What Happened at Midnight(24)
But her eyes widened and she stood up half out of her chair, reaching for the metal.
“Mr. Mason,” she said, her voice growing temporarily raspy, “how extraordinary.” Her fingers touched the earring, pressing it into his palm. “I had never thought to see this again. I lost it so long ago—before my marriage, even.”
She took it gently from him. John said nothing as she peered at it, lost in a long-ago time.
Finally, she looked up. “My brother Magnus gave me this for my twenty-first birthday. He passed away just a few years ago.” Her fist closed around the jewelry, and she pulled it close to her chest. “Where did you find it? How did you know it was mine?”
“Lady Patsworth found it at Doyle’s Grange.”
She frowned. “But if she found it, why were you tasked to return it?”
“She is not allowed to pay any calls.” John was unsure how much else he would have to say to convince the woman.
But Lady Northword leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Ah.”
She’d been a viscountess and the leading lady of this region for nearly half a century. What Lady Northword would have seen in that time, John could only begin to guess. She was no fool, that was for certain. She inclined her head to look out the windows in the direction of her onetime home.
“All is not well at Doyle’s Grange,” she said softly.
“No, my lady.” He drew a deep breath. “Lady Patsworth sends this to you with her regards, and her most desperate plea for your assistance. She would have brought it herself, were it allowed. She needs you.”
Lady Northword looked still to Doyle’s Grange, unmoving, as if caught in the grip of some long-ago memory. “Nobody should be imprisoned like that. What must be done?” she asked.
“Invite her to dinner,” John said. “She needs to get away from her husband’s domain. You’ll have to make the invitation in person…”
He trailed off, realizing he was giving commands to a viscountess. But she simply raised an eyebrow and motioned him to continue.
“And you’ll have to insist that she come—no excuses allowed. If her husband complains, insist that Beauregard and I have seen her strong and well. You own Doyle’s Grange, do you not? And as nobility, you and your husband are the only ones in the area that Sir Walter cannot truly refuse—if you insist. Insist, and we’ll manage the rest.”
Her eyebrow rose even higher. “We? That is you and…Lady Patsworth?”
He met her eyes straight on. “Lady Patsworth has a companion. We were once engaged.” He frowned. “In fact, as the engagement was never officially broken off, we are still betrothed.”
She sat back in her chair and gave him a curiously pleased grin.
“You see,” he repeated. “There’s nothing strange about it.”
“Consider it done,” she said. She raised the piece of jewelry in the air. “And give Lady Patsworth my compliments, if you please.”
MARY DID NOT OFTEN MOURN the loss of her gowns. But a week after she and John had made their plans, as she dressed for the dinner party, she wished she still had one of her finest. Her blue silk, for instance. She was, after all, preparing for battle. The right gown could serve as both sword and shield.
She’d contemplated her Sunday best, but the dove-gray gown had no pockets. If everything went well tonight, she might never return to this room. And if she was going to be restricted to the contents of her pockets, she wanted those pockets to be as large as possible.
The practical took most of the space available: a comb, a toothbrush, a sliver of hard soap, and a small hand towel—she’d learned in her last desperate flight from home that a lady should never be without a towel.
Aside from that…
She’d been carting around the damning pages she’d sliced from her father’s account book for too long. She couldn’t leave them here to be discovered by Sir Walter; after all she’d gone through to keep her father’s secret, there was no point betraying his shame to her worst enemy.
But she didn’t want to keep those words near her heart any longer. His note had all the sentimental value of a bludgeon. It was time to let the words go.
Sighing, she lit a candle and fed the pages into the flame. But as the edge blackened and smoked, her eye was caught by the numbers on the reverse of his final message—not blank, of course; it was an account book. She’d seen those numbers a hundred times without thinking about what they meant.
The last entries were not surprising or strange. But they’d never before set in motion the cascade of possibilities that rushed through her now. She’d been so used to seeing those words as a chain, holding her in place, that she’d not recognized that they could be something else entirely. She’d seen only what her father had taken—those thousands of pounds, spent on her behalf. She hadn’t thought about what he’d left behind.
The paper caught fire right at that moment, a thin lick of orange darting up. Mary dropped it on the desk and beat her fist into the flame, smothering it before it could consume the future she’d glimpsed.
She brushed away ash and the charred edges of cracked paper before unfolding the pages and surveying the damage.
The numbers were still there, unburnt.
When John talked of thousands of pounds missing, she’d thought of the money her father had spent. But the way he spoke, he made it sound as if nothing had remained. Her father had taken thousands, but he’d husbanded his ill-gotten gains. The other partners should have recovered quite a bit.