Read Chapter 25: The Test of Loyalty

The knock came at the kitchen door, and Maeve knew before she opened it that it would be Ashworth. The servants had gone to their beds an hour past, and the house had settled into that creaking quiet that followed disaster. She had not slept since the fire.

“You should not be here,” she said, but she stepped aside.

His coat was damp with November mist, and he carried a lantern though the hall was lit. He looked at her with that careful way he had, as if reading a ledger he suspected of hiding errors.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “It should have been told long ago.”

She led him to the study and poured whiskey from her husband’s decanter. It felt like a betrayal to use it, but she needed the warmth. Ashworth took the glass but did not drink.

“I was in Sir Godfrey’s employ,” he said.

Maeve’s hand stilled on her own glass. “You told me you were his agent when you came. That is not new.”

“That is not all I was.” He set the glass down untouched. “My father purchased your husband’s debt from Sir Godfrey’s factor. But before that arrangement, I worked directly for Sir Godfrey. I was sent here first as his surveyor—to map your land, your yields, your weaknesses.”

The word *weaknesses* hung in the air between them. Maeve felt the floor shift beneath her, though it was solid stone.

“You surveyed my land,” she said slowly. “And then you were sent to me as the agent of that debt, with my tenants starving and my granary burning.”

“No.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “I was sent to map the estate so that Sir Godfrey could annex it. He claims your husband owed him a debt of honor—gambling debts from before your marriage. He has documents, or so he claims. He intended to call them due this winter, when you would be weakest, and take the land in settlement.”

Maeve’s breath caught. “Take it? He cannot take it. The estate is entailed to my husband’s line.”

“The entail dies with your husband. You have no son. No living heir his solicitors could not buy off. The land would revert to the Crown, and Sir Godfrey has friends in Dublin who would see it granted to him cheaply.”

She stood, and the chair scraped against the flags. “And you mapped it for him. You knew the weak places in the fences, the fallow fields, the tenants who would not fight.”

“I did.” He rose too, but made no move toward her. “And then I met you, and I saw what he intended to destroy.”

“You expect me to believe you changed your allegiance for the sake of my blue eyes?”

“I changed it because you are the first person in this county who did not look at me as either a servant to be used or an Englishman to be despised. You looked at me as a man who knew his ledgers.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “And because I saw your tenants rebuild a wall after the spring flood, not because you paid them but because you stood in the rain beside them.”

Maeve turned to the window. The night was black, the fields invisible beyond the glass. Somewhere out there, a man she had trusted with her household had set her granary alight. And here, in her study, stood another man who had come to her with a surveyor’s map and a hidden purpose.

“Why tell me now?” she asked.

“Because he will move soon. The fire was a message—to you, and to me. He knows I have turned against him. He will not wait for winter.”

“Then I am to be crushed between two Englishmen fighting over the carcass of my land.”

“No.” His voice was quiet but hard. “I came to you tonight to swear on my father’s name—which is worth little, I know—that I am done with Godfrey. I will not map your weaknesses. I will map his.”

She turned back to face him. The lamplight carved his face into angles and shadows, and she thought of the kiss in the rain, the way he had pulled back as if burned. She had regretted it. She had not regretted it. Both were true.

“He wants the estate itself, then,” she said. “Not revenge for my husband’s refusal to sell.”

“He wants the river frontage and the mill rights. He wants your tenant rolls—the families who work this land are the best laborers in the county, and he means to pay them scab wages on his new drainage schemes. He wants your name wiped from the registry because your father-in-law refused him a seat at the Hunt Club forty years ago.”

Maeve laughed, a short, bitter sound. “He would burn my people’s food because a dead man would not let him ride to hounds?”

“He would. Men like Godfrey collect slights the way other men collect coin. They are the only currency they understand.”

She took up her glass and drank. The whiskey burned going down, and she welcomed it. “Then I will end him.”

Ashworth raised an eyebrow. “End him?”

“He has informants in my house. He has documents he claims prove my husband’s debt. He has the ear of the magistrates and the blessing of the landlords’ association.” She set the glass down. “But he has one weakness.”

“Which is?”

“He believes women are fools.” She smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “He sent Niamh to plant a spy in my kitchen and thought I would not find her out. He set my granary alight and thought I would collapse. He believes I am a grieving widow who will sell her land for a fair price and retreat to her mother’s cottage.”

“And what will you do?”

“I will make him believe that lie a while longer.” She moved toward the desk where her husband’s ledgers still lay, charred at the edges from the salvage. “I will play the frightened widow, and I will find his debt documents, and I will discover which of my own people he has bought. Then I will burn his influence out of this county root and branch.”

Ashworth was quiet for a long moment. “You understand what you are asking. Godfrey has friends in London as well as Dublin. My own father—”

“Your father purchased my debt,” she said. “You told me that already. Does he know you have turned?”

“He does not. He believes I am still gathering information for Godfrey’s claim.”

“Then let him believe it.” Maeve looked at him directly. “You will feed him false reports. You will tell him I am weak, frightened, ready to sell. And when Godfrey moves against me, he will find that the weak widow has teeth.”

Ashworth held her gaze. “You trust me with this?”

“I trust you no further than I could throw you.” She allowed herself a small, tired smile. “But you are the only ally I have who knows the man’s mind. And you chose to tell me the truth tonight when you could have stayed silent and taken his coin.”

“I would not take his coin.”

“No. I believe you would not.” She extended her hand. “Partners, then. In this and in the ledgers.”

He took her hand, and his grip was warm and firm. “Partners.”

A sound came from the hallway—soft footsteps, quickly silenced. Maeve’s head turned toward the door. The informant was still in the house, still watching, still reporting.

“Go,” she said quietly. “Through the kitchen. Let them see you leave looking troubled, as if I had turned you away.”

Ashworth released her hand. “What will you tell the household of our arrangement?”

“I will tell them I am keeping a leash on the Englishman,” she said. “Which is close enough to the truth.”

He almost smiled. “Goodnight, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Ashworth.”

He left, and she listened to his footsteps cross the flagstones toward the kitchen. When they had faded, she moved to the hearth and pulled the brick loose behind the woodpile where she had hidden her father’s unopened letter.

She had not opened it. She had told herself she was not ready. Now, with Godfrey moving toward her estate and the informant moving through her house, she thought she might have waited too long.

She broke the seal.