had been a formal wedding portrait, stiff and posed. This one was different. Intimate. The earl had painted her himself, or commissioned someone who had known her well enough to capture the private cast of her features. The way she looked at the viewer was almost accusatory.

Eleanor stepped closer, drawn by something she couldn’t name. The necklace in the painting was the same one now clasped around her own throat—identical in every particular, down to the largest emerald’s unusual hexagonal cut.

But that was impossible. Her father had given her this necklace. He’d claimed it had been her grandmother’s.

Behind her, the door opened.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Eleanor’s blood turned to ice. She did not spin, did not bolt—that would confirm everything. Instead, she let her shoulders drop, let her hand fall to her side, and turned slowly to face Lord Ashworth with what she hoped was the expression of a startled, slightly embarrassed girl.

He stood in the doorway, a candle in one hand, wearing a burgundy silk dressing gown over his shirt and trousers. His face was unreadable in the flickering light.

“My lord,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest. “I couldn’t sleep. I saw the light beneath the door and thought—I thought perhaps I might find a book.”

“You thought you might find a book,” he repeated. The words were flat. “In my private study. At two in the morning.”

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have intruded.” She gestured vaguely at the shelves. “I’m an insomniac, and I’ve read everything in the library downstairs. I remembered seeing this room from the garden and wondered if—if you might have something by Mr. Hardy.”

The earl did not move from the doorway. He stood there, filling it entirely, and Eleanor understood with a visceral clarity that she would not be leaving this room unless he allowed it.

“Hardy,” he said. The candle flame threw sharp shadows across his face, carving hollows beneath his cheekbones. “You struck me as more of a Brontë reader. All those wild moorlands and inconvenient passions.”

“I enjoy both.”

“I’m sure you do.” He stepped into the room, and Eleanor fought the urge to retreat. His gaze swept the study, cataloging—she could see him doing it—every displaced object, every drawer left marginally ajar. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I was looking for a book, my lord.”

“Were you.” It was not a question. He set the candle down on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. “I’ve buried two wives, Miss Whitmore. I know the look of a woman who is searching for something she shouldn’t. I know the sound of footsteps that don’t belong in a corridor at night. And I know,” he said, his voice dropping, “that the last woman who stood in this room uninvited came to a very bad end indeed.”

Eleanor’s throat tightened. She could feel the necklace cold against her skin, could feel Isabelle’s painted eyes on her back.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she managed.

“Don’t you.” He smiled then, and it did not reach his eyes. “Allow me to offer a piece of advice, since we are to be married. Every rose has its thorns, Miss Whitmore. And this house—this family—has more than most.” He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the brandy on his breath. “I would hate for you to prick yourself.”

The menace in his voice was unmistakable. Eleanor stood frozen, her heart hammering against her ribs, acutely aware that she was alone with a man she now believed had murdered his first wife. That he knew she had been searching. That he was watching her with the same careful attention he had once fixed on Isabelle.

“Return to your room,” he said softly. “And do not let me find you here again.”

He did not ask if she understood. He did not need to.

Eleanor crossed the threshold on legs that barely held her, feeling his gaze on her back until she reached the safety of her own door. She closed it, leaned against it, and pressed both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.

The necklace burned against her throat.

Everything she had suspected was true.

And the earl knew she suspected it.