Part 2
Marcus’s eyes finally dropped from the wall. He looked at Clara, and shame passed across his face with such nakedness that he seemed suddenly older.
He walked to the tall glass doors leading into the central hall.
They were locked.
Julian heard metal turn in the mechanism, but Marcus did not use the ordinary brass key from his uniform pocket. He removed a smaller key from a chain beneath his jacket.
The lock opened.
Julian looked at it, then at Marcus.
Evelyn descended another step. “The doors are secured at night. That is hardly sinister.”
“No,” Julian said. “Not by itself.”
He returned his attention to Clara. “Can you stand?”
She placed one hand on the floor. Her arm trembled. When she tried to rise, her right knee gave way.
Julian moved instinctively, then stopped before touching her.
“May I help you?”
Her eyes filled.
That question, more than seeing him, seemed to wound her. She nodded.
He offered his hand palm upward.
Clara stared at it before placing her fingers against his. Her skin was cold. She tried to keep her sleeve over the marks, but the wet fabric clung to her wrist.
Julian helped her stand. She was lighter than he remembered. The change was not dramatic enough to announce itself from across a room, but he felt it in the absence of weight against his hand.
A shard of crystal had cut the side of her palm. A thin thread of blood mixed with the water.
He took a folded handkerchief from his coat and held it out. She accepted it without meeting his eyes.
“We’ll go through the front hall,” he said.
Evelyn came down two more steps. “And then what?”
“Then she chooses.”
“You think choice is what she needs?”
Clara’s grip tightened around the handkerchief.
Julian turned his face toward his mother. “It is the first thing she needs.”
“You’ve been in this house for three minutes.”
“And I’ve seen enough.”
“No, you’ve seen a broken vase and a woman with a history of instability.”
Clara’s breath caught.
Julian felt the slight withdrawal of her hand from his. He did not tighten his hold.
“My investigator will be here soon,” he said. “So will my solicitor.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. “You called Anika Shah, not the police.”
“I called the person I knew would answer.”
“Because some part of you understands this isn’t what it looks like.”
“I don’t know what it looks like yet.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t behave as if you do.”
Julian glanced again at the red bands around Clara’s wrist. “I know what fear looks like.”
Evelyn’s gaze hardened. “You always did prefer a simple villain.”
The words landed where she intended. Julian had spent most of his childhood being told that his judgments were too clean, his loyalties too absolute, his anger too quiet to be reasonable. His mother had a way of taking any moral certainty and making it sound adolescent.
Six months earlier, when Clara vanished, Evelyn had sat in Julian’s study with both hands wrapped around untouched tea and told him that Clara had always been fragile beneath her self-control. She had produced a letter in Clara’s handwriting. It said the engagement had become unbearable, that she was leaving England, that Julian must not follow her.
He had followed anyway.
He had followed bank withdrawals, passport scans, airport footage, medical records obtained by legal request, and photographs too blurred to prove anything. Each trail ended just before he reached it.
Now Clara stood beside him in a servant’s dress, afraid to look at the woman who had handed him that letter.
Julian removed his coat and held it out.
Clara hesitated before allowing him to place it around her shoulders. The hem nearly touched the floor. She gathered it closed with her uninjured hand.
Evelyn looked at the gesture with open contempt.
“You’re reenacting the role you enjoy most,” she said. “The rescuer who arrives after everyone else has done the difficult work.”
Julian looked at Marcus. “Is there anyone between here and the front door?”
Marcus swallowed. “Mr. Crane is in the west corridor.”
“Security?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he armed?”
Marcus glanced toward Evelyn.
Julian stepped slightly between Clara and the staircase. “I asked you.”
“I believe he carries a licensed sidearm while on the premises.”
The information changed the room again.
Evelyn’s face tightened. “Daniel Crane is employed to protect this house.”
“From whom?”
She did not answer.
Julian took out his phone and called his driver.
“Owen, bring the car to the front steps. Stay in it. Lock the doors until you see me.”
He ended the call and dialed emergency services.
Clara caught his wrist.
The contact was so sudden that he looked down.
She shook her head.
“Clara—”
“Not yet.” Her voice was barely audible. It sounded unused. “Please.”
Evelyn lifted her chin, satisfaction returning by a fraction. “You see?”
Julian ignored her. “Why not yet?”
Clara glanced toward Marcus and then the open garden doors. “Lucy.”
The name took Julian a moment.
Clara’s younger sister lived in Bristol and worked as a pediatric nurse. Julian had last seen her at the engagement dinner, laughing too loudly after two glasses of wine and apologizing to a footman for dropping a spoon.
“What about Lucy?”
Clara’s eyes shifted toward Evelyn.
His mother’s expression did not change.
Julian understood enough.
“Is she in danger?”
Clara’s fingers trembled around his sleeve. “I don’t know.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
Clara looked down. “September.”
It was March.
Julian’s thumb moved across the edge of his phone. “I can have someone check on her without calling the police here.”
Clara shook her head harder. “They said they would know.”
“Who said?”
Her gaze moved again toward the west corridor.
Footsteps sounded beyond the open doors.
May you like
Marcus went pale.
A large man in a dark suit entered the central hall. Daniel Crane had the wide, settled posture of someone accustomed to taking up space without apology. Julian remembered him vaguely from his father’s funeral, standing beside a line of black cars with an earpiece in one ear.
