Read Chapter 7: Annabel's Photograph

The library at Blackwood Manor was a mausoleum of unread books. Evelyn ran a dry cloth along the spines of a row of leather-bound volumes, raising dust that hung in the afternoon light like gold leaf. Mrs. Coyle had assigned her the task—"to keep the governess occupied while the children rest"—but the order felt less like housekeeping and more like surveillance. A way to keep her in a room with one door and no attic stairs.

She had been at it for an hour. The ledgers on the lower shelf were estate records, columns of figures in a hand she did not recognize. Above them, a row of novels. Below, a stack of folios tied with twine. It was when she lifted the folios to dust beneath that her fingers caught a corner of something stiff, wedged between the shelf and the wall.

A photograph. Carte-de-visite, the paper yellowed at the edges, the image faded to sepia. She turned it toward the window light.

A young woman stood beside a studio column, one hand resting on a draped table. She wore a pale gown with a high collar, and her dark hair was pulled back in a severe style that did not soften her face. She was not smiling. Her eyes—large, direct, unblinking—held the camera with the defiance of someone who had been told not to look.

Evelyn's breath caught. She knew that face. She had seen it in the portrait in the west corridor, though there the subject had been younger, softer, her hand resting on the shoulder of a small child whose features had been partially obscured by shadow.

Annabel.

But the portrait had been labeled, in a brass plaque, *Lady Margaret Blackwood, 1849*. Margaret. The sister who died. The governess had been told she died of fever in London. But this photograph—the same face, older, dressed in mourning so deep the black fabric barely registered in the sepia—this was not a woman who had died quietly. This was a woman who had outlived the occasion of the portrait, and something in her expression suggested she had not forgiven it.

Evelyn turned the photograph over. On the reverse, in a neat, feminine hand: *A.B., 1856. Do not forget me.*

A.B. Annabel Blackwood.

She slid the photograph into her sleeve beside the torn ledger page. The cloth had barely settled when the library door opened.

Lord Blackwood stood in the frame, his coat draped over one arm, his expression unreadable. He was not a tall man, but he carried himself as if the house itself deferred to him. His eyes moved from Evelyn to the open folios, and something tightened at the corner of his mouth.

"Miss Hartley. I expected you to be with the children."

"They are resting, my lord. Mrs. Coyle suggested the library required attention."

"Mrs. Coyle suggests many things." He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Not a threat, Evelyn told herself. Merely a desire for privacy. But the latch clicked with a finality that made her spine straighten.

He moved past her to the desk, setting his coat across the chair. He did not look at her. "You have been at Blackwood barely a week, and already you have explored the gardens, the east wing, and now the private shelves of my library."

"My duties—"

"Your duties are to teach my wards. Not to inventory my house."

Evelyn's hand closed around the photograph in her sleeve. The edge of it bit into her palm. She should let it lie. She should nod, apologize, and retreat. That was what the previous governess should have done. That was what Mrs. Hutchins's niece had failed to do.

But the face in the photograph had looked at her with a directness that demanded an answer.

"My lord," she said, and her voice was steadier than she felt, "who was Annabel Blackwood?"

The stillness that followed was not silence. It was a held breath. Lord Blackwood's hand paused on the coat. When he turned, his face had not changed, but his eyes had—a flicker, gone as quickly as it came, like a fish beneath dark water.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"In the nursery. The children mentioned a lady in the attic. I assumed it was a game."

"It is a game. Children invent specters to frighten themselves." He picked up a book from the desk, not to read, just to hold. "Annabel Blackwood was my sister. She died before the twins were born. There is nothing more to know."

Evelyn drew the photograph from her sleeve. She held it out, face up, so the sepia image caught the light.

"Then why does your sister's photograph say *Do not forget me*? And why does it date from 1856, when the portrait in the corridor says she was buried in 1849?"

For a moment, Lord Blackwood did not move. Then he took the photograph from her fingers with a delicacy that surprised her. He looked at it for a long time. His thumb traced the edge of the card, once, twice.

"Where did you find this?"

