Read Chapter 3: Reading Between the Lines

The blue salon clock read half past eleven, and Eleanor had already been dressed for an hour. Rose, the lady's maid Aunt Prudence had assigned her, had done her work admirably—a morning gown of pale muslin, hair pinned in an elegant chignon—but Eleanor felt like a racehorse in a parade. Dressed and decorated while the real work waited.

She had dispatched two notes before breakfast. The first, to a solicitor named Mr. Gilbert Stokes, whom she remembered from Lord Ashworth's correspondence as the family's usual counsel. The second, to a Mr. Percival Hargrove, whose name she had found in her father's old letters. The first would tell her everything Lord Ashworth wanted her to hear. The second might tell her the truth.

Three hours had passed. No replies.

Eleanor stood at the window, watching the lane that curved toward the village. Her fingers drummed against the sill, a habit she could not break no matter how many times Aunt Prudence sighed at the "unladylike" tapping.

"You will wear a pattern into the marble," Aunt Prudence said from her chair by the fire, not looking up from her embroidery. "And then where shall you be?"

"Standing on the lawn, I suppose." Eleanor turned from the window. "Aunt, did my father employ a solicitor of his own? Apart from the family firm?"

Aunt Prudence's needle paused, just a fraction of a second, before resuming its rhythm. "Your father kept his affairs properly, as any gentleman would. There was no cause for separate counsel."

"Properly," Eleanor repeated. "And my mother? Did she have anyone she consulted?"

The embroidered rose in Aunt Prudence's lap took on sudden intense focus. "Your mother was a gentle soul, dearest. She relied on your father for all matters of business. As is natural."

Eleanor let the silence stretch, watching the older woman's face. Aunt Prudence had a tell—her lips pressed together when she was concealing something, flattening until they nearly disappeared. They were pressed now.

"I should like to visit the library," Eleanor said. "I find I need something to read."

Aunt Prudence's relief was almost audible. "Of course, dear. The light is lovely there this time of morning."

The library was not the grand, sweeping affair Eleanor had imagined from novels. It was a modest room, wood-paneled and smelling of old paper and beeswax. Bookshelves lined two walls. A leather-topped desk sat before the window. And on the third wall, a locked glass case held what appeared to be the family's more valuable volumes.

Eleanor moved through the room slowly, letting her eyes drift over the spines. Histories. Biographies. A complete set of sermons by someone named Tillotson. The usual country house fare. She ran her fingers along the shelves, not certain what she was looking for, only certain she would know it when she found it.

Her hand stopped at a small gap between two volumes of Shakespeare's plays. A space where something had been removed, not recently, but often—the books on either side had worn edges from fingers slipping between them.

She pulled one of the Shakespeare volumes free. Behind it, snug against the back of the shelf, sat a small journal bound in dark green leather, the gilt edges worn nearly silver.

Eleanor's pulse quickened. She drew it out carefully, as if it might crumble at her touch. The clasp was simple brass, tarnished with age. She undid it, and the journal fell open naturally—to the middle, to a page creased from frequent reading.

The handwriting was narrow and neat, feminine. Her mother's hand, she guessed, though she had no memory of it. Ava Chen had never met the woman whose body she now wore, whose life she had inherited.

But the body remembered something. A tightness in her chest, a warmth behind her eyes that was not entirely her own.

*October 14, 1810. Edward writes that I must not concern myself with the estate's debts. He says the wool shipment will cover the worst of it. I would believe him, except I found the letter from Lord Vane's steward this morning, hidden in his coat pocket. The Viscount has been patient for two years now. How much longer can we ask him to wait?*

Eleanor's breath caught. Vane. The name leapt off the page like an accusation.

*October 22. Edward has gone to London to speak with Vane himself. He says he will not beg. I pray he will not be too proud. Tomorrow I will write to my brother, though he has refused us before. Thomas thinks Edward wasteful, and perhaps he is not wrong. But surely family must help family.*

Brother. Thomas. Lord Ashworth. Eleanor's uncle was her mother's brother, then. She had assumed—she had not thought to question the relation. But Thomas was her mother's family, one who had refused to help. And now he held the reins of her life, had signed her away to the same Viscount who had held her father's debts.

