Read Chapter 24: The Informant Found

Padraig found her in the stillroom, ostensibly counting jars of preserved apples. The new maid, Niamh, started when he entered, her hand darting away from the shelf as if burned.

“Missus wants the tally for the winter stores,” Padraig said, his voice flat.

Niamh nodded, flustered. “I was just—I thought I’d help.”

“Helpful,” Padraig said. He didn’t move. He watched her fingers, the way they trembled at her apron hem. A faint smear of ink on her thumb. A servant who couldn’t read had no business with ink.

He found Maeve in the study an hour later, closing the door behind him with the careful silence of a man who knew walls had ears.

“It’s the girl, Niamh,” he said. “The one took over Molly’s place when Molly’s mother sickened.”

Maeve set down her pen. “She’s been here three weeks. Quick, quiet, no trouble.”

“Too quick.” Padraig stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I watched her last night. She went to the old chapel after dark, not to pray. She met a man at the east gate—Cusack’s groom, I’d swear it on my mother’s grave.”

Maeve’s jaw tightened. Cusack. The merchant who’d threatened her over a counterfeit debt, who’d promised the matter wasn’t finished. And Sir Godfrey, whose informant she’d known existed since the harvest festival, when a tenant had fled rather than face her—a tenant who’d been paid to burn her fields.

“But Cusack does Sir Godfrey’s bidding,” Maeve said slowly. “Or they share a purse.”

Padraig nodded. “The girl’s no common maid. Her hands are soft. She speaks like she’s been educated. She’s a plant, missus, I’d stake my life on it.”

Maeve rose, moving to the window. Rain streaked the glass, blurring the grey October light. The granary was a black scar on the landscape now, the winter stores reduced to ash and memory. She had lost a third of what she needed to feed her people.

“If we dismiss her now,” she said, turning back, “Sir Godfrey will simply send another. We learn nothing.”

“So we don’t dismiss her.”

Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “No. We feed her a lie and see where it travels.”

The plan was simple. Maeve called a meeting of her household the next morning, making sure Niamh was present, standing at the back with the other servants, her eyes lowered, her hands folded.

“The western pasture,” Maeve announced, loud enough for all to hear. “We’ll be moving the remaining cattle there come Monday, before the rains worsen. The old drover’s path is still passable, and the ground is higher ground—the flood can’t reach it. We’ll use the barn at the far edge for shelter. It’s the only place the beasts will be safe.”

Padraig nodded solemnly beside her. Ashworth, seated at the table with the estate ledgers, looked up sharply, confusion flickering across his face before he masked it.

Maeve caught his eye and gave the slightest shake of her head. His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

The trap was baited.

Two nights passed. Maeve slept little, rising at every creak of the house, every scuttle of a mouse in the walls. She kept her father’s unread letter in the pocket of her dressing gown—she didn’t know why, only that its weight comforted her, a reminder that some questions remained unanswered, some truths still waiting.

On the third night, Padraig came to her door at midnight. His face was grim in the candlelight.

“They’ve taken the bait,” he said.

They rode to the western pasture in silence, Maeve on the grey mare, Padraig and two of his most trusted men on foot, their boots muffled in the wet grass. The moon was thin, half-hidden behind ragged clouds, and the land stretched dark and featureless, the ruined granary a distant shadow.

They reached the edge of the pasture just as a figure emerged from the barn, dragging a sack behind them.

Niamh.

Maeve dismounted, her boots sinking in the soft earth. “Niamh,” she called, her voice carrying across the field.

The girl froze. The sack slipped from her fingers, spilling something white—salt. A sack of salt, meant for the pasture’s grazing ground, meant to poison the ground and kill the grass, to destroy the last of Maeve’s hope for winter feed.

“Missus,” Niamh whispered, her face gone white as the salt itself.

Padraig seized her arm before she could run. Niamh struggled, but it was no use—the men flanked her, and she sagged, all the fight draining out of her.

“Take her back to the house,” Maeve said. “I want answers before she leaves this land.”

