Read Chapter 4: A House of Secrets

The carriage crested the final rise, and Clara pressed her gloved fingers to the window glass. There it was—Ashworth Park. Grey stone, ivy-strangled, its eastern turret leaning at an angle that made her stomach drop. The gardens she remembered as a riot of roses were now a brown tangle of weeds and dead stems.

Julian sat opposite her, his hat balanced on one knee, his scarred hand resting gloved upon it. He said nothing, which she was beginning to understand was his way of allowing her space. Space to grieve, space to hope, space to lie to herself about what she would find.

He did not offer false comfort, and for that she was grateful.

The carriage rattled down the drive, and Clara saw the state of the place with the sharp clarity of a woman seeing her own reflection in a cracked mirror. Two ground-floor windows were boarded. The front steps had buckled. A section of the roofline sagged like a tired shoulder.

"The roof," she murmured. "It was never meant to be neglected. My father wrote that he was keeping it up, but he was always too proud to admit—"

"Let's go inside before we catalogue the ruin."

She nodded. Pride, she was learning, wore many coats. Her father's wore one of fine wool and blind optimism.

The front door swung open before they reached it. Mrs. Hoyle, the housekeeper, stood with flour on her apron and tears already streaming down her cheeks.

"My lady. Oh, my lady. We thought—we didn't know if you'd ever—" The woman's voice broke, and Clara stepped forward and took her hands.

"You thought I would abandon the house. The way I abandoned all of you."

"You didn't abandon us, my lady. You had no choice."

Clara forced a smile. "We have a long day ahead. This is Mr. Sterling—my husband."

The housekeeper blinked, taking in the severe cut of Julian's coat, his unadorned cravat, the way his eyes moved past her to survey the dim hallway beyond. "Your husband. Yes. Of course. I'll—there's tea, but the kitchen hearth, it's been stubborn, and Cook left last month, and—"

"Tea can wait," Julian said, and Clara felt a flash of annoyance at his tone. He was sweetening months of neglect with one sharp sentence. "Show us the house."

Mrs. Hoyle led them through the downstairs. The ballroom smelled of damp and dust. A chandelier hung dark and heavy with cobwebs. The wallpaper in the morning room had peeled in long strips, like birch bark. In the library, one entire shelf had collapsed, spilling its books across the floor in a tumble of broken spines.

Clara walked through all of it with her spine very straight. She noted each scar on the house's face with the forced calm of a battlefield surgeon. This could be mended. This could be painted over. This could be sold.

This could not be saved at all, if she was not honest about the ledger of things the house had lost.

"I should like to see my mother's sitting room," she said, when Mrs. Hoyle paused at the foot of the stairs.

The housekeeper's face flickered. "The blue room, my lady? It hasn't been touched since—since her passing."

"I know." Clara began to climb the stairs, and Julian followed without asking permission.

The door to the blue room was closed, and when Clara turned the handle, it gave with a groan of resisted wood. The room was dim, curtains drawn. Her mother's writing desk, her neat row of volumes, her little upholstered chair by the window—all stood as they had for six years, gathering dust like a slow snowfall.

Against the far wall sat the cabinet. Rosewood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, its doors carved with trailing honeysuckle. Clara's mother had kept her few pieces of jewelry there, and the precious ones.

Clara crossed to the cabinet and tugged at the doors. They didn't open.

"Locked," she said. "Do you have the key, Mrs. Hoyle?"

The housekeeper shook her head, twisting her apron. "His lordship—your father, I mean—he took the key. Two years ago, it was. Said he'd lost it. We never saw him open it after that."

Julian moved to the cabinet, studying the doors, the brass lock plate. He pulled a small tool from his waistcoat, and Clara watched, fascinated despite herself, as he bent, worked the lock with a quiet click, and pulled.

The left door swung open. The right door dragged.

Because something was jammed beneath it. A fold of paper, wedged into the gap where the door had been forced shut over it.

Julian pulled it free. Clara reached for the interior of the cabinet.

The shelves were empty.

Every one.

Her mother's pearls. The diamond earrings from her grandmother. The cameo brooch that had been in the family for three generations. And in the centre shelf, on a velvet stand the size of a small fist, cupped like a waiting palm for something long gone—

The stand was empty.

"The Ashworth Sapphire," Clara whispered.

Her mother had worn it at Clara's christening, at every ball of significance, at her wedding to a man who was not Clara's father. The necklace was not merely family heirloom; it was the single item of greatest value in the entire estate. It had been valued, when her mother was alive, at something in the range of four thousand pounds.

"Stolen," Clara said, her voice hardening. "Our own people. Mrs. Hoyle, who has had access to this room since my father—"

"Clara." Julian's voice cut through her spiral. He held up the paper he had extracted from the door hinge. It was a letter, folded into tight quarters, addressed in her father's hand to no one and everyone at once.

She took it. Read.

*My dearest Clara,*

*If you are reading this, you have found the cabinet open, and you have found the empty stand, and you are angry. I would be angry too.*

*I must tell you what I have done, because I can no longer tell you in person, and because I was too much of a coward to tell you to your face. The Sapphire is not stolen. It is pawned.*

Clara's gasp was sharp enough to sting her throat.

*I pawned it in 1809, when I believed our fortunes would turn within the year. I was wrong. The pawn-broker, a Mr. Callow in York, holds it as collateral against a loan of eight hundred pounds. The term has long since expired, and I confess I have not had the courage to discover whether he has sold it, or whether it yet waits for its redemption.*

*I am sorry. Truly. I have made a muck of everything, and you deserve better than a father who gambles with his daughter's inheritance.*

*There is one thing more. I have written to you about a last resort. A course of action that, if taken, would settle all our debts but would cost us the thing we hold most dear. I have not taken it yet. I wanted you to know it exists. That I trust you, if it comes to it, to choose better than I would.*

*Your ever-loving father,* *Robert Ashworth*

Clara's hand trembled. The paper shook, a small white bird fluttering in her grip. She read the last paragraph again. And again.

"A last resort," she repeated. "What does that mean? Some scheme of his? Some connection I don't know about?"

Julian took the letter from her, scanning it, his pale eyes moving quickly down the page. When he spoke, his voice was carefully flat. "He says it would settle all debts. That implies a sum of money. Large. Twelve thousand eight hundred pounds, or more."

Clara shook her head. "My father has no connections that could produce such a sum. He spent his entire life failing to produce such a sum."

"Perhaps he found a new one."

"Or perhaps he found a new delusion."

Julian studied her, and Clara felt herself blush, as if he had laid a hand on her cheek. He was weighing her words, her tone, the flush of her skin, searching for the lie beneath the truth. She had told him none. Not yet.

"You know him better than I do," Julian said, which was diplomatic and gave nothing away.

Clara stared at the empty cabinet shelf, at the velvet stand that looked like a small, abandoned throne. The house around her creaked. The light through the curtains was watery, thin.

She had married this man to save the house. To save her father. To restore what had been lost.

But her father had already lost what she had come to save. And he had left her a mystery—this "last resort"—like a landmine buried in the garden path, waiting for her to step on it.