The interleaving of events wove itself into a pattern her mind could not ignore. Viscount Vane had held Ashworth debts before. Now he held a marriage contract that would deliver Eleanor into his hands. The same hand that had collected what the family owed.

She turned the page.

*November 3. Edward returned from London in a strange temper. He would not speak of his meeting with Vane. When I pressed him, he said only that the man was "more lawyer than nobleman" and that he had been made to feel his station. Edward hates that above all things—to be looked down upon. I have never seen him so humiliated.*

More lawyer than nobleman. Eleanor almost smiled. Perhaps the Viscount Vane and she might understand each other more than anyone guessed. But the thought chilled her as quickly as it came. A man who collected debts like trophies, who had a dead wife and a new betrothed. She needed to know more.

*November 18. Edmund is unwell.* Edmund—that would be her brother, she realized. A brother she had never been told about. A child who had been sick. *The doctor says it is a putrid throat, but last autumn he had the same and recovered. I try not to think of Margaret's boy who died of the same.*

Eleanor turned the page with a hand that trembled, despite herself.

*November 26. My son is dead.*

The words sat on the page like stones in her chest. There was no elaboration, no outpouring of grief—just that brutal, simple line. Eleanor felt the grief anyway, through the body she inhabited, through veins that remembered a love she had never experienced.

*December 2. I have buried myself in the accounts today. It is the only thing that keeps my mind from Edmund. Edward says I must not blame myself, but if I had sent for the London doctor when the fever first broke instead of listening to the village man... But what is done is done.*

*December 15. Edward has not been himself since Edmund died. He walks the grounds at night, returns with mud on his boots and a wild look in his eye. He will not tell me what is in his mind. Today he asked me where I keep the key to the strongbox. I told him I did not know. He looked at me so strangely.*

The strongbox. Eleanor's stomach tightened. Whatever had been in that strongbox, her father's strange behavior suggested it was connected to his death. To the debts. To Vane.

She flipped ahead, searching for the last entries.

*February 3, 1811. Edward is dead. They tell me he had been drinking and fell from the cliffs at Blackwood Point. But Edward never drank to excess. He knew the cliffs as well as he knew his own face. I do not believe them. I will never believe them.*

*February 10. I have written to Thomas, though it galls me. He is my brother, and I have no one else. I will tell him about the irregularity in the accounts. The money Edward swore was borrowed from Vane may never have existed at all. The final note I found sewn into his coat reads simply: "She must never know." She. Which one of us?*

The journal ended there, mid-thought, no further entries. Eleanor turned the final page, looking for more, finding nothing but blank paper.

Her mother had died without writing another word—or had been prevented from writing one.

Eleanor stood motionless, the journal clutched to her chest, her mind racing through the implications. Her father had debts he might not have truly owed. A note sewn into his coat, warning that "she" must never know. A death that her mother had refused to accept as accident.

And now, five years later, the daughter was engaged to the very man her father had supposedly owed. If the debt was fabricated, what was the true arrangement? What hold did Viscount Vane have on the Ashworth family?

The library door opened.

Eleanor shoved the journal into the folds of her gown without thinking, her heart slamming against her ribs. She turned, arranging her face into polite neutrality.

Rose, the lady's maid, stood in the doorway with a tray. "Your aunt sent me to bring you a refreshment, my lady. And to say that a Mr. Hargrove has called—he asks if you are receiving."

Mr. Hargrove. The second solicitor she had written to. Eleanor's mind spun. She needed to compose herself, to appear the gentle, unburdened young lady and not the desperate schemer she felt like. The journal was hard against her ribs, a secret burning through muslin.

"Please show Mr. Hargrove to the morning room," she said, her voice steady even as her blood hammered. "Tell him I shall be with him directly."

Rose bobbed a curtsey and vanished. Eleanor took three deep breaths, feeling the journal press against her corset. Her mother's words circulated through her thoughts like a current, changing everything she had believed about the world today.

The debt that bound her to Viscount Vane might be built on nothing but lies. And somewhere in this house, in ledgers or letters or that mysterious strongbox her mother had mentioned, there would be proof.

One hour with Hargrove. She would offer him a retainer, gauge his loyalty. Then she would find the strongbox before the afternoon's presentation to Viscount Vane, armed with more than just a lawyer's wits.

She smoothed her gown and walked toward the morning room, the journal tucked against her heart, as close to her mother's truth as she had ever been.