Read Chapter 14: Aftermath of the Discovery

The wind had died with the dawn, leaving the estate in a hush that felt almost unnatural after the storm’s fury. Maeve stood at the study window, the ledger open on the desk behind her, its pages still smelling of damp and secrecy. She had not slept. The gold beneath the chapel floor had kept her eyes wide and her mind turning until the first gray light crept over the fields.

A knock at the door made her start. She crossed the room and opened it to find Ashworth standing on the step, his coat damp at the shoulders, his face pinched with cold.

“I saw your candle burning,” he said. “You’ve found something.”

It was not a question. She stepped aside and let him in, gesturing to the desk. “My husband kept better records than I knew.”

Ashworth moved to the ledger and bent over it, his long fingers tracing the entries. She watched his face as he read—the slight furrow between his brows, the way his jaw tightened when he reached the page that named Sir Godfrey.

“This is why Godfrey wants your land,” he said slowly. “Kilmartin backed a tenant’s claim against him. A claim that, if it held, would cost Godfrey a hundred acres of prime pasture.”

“And the moneylender in Dublin?”

Ashworth turned another page. “Your husband borrowed deep to fight the case. Deeper than he could repay.” He looked up at her, his eyes unreadable. “He was a man cornered from both sides.”

Maeve felt the old anger stir—at her husband for his secrets, at herself for her blindness. She pressed her palms flat against the desk. “He hid twenty gold coins beneath the chapel floor. To protect us, or so he wrote.”

Ashworth’s eyebrows rose. “Twenty sovereigns would buy seed and food for the winter. It would keep your tenants from starving.”

“It would,” she agreed. “But if Sir Godfrey learns of it—if anyone learns of it—the gold will be seized toward the debt before I can spend a penny of it. And there is the other matter.”

She lifted the locket from the drawer and held it out to him. The chain swung, catching the light. “I told you it pointed west. I thought it meant Galway, for the loan. But there is a property in the district—land that belonged to my father’s family. The map marks it.”

Ashworth took the locket, turning it over in his palm. He did not open it. “You believe there is more than gold.”

“I believe my father did not hide a map for nothing.”

He set the locket down carefully beside the ledger. “Then we have two tasks. The gold, and whatever your father left you.”

“And Sir Godfrey,” she said. “If he knew about the ledger—if he knew the depth of Kilmartin’s fight against him—he would not rest until he had seen me ruined. He would accept no risk, no compromise. He would simply crush us.”

Ashworth was quiet for a moment. “Then he cannot know. And the gold must be moved before anyone suspects it exists.”

“Tonight,” Maeve said.

He looked at her sharply. “The ground will be soft from the rain. The chapel floor is stone. We’ll need tools, and men we can trust.”

“Padraig.”

“One man, you, and me.” He counted on his fingers. “It will take hours. And if we are seen—if Sir Godfrey has eyes on the estate, and he must, given what he knows of your debts—the game is lost before it begins.”

“Then we dig at night,” she said firmly. “After the household sleeps. Padraig will keep his silence. He has kept worse.”

Ashworth studied her for a long moment. “You trust him that much?”

“With my life,” she said. “He has carried this estate on his back since my husband died. Perhaps before.”

Ashworth nodded slowly. “Then I will bring the tools from the barn myself. If we are seen by a servant, it will look like I am making repairs. But you must have a reason for Padraig to be there.”

“He is my steward,” Maeve said. “It is his place to inspect the chapel for storm damage. No one will question it.”

A thin smile crossed Ashworth’s face. “You are learning the art of misdirection, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Necessity teaches quickly,” she replied.

They stood for a moment, the plan settling between them like a weight. Maeve felt the exhaustion pulling at her bones, but beneath it, a strange excitement. For the first time in months, she was not merely reacting. She was moving.

A servant appeared in the doorway with a letter on a silver tray. Maeve took it, frowning at the unfamiliar hand. The postmark was Liverpool.

“Cormac,” she breathed.

Ashworth’s expression sharpened. “Your husband’s brother?”

