Read Chapter 30: The Missing Letter

“This is the letter she means,” Evelyn said, her finger resting on the faded ink. “The one to Magistrate Hollings in London.”

Lord Blackwood leaned over her shoulder, the candlelight carving deep shadows into his face. The diary lay open on the escritoire between them, its pages brittle with age. The entry was dated three weeks before Miss Reeves vanished—a hastily scribbled passage that spoke of a letter already sent.

*I have written to Magistrate Hollings with full particulars of her cruelty. The accusations require no embellishment. If the girl is harmed, the law will know where to look.*

Evelyn read the lines again, her chest tightening. “She sent it. She truly sent it.”

“Then Hollings should have it.” Lord Blackwood straightened, rubbing the back of his neck. “If he received such a letter, he would have acted. He is an honourable man.”

“Unless he never received it.” Evelyn turned to face him. “Your wife intercepted it. She intercepts everything. The resignation letter, the correspondence to the doctor in Northamptonshire. Why would this be different?”

Blackwood’s jaw tightened. He said nothing, but his silence was answer enough.

Evelyn closed the diary gently, her mind racing. “If Beatrice intercepted the letter, she would have read it. She would have known exactly what Miss Reeves intended to expose. That gives her motive—more motive than we already knew.”

“She had motive enough already,” Blackwood said bitterly. “My father’s will made certain of that.”

“But this is different.” Evelyn’s voice quickened. “This letter wasn’t only about the inheritance. Miss Reeves wrote to Hollings about Beatrice’s cruelty toward Annabel. The beatings. The locked rooms. The threats of an asylum. If that letter had reached London, Beatrice would have lost everything—her reputation, her influence, her place in this house. Perhaps even her freedom.”

Blackwood’s hand moved to the diary’s spine, tracing the worn leather. “You think she saw the letter before it was posted.”

“I think she saw it before it was sent.” Evelyn began pacing the narrow room, her skirts whispering against the floorboards. “Miss Reeves was careful, but she wasn’t a conspirator. She trusted the household in ways we cannot afford to. She may have given the letter to a servant to post, believing it safe.”

“And Beatrice bribed the servant.”

“Or threatened them.” Evelyn stopped. “Mr. Thorne was not the first person she corrupted. He was simply the one who broke.”

Blackwood exhaled slowly. He looked older in the candlelight, the weight of years pressing down on his shoulders. “If the letter never reached London, then Hollings knows nothing. Our only proof is this diary—and her sister in Kent.”

“The second testament,” Evelyn agreed. “Miss Reeves mentioned it in her draft. She wrote that her sister holds a copy of the original will—the one your grandfather made before he revised it under Beatrice’s influence.”

Blackwood frowned. “My father was not easily influenced.”

“Your wife is persuasive.” Evelyn’s tone was gentle but unyielding. “She persuaded Mr. Thorne to abandon a dying woman. She persuaded Dr. Whitmore to sign fraudulent reports. She persuaded you—for a time—that your own daughter was unstable.”

Blackwood flinched, but he did not argue.

Evelyn crossed to him, lowering her voice. “The letter to Hollings is the thread that ties everything together. If Beatrice intercepted it, she must have disposed of it—or kept it. Women like her keep trophies. Proof of their victories.”

“You want to search her rooms again.”

“I want to know what she did with it.” Evelyn hesitated. “I was planning to steal the will from her sitting room. But if we can find the letter instead—the one Miss Reeves sent, with its private particulars of Beatrice’s cruelty—it would corroborate the diary. It would show that Miss Reeves attempted to expose her, and that Beatrice silenced her for it.”

Blackwood turned toward the window. Rain streaked the glass, distorting the dark shapes of the garden beyond. “Beatrice knows we have the diary. She knows I have ordered her not to leave the estate. She will be watching.”

“She will be watching me,” Evelyn corrected. “She does not fear you anymore, my lord. She fears what I might find. I am the interloper. The governess who asks too many questions.”

He looked at her, something shifting in his gaze—respect, perhaps, or sorrow. “You are braver than most men I have known.”

