Read Chapter 22: The Hidden Ledger

Colonel Ashworth’s hand trembled slightly as he set down his teacup—the third he’d drained since they’d arrived at the safe house. The room was a cramped servant’s cottage on the far edge of the estate, the one place Lady Eastleigh’s spies had yet to infiltrate. Dust motes swam in the late-afternoon light slanting through warped glass.

“The ledger,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Your father kept a ledger. Bound in green leather, brass corners. He showed it to me once, years ago—the night before I resigned my commission.”

Clara leaned forward from her seat by the cold hearth. “You never mentioned this.”

“I’d forgotten until now.” The Colonel rubbed his temples. “Your father had a habit of recording everything—every transaction, every officer’s debt, every scheme he uncovered. Old habits from his intelligence work. He opened it to a page that detailed an arrangement with a quartermaster named Umbridge. Illegal sale of military supplies. Munitions diverted to civilian buyers at three times their value.”

Julian had been standing watch at the grimy window, but now he turned. “Umbridge was a quartermaster?”

“Junior, but corrupt.” The Colonel’s eyes grew distant. “Your father was going to have him court-martialed. Called it his duty—‘the rot must be cut out clean.’ But the night before the hearing, Umbridge came to him with proof of something else. Letters. About your mother.”

Clara’s breath caught. “Letters?”

“I never knew their contents. Your father burned them in front of me, swore he’d bury the matter if Umbridge resigned quietly. Umbridge agreed—signed a confession, accepted disgrace without a tribunal.” The Colonel’s jaw tightened. “But your father kept the ledger. Evidence. Insurance. And now Umbridge means to have this estate, which means he knows that ledger still exists.”

Julian crossed to the door in three strides. “And if the ledger falls into Eastleigh’s hands instead? She’s already wormed her way into your staff—how long before she or one of her men reaches your father’s study?”

“The study was cleared after my father died,” Clara said slowly. “But the desk was never moved. It’s been in the family library for four generations—too heavy to carry out, and the housekeeper refused to sell it. It’s still there.”

“Then we must assume it’s been searched already.” Julian’s voice was flat, calculating. “Eastleigh’s agents have had free run of the household since yesterday. If the ledger was in plain sight—”

“It wasn’t.” Clara rose, her skirts rustling. “My father had a hidden drawer, built into the desk’s lower moulding. You had to press a specific brass stud—the third rosette from the left on the front panel. I discovered it as a child, the summer I was forbidden from the study. He’d caught me hiding inside the desk during a game of hide-and-seek, and I felt the catch give beneath my fingers.”

“And you’ve never opened it?”

“I tried once. The lock required a key.” Her expression darkened. “My father never told me where it was kept. I assumed he’d taken it to his grave.”

The Colonel cleared his throat. “It’s in his Bible. The family Bible in the chapel—he kept a small brass key between the pages of Job. He believed the Lord tested the faithful. He showed me once, joking that his true faith lay in his inability to keep a secret from his wife.”

Clara’s heart lurched. The chapel. The compartment. They were already hunted from that ground, but the Bible had been in the vestry, untouched by Eastleigh’s men when they’d ambushed them there. But they couldn’t return—Umbridge’s men would be watching the chapel, the house, every approach.

Julian read her thought. “We won’t go through the front door.” He tapped his boot heel against the worn floorboards. “Colonel, you said you’d served with Clara’s father in the Peninsula. You’ll know the grounds—the old ways in.”

The Colonel nodded slowly. “There’s a tunnel from the icehouse to the chapel crypt. My nephew and I used it as boys, when the vicar caught us poaching.” He gave a thin smile. “The entrance was behind the wine racks. It’ll be rusted shut, but the mechanism was sound.”

“How long?”

“From here, a quarter hour on foot through the woods, then through the tunnel. The icehouse sits within the walled garden—we’ll have to cross open ground for twenty yards.”

Clara fetched her cloak from the peg. “Then we go at dusk. The household will be at supper. Eastleigh dines early, and her spies follow her habits.”

Julian caught her arm. “We don’t go together. You’ll go to the attics—remember the sedan chair? The key you were meant to search for.”

“I had forgotten,” Clara admitted, chagrined.

“We’ll need both keys—the one to the chapel Bible and the one hidden in the chair. But we also need time. If I accompany you to the attics, and the Colonel retrieves the chapel key, that divides our forces.”

The Colonel stood, shoulders squaring with a hint of his old military bearing. “I’ll take the tunnel alone. I’m known to the staff—they’ll assume I’ve come for a private prayer, as I did when Clara’s mother passed. If I’m quick, no one will think twice.”

“And if Umbridge’s men are inside the chapel?”

“I was trained to move silent.” The Colonel’s eyes held a cold light. “And to kill if needed. Though I pray it won’t come to that.”

It was settled within minutes. The cottage had a small trapdoor beneath the rush mat, leading to what had once been a smuggler’s bolt-hole. The Colonel descended first, lantern in hand, leaving Clara and Julian alone in the fading light.

Julian turned to her. “We have an hour until supper. The attics will be empty—the servants gather below stairs to eat. If we go now, through the orchard and the servants’ stairs, we can search the sedan chair before anyone’s the wiser.”

Clara hesitated. “You trust that Eastleigh hasn’t put someone in the attics?”

“The attics have nothing of value to a woman hunting a sapphire,” Julian said. “She’ll have her people watching the study, the chapel, the grounds—the obvious places. The sedan chair is a relic from the last century. No one thinks of it.”

They slipped out through the cottage’s back door, keeping to the hedgerows and the shadowed lanes. Clara’s skirts caught on brambles, but she didn’t slow. The estate sprawled before them, its familiar fields now hostile ground.

They climbed the servants’ stairs to the attics without incident, emerging into a forest of dust-sheeted furniture, old trunks, and the ghosts of generations. The sedan chair stood in the far corner, its lacquered panels faded to a mournful grey. Clara approached it with a sinking familiarity.

“I played in this as a girl,” she whispered. “I dreamed of being carried to a ball in it.”

Julian ran his fingers over the chair’s interior. “Your father would have hidden the key somewhere child-safe. Check beneath the seat cushion.”

Clara lifted the musty cushion, then the wooden slat beneath. Her fingers closed on a groove—and a small velvet pouch, tied with a rotting ribbon. Inside lay a single brass key, its teeth worn smooth with age.

“Found it.”

Julian’s smile was quick and sharp. “Now let’s hope the Colonel fared as well.”

But as they turned toward the stairs, a floorboard creaked behind them—heavy, deliberate. And a voice, silk-smooth, slithered from the shadows.

“Clever girl. But I’d hoped you’d find something better than furniture polish.”

Lady Eastleigh stepped into the light, a pistol gleaming in her gloved hand.

“Now let’s discuss what else that desk is hiding.”