Read Chapter 17: The Crypt

Mary moved like a shadow through the servant’s passage, her candle cupped in a trembling hand. Evelyn followed close behind, skirts gathered to keep them from brushing the walls, counting each stone step as they descended. The air grew colder, denser, carrying the smell of earth and old stone and something faintly sweet—decay, perhaps, or the last memory of cut flowers.

“How much farther?” Evelyn whispered.

“Just past the kitchens,” Mary murmured. “There’s a door behind the wine racks. Most of the staff think it’s bricked up. It isn’t.”

She paused at a low wooden door, iron-banded and warped with age. A rusted key hung from a nail beside it, and Mary took it down with a practiced hand. The lock turned with a groan that seemed to echo far too loudly in the silence.

“You’ve done this before,” Evelyn said.

“Every night for a fortnight.” Mary’s voice was barely audible. “She was so weak at first. I thought I’d be carrying her out in pieces. Miss Reeves—she knew what to do. She always knew.”

Mary pushed the door open, and the smell of earth sharpened. Steps descended into darkness, rough-hewn and slick with moisture. Evelyn lifted her skirts higher and followed, her free hand trailing along the stone wall to keep her bearings.

The crypt opened before them like a mouth. Low vaulted ceilings, stone pillars thick with moss, and rows of tombs sunk into the floor like patient teeth. Some bore carved names and dates, their surfaces worn smooth by decades of grief. Others were bare, their occupants long forgotten.

Mary led her past the older graves to a recessed alcove at the far end, where a single candle burned behind a screen of stone. Evelyn’s heart quickened.

“Annabel?” Mary called softly. “It’s me. I’ve brought someone.”

A rustle of fabric. A shadow shifted in the corner, and then a figure emerged from behind a column—small, pale, with dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She wore a servant’s dress, too large for her frame, and clutched a shawl around herself as though it could shield her from the world.

Annabel Blackwood was alive.

Evelyn had seen her portrait in the great hall—a bright-eyed girl with her father’s square jaw and her mother’s dark curls. But the girl before her was a ghost of that image. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin almost translucent in the candlelight, and her eyes held a wariness that spoke of too many sleepless nights.

“You’re the governess,” Annabel said. Her voice was hoarse, unused.

“Evelyn Hartley.” She stepped forward slowly, hands open at her sides. “Mary told me you were here. I came to help.”

Annabel’s gaze flicked to Mary, then back. “Why? No one else has. Father thinks I’m dead. Mother—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “She would rather I were.”

Evelyn’s chest tightened. “Your father doesn’t know you’re alive. He told me he believes you were lost in the carriage accident.”

“Because that’s what I wanted him to believe.” Annabel’s chin lifted. “I staged it. The carriage, the river, the empty seat. I had help.”

“Mr. Thorne,” Evelyn said. It was not a question.

Annabel’s face flickered with surprise, then something softer. “You know about him?”

“I know he owes a debt to Miss Reeves. I know he’s the one who helped you escape.”

“He was more than help.” Annabel’s voice cracked. “He was the only person in this house who ever treated me as though I mattered. When Mother began her cruel games, when she started whispering that I was not her blood, that I was a changeling child—Mr. Thorne was the one who held me when I cried. He was the one who said he would not let her destroy me.”

Mary shifted uncomfortably. “We shouldn’t stay long. Her ladyship’s men patrol the grounds at night. They’ve been more active since the governess started asking questions.”

Annabel’s eyes snapped to Evelyn. “What questions?”

“About the ledger,” Evelyn said quietly. “Miss Reeves kept a record of everything that happened in this house. Someone tore out the pages for April 1857. The month you disappeared.”

Annabel laughed—a bitter, brittle sound. “Of course they did. Miss Reeves knew everything. She knew about Mother’s obsession. She knew what Mother planned to do.”

“What did she plan to do?” Evelyn pressed.

Annabel’s hands tightened on the shawl. “Kill me. Or have me sent away to an asylum where no one would find me. She was convinced I was not her child, you see. She told Father it was God’s punishment for marrying beneath him—that I was a monster in a babe’s skin.”

“Your father didn’t believe her.”

“He didn’t stop her.” The words were flat, emptied of all accusation. “He went to London. He was always going to London when Mother grew worse. And when he was gone, she came for me.”

Evelyn felt the cold seep into her bones. “The carriage accident.”

“I was supposed to be in that carriage,” Annabel said. “Mother arranged it. A driver loyal to her, a route through the narrow bridge, a wheel loosened. She meant for me to die in the river. She meant for them to find my body downstream, if they found it at all.”

“But you escaped.”

“Miss Reeves found out. She came to me the night before and told me I was in danger. She had already spoken to Mr. Thorne—he had a cousin in the village who could take me in, a farm girl who looked enough like me to fool a grieving father for a single glance. The river was swift that week. No one expected them to find much.”

Evelyn’s mind raced. “The locket I found. The inscription—” She paused, seeing Annabel’s hand move to her throat, finding nothing. “I found it in your room. It says ‘For M.’ I thought perhaps it was for your mother. Margaret.”

Annabel shook her head. “For Mary.” She glanced at the servant girl. “Miss Reeves’s niece. She was kind to me when I was small. The locket was meant for her, though I never had the chance to give it.”

A wave of dizziness washed over Evelyn. Mary—not the Mary who stood before her now, but another Mary entirely. The scratched-out name in the ledger. The marginal note about hidden letters.

“Miss Reeves’s niece,” she repeated slowly. “What happened to her?”

Annabel looked away. “She fell ill two years before I disappeared. Consumption. She lasted six months. Miss Reeves never spoke of her again, but she kept the locket safe, hoping that one day I would give it to her grave.”

Evelyn sat down heavily on a stone bench, her legs giving way. The ledger entries had taken on a new shape. The hidden letters Miss Reeves had noted—they were not letters to be delivered, but a correspondence already kept, a trail of secrets that someone had to tear out of the book.

“Miss Reeves was planning to leave,” Evelyn said.

Annabel nodded. “She told me the week before she vanished. She had found something in my mother’s papers—proof, she said. Proof that my mother had tried to harm me before, when I was an infant. She planned to take that proof to my father, and if he would not listen, to the magistrate.”

“She vanished before she could.”

“Yes.” Annabel’s voice was barely a whisper. “She told me she would write to Father herself, that she would make him see the truth. And then she was gone.”

Evelyn’s blood chilled. “Do you think your mother silenced her?”

“I don’t know.” Annabel shook her head. “I’ve been hiding here, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Mr. Thorne brings me food when he can. Mary brings me what little she can spare. But I have no way of knowing what happened to Miss Reeves. I only know that I owe her my life.”

Mary touched Evelyn’s arm. “We should go. It isn’t safe to linger.”

But Evelyn did not rise. Instead, she fixed her gaze on Annabel, a terrible suspicion crystalizing in her mind.

“You said Miss Reeves found proof,” she said slowly. “Proof that your mother tried to harm you as an infant. Where would such proof be kept?”

Annabel’s eyes flickered. “She never told me. She said it was safer if I didn’t know.”

“But the ledger mentioned hidden letters,” Evelyn pressed. “What if Miss Reeves left them somewhere—somewhere your mother’s men haven’t found? What if she wrote down everything before she vanished?”

Annabel stared at her, a spark of hope kindling in her hollow eyes. And at that moment, the candle behind the stone screen guttered, and was out.