“I am more desperate than most men,” she said quietly. “Miss Reeves made me a promise. I intend to keep it.”

A knock sounded at the door. Mrs. Hutchins entered, her face drawn with worry. She had been subdued since the revelations of the past days, her loyalty to Lady Beatrice shaken but not yet broken.

“My lord,” she said, bobbing a curtsy, “Lady Beatrice has requested that the family portraits in the east corridor be taken down for cleaning. She wishes to have them stored in the attic this evening.”

Blackwood’s expression hardened. “She is removing evidence.”

Evelyn’s pulse quickened. “Or making room for something.”

Mrs. Hutchins looked between them, uncertain. “She has also dismissed the night footman and taken the keys to the servants’ quarters. She says she found irregularities in the household accounts and intends to conduct an audit.”

“She is isolating us,” Evelyn said. “Cutting off communication with the servants. If she controls the keys, no one can leave the estate without her knowledge.”

Blackwood’s hand moved to the diary. “Then we act tonight. Before she tightens her grip further.”

“What will you do?”

He met her eyes. “I will confront her. The diary, the draft of the letter, the testimony of Mr. Thorne—together, they are enough to force her hand.”

“And if she refuses to break?”

“Then I will send for the magistrate myself.” He opened a drawer and removed a folded paper, creased and yellowed with age. “But first, I need you to find this.”

Evelyn took the paper. It was a letter of introduction signed by Lord Blackwood’s grandfather, addressed to a solicitor in Kent. “Miss Reeves’s sister?”

“Her name is Margaret Reeves. She was in service to a family near Canterbury. If she holds the second testament, she may already know something of her sister’s fate.” He pressed the paper into Evelyn’s palm. “If I fail tonight—if Beatrice does something rash—you must go to Kent. You must find Margaret and bring her here.”

Evelyn folded the letter carefully and tucked it into her bodice. “I will not fail you.”

“I know.” He smiled faintly, but there was no joy in it. “You have not failed anyone yet.”

Mrs. Hutchins cleared her throat. “My lord, there is one more thing. I went to the summer house this afternoon, as you asked, to see if the cold store could be opened from within. I found fresh scratches on the latch.”

Evelyn’s blood went cold. “Fresh?”

“Within the past day, my lady.” Mrs. Hutchins’s hands twisted in her apron. “And the ground outside the cold store door was disturbed, as though someone had knelt there recently.”

Blackwood’s eyes met Evelyn’s. The unspoken question hung between them: *Who else knows about the cold store?*

Evelyn thought of Mary—the silent attendant who had carried something heavy toward the summer house on the night Miss Reeves disappeared. She had been seen by Thorne and never questioned. She had returned to Lady Beatrice, whose grip on the household tightened with every hour.

“We are running out of time,” Evelyn whispered.

“Then we stop running.” Blackwood closed the diary and slid it into his coat. “I will confront my wife tonight. You will watch the summer house. If anyone approaches the cold store, you will know what to do.”

Evelyn nodded, though her heart hammered in her chest. The rain beat harder against the windows, as though the very sky were closing in around them.

“Mrs. Hutchins,” Blackwood said, “remain with Lady Beatrice. Watch her. Tell me if she sends anyone to the summer house or the cellars.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He moved to the door, then paused. “Evelyn—if you find proof in the cold store, do not wait for me. Wake the stable boy and ride for the village. Bring the magistrate yourself.”

“And if Beatrice stops me?”

He looked at her, and for a moment the mask of lordly composure cracked, revealing something raw and fierce beneath. “Then you will do what you have always done. You will not stop.”

He was gone before she could answer.

Evelyn stood alone in the flickering candlelight, the letter from the grandfather pressing warm against her chest. Somewhere below, she could hear the muffled sound of servants moving furniture, Lady Beatrice’s voice rising in sharp commands.

The house was closing in around them. And somewhere beneath the summer house, in the cold and the dark, something waited to be found.

Evelyn blew out the candle and moved into the corridor, listening to the sound of her own footsteps echoing into the dark.