“Word of his leaving reached me months ago. I wrote to his last known address, but—” She broke off, breaking the seal with trembling fingers. The paper was thin, the script cramped but legible.

She read quickly, then again, slower. Ashworth waited in silence.

“He is in Liverpool,” she said at last. “Working as a clerk in a shipping office. He has a room, a wage, and a clear head. He asks about the estate. Whether it still stands, whether I am well.”

She looked up at Ashworth. “He says he would come home if I asked him.”

“Would you?”

The question hung in the air. Maeve remembered Cormac—younger than her husband by five years, quick to laugh, slower to anger. He had left Ireland the spring after Kilmartin’s death, unable to bear the sight of the empty house, the unfinished fields. She had not blamed him. But she had felt his leaving like another loss.

“He was never strong enough to carry this place alone,” she said slowly. “But with the gold, with seed for the spring—if he came back, we might rebuild. The estate would have a Kelly at its heart again.”

“And if he asks questions about the ledger? The debt?” Ashworth’s voice was careful.

Maeve folded the letter, its edges soft with handling and travel. “He is my brother. He has a right to know the truth.”

“Does he have a right to know about the gold?”

She hesitated. The weight of the secret pressed against her chest. Cormac had left before her husband’s ledgers were found. He had left believing his brother’s affairs were in order, that the estate was merely mourning, not drowning.

“Not yet,” she said. “Not until I know why he left, and what he wants now.”

Ashworth said nothing, but his look was doubtful. She understood. Trust had been a scarce commodity in her life of late. Every offer of help hid a blade, every friendly face a ledger entry.

She sat down at the desk and took up her pen. The ink was dry and she had to wet it. Her hand moved across the paper in a script she had learned at her mother’s knee, careful and deliberate.

*Cormac—*

*The estate stands, though the season has been cruel and the fields have known blight. I cannot promise you abundance, but I can promise you purpose. If you would return, if you would help me see this place through the winter, I will be grateful beyond words. Write to me with your decision. I will await your answer with patience, but not with ease.*

*Your sister,*

*Maeve*

She sanded the page and folded it, sealing the wax with the ring her husband had given her on their wedding day. The crest pressed into the warm red seal—a small oak, roots deep, branches high.

Ashworth watched her. “You do not entirely trust him.”

“I trust that he is my blood,” she said. “I trust that he loved his brother. But love and trust are not the same thing, and I have learned to tell the difference.”

He inclined his head, a gesture of respect she had come to recognize. “Then we proceed as planned. Tonight, the chapel. And when the gold is safe, you will decide what to tell him.”

Maeve set the letter aside for the morning post. Outside, the sky had cleared to a pale, watery blue. The fields lay sodden and brown, but the storm had passed. For the first time in days, she could see the far fence line, the stand of trees that marked the boundary of her land.

Her land. For now.

She would not let it slip away. Not to Sir Godfrey, not to hunger, not to despair. She had gold beneath a chapel floor and a map hidden in a locket. She had a brother in Liverpool who might come home.

And she had an English land agent who, for reasons she still did not fully understand, had chosen to stand beside her.

She looked at Ashworth, who was closing the ledger with care, smoothing its pages flat.

“Why do you help me?” she asked.

He paused, his hands resting on the worn leather cover. “Because you do not ask for what you do not need. Because you refuse to yield to men who believe your land is theirs for the taking.” He met her eyes. “And because I have seen what happens to estates like yours when no one stands against the Godfreys of the world. I would rather not see it happen again.”

Maeve held his gaze for a long moment. She did not know if she believed him. But she knew she needed him, at least for now. And need, she had learned, was a kind of trust in itself.

She rose and walked to the window, looking out over the sodden fields. Tonight she would dig. Tomorrow she would post the letter. And in the weeks to come, she would learn what her father had hidden, what her husband had feared, and what her brother intended.

One step at a time. One secret at a time.

The wind stirred the bare branches of the oak by the gate, and Maeve Brennan-Kelly stood very still, letting the quiet settle around her like a shawl.