"Wedged behind the folios. Someone hid it."

"Someone misplaced it."

"Someone wanted it found," Evelyn said. "Or wanted it lost. I cannot tell which."

He looked up at her, and his face had gone pale beneath the beard. "You speak very freely for a governess."

"I speak carefully, my lord. I have been told this house does not welcome questions. But I find that the things hidden in this house are not hidden well enough to withstand a careful eye."

Lord Blackwood's jaw tightened. He looked at the photograph again, then slipped it into his breast pocket.

"Annabel was my elder sister. She did not die in 1849. She died in 1856, of a fever, in London. The portrait in the corridor was painted when I was a child, and when she died, my father ordered that it remain as it was. He did not wish to explain the change to callers." He paused. "The photograph was taken shortly before her death. Its presence here is an oversight."

"A fever," Evelyn repeated. "And the child in the portrait? The one whose face is shadowed?"

Lord Blackwood's expression closed. "My memory of that portrait is imperfect. It has been many years since I studied it."

"It is your own house, my lord. Surely you have looked at it."

"I have not needed to." He stepped toward her, and for the first time she saw not anger but something closer to fatigue beneath his eyes. "Miss Hartley, I do not know what stories you have heard, or what you hope to find at Blackwood. But my sister is dead. Whatever you think you have discovered, you have only found a woman's grief and her brother's attempt to spare himself its weight. Let it rest."

"Annabel's garden," Evelyn said. "There is a page in the old ledger—"

"There is no Annabel's garden." His voice was flat. "There is only the rose garden, which has stood untended since my sister's death. If a governess before you wrote such a phrase, she was mistaken. Or she was lying."

"She is not the only one who has vanished from this house."

Lord Blackwood stopped. He was very close now, and his presence pressed on her like weather. The photograph was in his pocket, but she could still feel its edge against her palm, phantom and accusing.

"Miss Reeves left for Bath," he said. "Her letters to her aunt were fabrications to cover an elopement. The woman was embarrassed, and the household wished to protect her reputation. It is a common enough story, and an uninteresting one."

"Mrs. Hutchins does not believe that."

"Mrs. Hutchins is an old woman who lost her niece and cannot accept that the girl chose to leave. Grief invents explanations where none are required." He held her gaze. "I am telling you this once, Miss Hartley. Not as a warning, but as a kindness. This house has buried its secrets. They will not serve you to dig them up."

Evelyn said nothing. The room was silent. Outside, the light had begun to slant gold, and somewhere in the garden a bird called once and fell still.

Lord Blackwood turned to leave. At the door, he paused.

"You will return to your duties. The children are fond of you, and I would not disrupt their routine."

"My lord."

He waited.

"The photograph," Evelyn said. "You said she died of a fever in London. But the woman in the photograph is wearing mourning. Whom was she mourning, if not herself?"

Lord Blackwood's hand tightened on the doorframe. For a moment, he was not a lord or a guardian or a man with a coat over his arm. He was something smaller. Something held together by effort.

Then the mask settled again.

"There is nothing in that photograph you need to understand," he said. "And if you are wise, you will forget you ever saw it."

He left the door open. Evelyn watched him go down the corridor, his steps measured, his shoulders straight. When the sound faded, she reached into her sleeve.

The torn page was still there. She had not given it to him. She had not given him the ledger's missing sections, either, because she did not yet know where they were. But she knew now what she had not known an hour ago.

Annabel Blackwood had not died in 1849. She had died—or had been reported to die—in 1856. Which meant that Miss Reeves's ledger, with its references to Annabel's garden and its dates of hidden visits, had not been written by a woman chasing a ghost.

It had been written by a woman chasing a living person.

And that person had been hiding in this house until something, or someone, had made her stop.

Evelyn slid the torn page back into her sleeve. The nursery. The ledger's missing sections. Tonight, after the children slept, she would go where Mrs. Coyle would never think to search.

The east wing could wait one more night. But the nursery held an account book written by a dead woman—or a vanished one—and Evelyn had run out of patience for waiting.