Chương 2
Serena did. The flap had not been sealed.
Mara felt Harrison’s attention shift toward her without his looking away from his wife.
“That isn’t it,” Mara said.
Paul came down the remaining steps.
Serena’s gaze settled on Mara. She looked neither angry nor surprised. That was worse.
“You saw an ivory envelope in a dark room during a power failure,” she said. “You ran barefoot into a storm. Perhaps we should not make legal conclusions from the evening.”
“It had the law firm’s seal.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“You were frightened.”
“I was looking at it from six feet away.”
“You were spying from six feet away.”
Harrison took the false envelope, opened it, and found nothing inside. He folded the flap once between his fingers.
“Where is the packet?” he asked.
Serena turned her face toward the rain.
A car horn sounded faintly from somewhere beyond the rear grounds.
Paul touched his radio.
“North gate,” a voice said through the speaker. “Vehicle just exited before lock confirmation.”
“What vehicle?” Paul asked.
“Mrs. Vale’s town car.”
Serena’s driver had been waiting behind the conservatory.
Harrison looked at her.
Serena lifted one shoulder.
“You said I could keep the car through the weekend.”
“Who is driving?”
“Leon.”
“What did you give him?”
“Nothing that belongs to you.”
Paul was already issuing instructions into the radio. The north gate had closed behind the vehicle. The estate’s outer cameras showed taillights moving toward the county road, but the rain had blurred the plate. Everyone knew which car it was. That did not mean Paul could send men after it without deciding what law had been broken and whose orders mattered more.
Harrison took his phone from his coat. Serena watched him unlock it.
“Call Leon,” he said.
“I don’t manage his phone.”
“You pay him.”
“Technically, you do.”
The remark landed with the intimacy of an old cut. Harrison’s thumb stopped above the screen.
Mara felt herself sway. The cold had reached her hands. Harrison noticed and looked down at her feet.
“Get inside,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m wet.”
Serena stepped closer. She smelled of tuberose and the brandy she sometimes drank after dinner.
“Mara should change,” she said. “Then perhaps she can explain why she had the only mechanical key capable of opening the rear service door.”
“I took it after the power failed.”
“Before or after you entered the study?”
“I didn’t enter the study.”
“You were standing in it when I found you.”
“No. I was in the hall.”
Serena looked at Harrison.
“She has always been very exact when she lies.”
The sentence struck Mara harder than an accusation shouted in anger would have. Serena had known her since she was seventeen. She had attended Ruth Ellis’s funeral in a cream coat and stood beside Harrison under a black umbrella. She had once paid for Mara’s textbooks without being asked and then never mentioned it. The cruelty now was not impulsive. Serena had selected it.
Harrison removed his coat and placed it around Mara’s shoulders.
“Paul, no one leaves the house,” he said. “Not until we know what was taken.”
Serena gave a short laugh.
“You cannot detain your staff and your wife because a house assistant had a dramatic evening.”
“I can close my own gates.”
“And when I ask the police to open them?”
“You may explain the missing legal packet while you wait.”
Serena’s face changed then. Not much. Her mouth remained composed, and her back stayed straight. But the skin beneath her eyes tightened, and for the first time Mara saw real fear.
Harrison saw it too.
He looked toward Paul.
“Call the local police. Tell them confidential legal documents were removed from my study and may have left the property.”
Serena’s hand closed over the beaded fabric at her hip.
“You should speak to Ellen first.”
“I intend to.”
“Before involving police.”
“The packet was addressed to me.”
“It concerns me.”
“Then you should not have stolen it.”
She flinched at the word.
Harrison guided Mara up the steps. Serena remained at the bottom beneath the portico, black gown glittering in the reflected entrance light, rain blowing across the stone between them.
Mara glanced back only once.
Serena was not watching Harrison.
She was watching the brass key.
Inside, the warmth of the entrance hall made Mara’s skin hurt. Water collected beneath her feet on the black-and-white marble. Rachel Boone, the youngest housemaid, stood near the coat closet clutching a stack of clean towels. She looked at Mara, then at Serena coming through the doors behind them.
No one spoke.
Mrs. Kline emerged from the service corridor in a flour-dusted apron. She had been Ashbourne’s cook for thirty-one years and regarded emergencies as obstacles to dinner.
“Upstairs,” she told Mara. “Before you ruin the floor and catch pneumonia.”
“I need to stay.”
“You need dry clothes.”
“Harrison asked her what she needs,” Serena said.
Mrs. Kline did not look at Serena.
“I heard Mr. Vale ask for the police. Police take time. Wet satin doesn’t.”
Mara almost smiled. It would have been the wrong moment, which was why the impulse came.
Harrison nodded toward the stairs.
“Five minutes.”
Mara went.
Her room was on the third floor in a converted nursery that had not been used by the family in decades. The sloped ceiling made half the space impossible for Harrison to stand in without ducking, but Mara liked it because rain sounded close against the roof.
She locked the door and leaned against it.
Only then did she realize she was still holding the brass key.
Her fingers had closed around it so tightly that its teeth had pressed red marks into her palm. She set it on the dresser beside a photograph of her mother. Ruth Ellis stood in Ashbourne’s kitchen wearing a blue cotton shirt, one hand raised because she had been telling Mara not to take the picture.
May you like
Mara looked away.
She peeled off the wet dress, dried her hair badly, and put on black trousers, a gray sweater, and socks that felt too thick. Harrison’s coat lay across the bed. One sleeve dripped onto the floor.