In the study, with the fire crackling and the household servants dismissed, Niamh sat across from Maeve, her hands bound, her face a mixture of defiance and terror. Ashworth stood by the door, arms crossed. Padraig loomed behind the girl.

“Who sent you?” Maeve asked.

Niamh’s lips pressed together.

“I know it wasn’t Cusack,” Maeve said. “He’s a petty man who deals in debts and threats. This—salt on my pasture, the granary fire—this is ruin. This is Sir Godfrey’s work.”

Niamh’s eyes flickered at the name.

Maeve leaned forward. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll let you walk to the road with your wages. Lie to me, and Padraig will see you delivered to the magistrate for arson—and the fire at my granary cost me a third of my winter stores, girl. That’s a hanging matter.”

Niamh’s shoulders shook. She was young, Maeve realized—perhaps nineteen, a lifetime of poverty behind her and little but fear ahead.

“He promised me passage to America,” Niamh said, her voice breaking. “My brother is there, in Boston. He said he’d send me to him if I did what he asked.”

“Sir Godfrey?”

Niamh nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He said you were a tyrant, that you’d hound your tenants off the land and keep the profits for yourself. He said the granary fire was justice, that you starved your people while you ate well.”

Maeve felt the words like a knife in her gut. “And you believed him?”

Niamh looked down. “I wanted to.”

Ashworth stepped forward. “The granary fire,” he said, his voice low and careful. “Did Sir Godfrey tell you to set it? Give you the means?”

Niamh shook her head. “No. He didn’t tell me until after. He said a man on the inside had done it, and that I was to be his eyes and ears from then on. He wanted to know your movements, your plans, where the new stores would be kept.”

“A man on the inside,” Maeve repeated, her blood running cold. “He named him?”

Niamh hesitated. Maeve held her gaze, unblinking.

“He didn’t name him,” Niamh said at last. “He said his man was close to you, that he heard everything you said, that you’d never catch him because you trusted him too much.”

Maeve’s mind raced. Padraig loyal. Cook, a fixture since childhood. Molly’s mother, absent with sickness. The stable boy, weak-chinned and simple. Ashworth—

Ashworth, standing at the door, his face unreadable.

*He was once an agent for Sir Godfrey*, a voice whispered in her mind. *He told you that himself.*

She pushed the thought aside. He’d proven himself since—helped her clear the debt, confessed the truth of his father’s test. He had kissed her in the rain, and she had pulled away, and he had sworn to reveal everything the next day, but the granary fire had swept that promise away into the chaos of survival.

Maeve stood. “Your wages will be paid,” she said to Niamh. “Padraig will take you to the road at dawn. If you value your life, you’ll not return to this county.”

Niamh sobbed her thanks. Padraig led her out, and the door closed behind them.

Maeve stood alone in the study with Ashworth. The fire crackled. Rain drummed against the windows, a hard, steady beat like a second heart.

“It’s Godfrey,” she said. “The fire, the informant, all of it. He’s not just after revenge for the deed—he wants this land. Every acre of it. He wants me gone, and he’ll burn everything I have to do it.”

Ashworth moved closer, his face tight with something that looked like guilt. “Maeve, there’s something I should have told you. About Godfrey—about his plans for this estate.”

She met his eyes. “Then tell me now.”

But before he could speak, a knock came at the door. Padraig’s voice, urgent and low.

“Missus—the girl’s gone.”

Maeve turned. “Gone? You said you’d hold her till dawn.”

“I did,” Padraig’s voice came through the wood. “But she’s not in her room. The window’s open, and there’s blood on the sill. Someone took her—or she was taken.”

A cold dread seized Maeve’s chest. She wrenched the door open. Padraig stood in the hallway, his face pale in the candlelight.

“There’s something else,” he said. “We found this by the window.”

He held out a scrap of paper, crumpled and damp. Maeve took it, smoothing it flat. The handwriting was neat, educated, male.

*The widow underestimates me. She taught me patience, but I am done waiting. Tell no one of this night’s work, or the girl’s blood is on your hands.*

There was no signature. There didn’t need to be.

Sir Godfrey’s informant was not just close to her.

He was in her house, still, watching, waiting.

And he had taken the girl to silence her.