Read Chapter 27: The Inheritance

The night pressed against the windows of Evelyn’s room like a held breath. She had not dared light a candle; the darkness suited her purpose. The letters lay in a neat stack beneath her mattress, the locket wrapped in her spare handkerchief and tucked into the bodice of her dress. Every creak of the old house made her start.

Lord Blackwood had given her until morning. Morning was perhaps four hours away now, judging by the thin sickle of moon beyond the glass. She had promised herself she would not sleep, but her eyelids had grown heavy with the weight of the day’s revelations when a soft knock came at her door—three quick taps, then a pause, then two more.

Annabel’s signal.

Evelyn crossed the room in three strides and pulled the door open a crack. The girl stood in the corridor in her white nightgown, barefoot, her dark hair loose about her shoulders. In the dim light she looked almost spectral, a ghost of the child Evelyn had first met—pale, watchful, too old for her years.

“He did not come,” Annabel whispered. “Papa. He sent word he was unwell and would see me at breakfast.”

Evelyn’s chest tightened. Lord Blackwood had promised, in the study, that he would speak with his daughter. That he would read the letters again. That he would act. But he had not come.

“Perhaps the hour grew late,” Evelyn said, though she did not believe it.

Annabel shook her head slowly. “He is afraid. Of her. Of what he might learn.” She looked up at Evelyn with eyes that had seen too much. “Miss Hartley, I heard something tonight. From the servants’ hall. Old Margaret was talking to the scullery maid about the mistress, about the year I was born.”

A prickle ran down Evelyn’s spine. “Come inside.”

She drew the girl into the room and shut the door, guiding her to the narrow chair by the unlit hearth. Annabel sat with her hands folded in her lap, composed as ever, but her voice trembled when she spoke.

“Margaret said that when my mother died, the whole house knew Grandfather would change the will. He blamed Beatrice—said she had hastened my mother to her grave with her cruel words and her scheming. But he could not prove it. So he wrote the new will in anger, and then he died before he could change it again.”

Evelyn knelt before the girl, taking her cold hands. “What did the will say, Annabel?”

The child’s chin lifted. “That the estate would pass to Beatrice upon my father’s death—but only if I was dead. Or if I was never found. If I lived, if I was his true heir, the whole of it would go to me, and she would receive only what the law required and nothing more.”

The words hung in the stale air of the room. Evelyn felt the pieces of the puzzle she had been assembling for weeks shift and lock into place with terrible precision.

That was it. That was the root of it all.

“She needs you gone,” Evelyn said slowly. “Not harmed in a way that might be investigated—but gone. Locked away. Declared dead. Sent to an asylum where no one would believe a child’s ravings.”

“Or frightened into silence,” Annabel added. “Like Mary. Mary has a pension from Beatrice, Margaret says. She was told she would lose it if she spoke of certain things.”

Evelyn’s mind raced. The inheritance. It made everything make sense—Beatrice’s frantic control of the household, her willingness to threaten a governess’s life, her determination to bury the truth of Annabel’s disappearance beneath layers of forged letters and convenient stories. Miss Reeves must have discovered the terms of the will before she tried to leave. She must have realized what Annabel’s disappearance would mean, and what Beatrice would do to anyone who interfered.

“Miss Reeves knew, didn’t she?” Evelyn whispered.

Annabel nodded. “She told me once that the mistress kept a copy of the will in her private sitting room, hidden in the false bottom of her writing desk. Miss Reeves saw it when she was asked to fetch paper one day. She said the mistress would not leave the room while she was there, but she saw enough. The look on her face—I never forgot it.”

Evelyn rose and began to pace the small room. The inheritance explained Beatrice’s desperation. It explained why the woman had risked everything to intercept Miss Reeves. And it meant that the danger to Annabel was greater than Evelyn had imagined. If Lord Blackwood died suddenly—an accident, a convenient illness—Beatrice would control the estate until Annabel’s majority. And a fourteen-year-old girl did not always survive to adulthood in such circumstances.

“We cannot wait for your father to act,” Evelyn said, stopping before the girl. “He is too weak, too torn between loyalty and doubt. He will consult Mr. Ashworth in the morning, and Ashworth may counsel caution, delay, further investigation. And Beatrice will have time to prepare her defenses.”

“Then what do we do?”

Evelyn pressed her fingers to her temples. The summer house. The locket. The letters. The unfinished letter from Miss Reeves, still unsent. And now this—the will, hidden in the false bottom of a writing desk in Beatrice’s private sitting room.

“I need proof of the will,” Evelyn said. “If I can produce it—show your father the exact terms—he will have no choice but to act. He cannot ignore his own father’s final wishes.”

Annabel’s eyes widened. “Her sitting room is always locked. She keeps the key on a chain around her neck.”

Evelyn thought of Lady Beatrice as she had last seen her, pale and furious in the study, her dark eyes burning with hatred as Lord Blackwood ordered her not to leave the estate. The woman would be vigilant now, watching for any threat. But she was also arrogant. She had spent years believing herself untouchable.

“Tomorrow,” Evelyn said slowly. “I am supposed to be gone by morning. But if I am seen in the corridor, what is one more hour of defiance? Your father has already condemned me. I have nothing left to lose.”

Annabel caught her wrist. “I will not let you take the blame alone. If we are caught, I will say I forced you to stay.”

“You will say nothing of the sort.” Evelyn’s voice was firm. “You will return to your room now, and you will sleep. You will attend breakfast as though this night never happened. And when the household is occupied—when your father is closeted with Mr. Ashworth and Beatrice is distracted—you will create a disturbance. A vase broken in the east corridor. A servant called away on an errand. Anything to draw eyes from the dining room.”

Annabel’s jaw set. “And you will go to her sitting room.”

“I will go.” Evelyn squeezed the girl’s hands. “I will find the will, I will bring it to your father, and I will end this.”

But even as she spoke, a cold voice at the back of her mind whispered a different truth. Beatrice had seen them at the summer house. Her attendant had witnessed their entry. If Beatrice knew—and surely she knew by now—the sitting room might well be a trap. The locked door might open onto a room designed to ensnare the foolish governess who thought she could outwit the lady of the house.

Evelyn pushed the thought aside. Fear was a luxury she could not afford.

“Go now,” she said softly. “And pray, Annabel. Pray that your father finds his courage before the morning ends.”

Annabel rose and moved to the door, pausing with her hand on the iron latch. She looked back at Evelyn, her face unreadable in the shadows.

“Miss Hartley,” she said. “My grandfather’s will had a final clause. A provision that would only take effect if I died before my father.”

Evelyn’s breath caught. “What provision?”

“Everything—the whole estate—was to be given away,” Annabel said quietly. “To a charity for orphaned governesses in London. To every cause the mistress despises. My grandfather meant to punish her even beyond the grave.” She paused, and a thin smile touched her lips. “Beatrice does not just need me dead. She needs me dead before my father. If he were to die with me alive, the will would remain as written—but if I died first, even by a day, she would inherit everything.”

The words settled over Evelyn like a shroud. The inheritance did not simply explain Beatrice’s obsession with Annabel’s disappearance—it made Annabel’s continued existence a direct threat to everything Beatrice had schemed to secure. And it made Evelyn’s mission not merely a rescue of a lost girl, but the protection of an heir that a woman with nothing left to lose would stop at nothing to destroy.

Annabel slipped out into the corridor and disappeared into the darkness. Evelyn remained at the window, staring at the moon’s pale reflection in the glass, counting the hours until dawn brought either salvation or ruin.