Read Chapter 23: The Blackwood Interrogation

Lord Blackwood’s study smelled of leather and old tobacco, the fire low in the grate despite the evening chill. He stood at the window, his back to Evelyn, one hand resting on the sill—a posture of studied calm she had seen him adopt at dinner the first night she arrived. She had thought it distinguished then. Now she recognized it as armor.

“My lord,” she began, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. “I must speak with you about your mother.”

He did not turn. “If this concerns the household accounts, Mrs. Hutchins handles those—”

“It concerns Annabel.”

At that, he turned. The firelight carved shadows beneath his eyes, and for a moment he looked older than his years—a man who had spent a decade not hearing that name. “Miss Hartley.” His tone was low, warning. “I have told you before that subject is closed.”

“Your sister is alive.” Evelyn moved closer, the oilcloth pressed painfully against her ribs beneath her bodice. She had transferred Beatrice’s letters there after leaving Mrs. Hutchins, unwilling to trust even her own skirt pocket. “I have spoken with her. She is hidden on this estate, and she has told me things—terrible things about your mother.”

Lord Blackwood’s jaw tightened. He crossed to his desk, poured two fingers of brandy, and drank it in a single swallow. “You have been here little more than a month, Miss Hartley. You cannot possibly understand the history of this house.”

“I understand that Miss Reeves was dragged away by hired men on your mother’s orders.” Evelyn withdrew the oilcloth, untied it with trembling fingers. “I understand that your mother wrote letters demanding Annabel be killed. I have them here.”

She placed the folded correspondence on his desk. He stared at it as though it were a viper.

“Where did you get these?”

“From Miss Reeves’s room. She hid them before she disappeared.” Evelyn’s voice cracked. “She hid them so that someone might find them. So that the truth might survive her.”

Lord Blackwood picked up the top letter. His eyes moved across Beatrice’s sharp, angular hand—Evelyn knew the words by heart now, the elegant cruelty of them: *The girl must not reach her majority. See to it, or I will see to you.*

He read it. Then another. Then the debt note from Mrs. Hutchins.

“This is not possible,” he said quietly. But his hand had begun to shake.

“It is possible. It is true.” Evelyn pressed forward. “Miss Reeves saved Annabel—helped her escape the night her governess was meant to end her life. And when your mother learned the girl still lived, she sent men to take Miss Reeves. To silence her.”

Lord Blackwood set the letters down slowly, side by side, as if arranging them for inspection. For a long moment he said nothing. Evelyn willed him to speak, willed him to act. The clock on the mantel ticked.

“Miss Hartley.” He lifted his head, and his eyes were flat now, gray as winter sea. “These papers could have been written by anyone. Forged. Planted. You are a young woman of good education but little experience of the world. I know hysterics when I see them.”

Evelyn felt the words land like a blow. “I am not hysterical.”

“You have been alone in a strange house, surrounded by servants who gossip and shadows that move. You have invented a romance with a dead governess’s ledger. You have spoken with a girl who does not exist.” He stepped around the desk, closer, and there was something almost gentle in his voice. Kindness before the fall. “I will have Mr. Croft prepare a reference. You may leave in the morning.”

“I will not leave.”

“You have no choice in the matter.”

“Then I will walk to the village and tell them every word of what I have found. I will tell the magistrate. I will tell the newspapers if I must.” Evelyn’s hands were shaking now, but her voice did not waver. “Annabel is alive. I have spoken to her. I have seen her face. She is not a fantasy, my lord. She is your blood.”

Lord Blackwood’s expression flickered—something raw beneath the composure, and for a moment Evelyn thought she saw grief. Real grief. The grief of a brother who had mourned a sister for a decade.

Then he closed it away.

“My mother has her faults,” he said carefully. “She is proud, exacting, and she has never forgiven circumstance for taking my father before his time. But she loved Annabel. She prayed at her memorial. She had a stone carved with her name.” He shook his head slowly. “A woman of her age, of her breeding—she could not orchestrate something such as this. You are mistaken, Miss Hartley. By grief, or by manipulation.”

“I am not mistaken. I have proof.”

“Proof of what? Letters in a dead woman’s handwriting, accusing my mother of unspeakable things.” He gathered the correspondence, folded it with the same care he had shown moments before, and held it out to her. “Keep your papers. Burn them, if you are wise. But do not ask me to believe that my mother conspired to murder her own child.”

Evelyn stared at the outstretched hand. She took the letters.

“And what will you do when you see her yourself? When Annabel is brought before you, flesh and bone and breathing?”

Lord Blackwood’s eyes went cold. “If such a thing were to occur, I would question how a strange woman came to be passing off an imposter as my sister.”

The words struck Evelyn silent.

“You have until morning,” he said, turning back to the window. “Take the night to reconsider. For your own sake.”

The dismissal was absolute. Evelyn remained a moment, clutching the oilcloth, listening to the crackle of the fire and the soft, even whistle of his breathing. She had lost. She had come with truth and left with her hands full of it, still burning.

She turned and walked to the door.

“One more thing,” he said, and she froze with her hand on the handle. “If you choose to remain—if you force the issue—I will have you turned out without a reference. And I will see to it that every door in the county is closed to you.”

Evelyn looked back. His face was unreadable.

“Then that is a risk I must take,” she said. “For Annabel. For Miss Reeves.”

“Miss Reeves was my governess too,” he said, and there was something unguarded in his voice, almost an appeal. “I knew her. She was kind. If she had wished to contact me, she could have. She chose not to.”

“She wrote a letter to your mother,” Evelyn said quietly. “A threat, I believe, to expose what your mother had done. And that letter is what destroyed her.”

Lord Blackwood went still.

“Ask yourself, my lord,” Evelyn continued. “What kind of woman receives a threat of exposure—and then a rival disappears the same week? What kind of woman pays her housekeeper fifty pounds for services rendered on the night of a disappearance?”

He said nothing.

Evelyn left. In the corridor she heard the crash of glass as a brandy decanter met the wall.