Part 2
Clara read the final words twice.
Edmund lifted the cover and removed the music box. The curator stationed nearby began to object, recognized him, and converted the objection into a cough.
“This lock has never been opened,” Edmund said.
Clara looked at the key. “Then how do you know it fits?”
“Because I commissioned it.”
He placed the box on the velvet and guided the key toward a narrow opening beneath the silver flowers.
His hand trembled once.
He stopped, closed his fingers, and tried again.
The key entered without resistance.
A tiny metallic catch released when he turned it. The lid rose slowly on its spring. A melody emerged, thin with age but unmistakably tender, four descending notes followed by a pause and a gentle return.
Clara drew in a breath.
Inside the lid, beneath a concealed panel, was a painted miniature that had not been visible when the box was displayed. It showed a young woman with dark hair loose around her shoulders, holding a newborn wrapped in ivory cloth. The painter had captured exhaustion beneath the mother’s smile and one small hand resting against her collarbone.
Clara touched her chest.
“I know that song,” she whispered.
Edmund did not look at the music box. He looked at her.
“From where?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice thinned. “Someone sang it to me. When I was little. Before I could—”
She stopped.
A memory had opened without permission: darkness, warmth, the rise and fall of someone’s breath, a woman’s voice cracking on the third note and beginning again. Clara had spent years believing it belonged to Margaret Vale, though Margaret had always denied being able to carry a tune.
Tears gathered in Clara’s eyes, but she did not let them fall. Her hand remained against her chest as if she needed to feel the steadiness of her own breathing.
Edmund looked from her face to the painted woman.
The resemblance was not exact. Eleanor’s eyes had been gray, and her mouth had carried the Ashcombe severity even when she laughed. But the shape of the brow, the delicate chin, and the slight asymmetry of the smile were there.
Behind them, Beatrice lowered her fan.
Edmund heard its carved handle strike the side of her gown.
He turned.
For a moment she had no defense ready. Fear showed plainly in her face, naked and involuntary.
Then she lifted the fan again.
“Who gave you the letter?” Edmund asked Clara.
His suspicion was aimed elsewhere now.
Clara looked toward Beatrice.
Edmund followed her gaze.
The tenderness in his face vanished.
Beatrice’s lips parted, but no sound came.
Before anyone could speak, the orchestra ended its waltz. Applause rolled through the ballroom, bright and oblivious. The noise gave Beatrice three seconds in which to recover, and she used every one of them.
“You should not do this here,” she said.
Edmund took both of Clara’s hands.
His grip was gentle, almost formal, yet Clara could feel the strain in his fingers.
“Who gave you the letter?”
“My mother said a woman brought me to her,” Clara answered. “A woman wearing ruby earrings.”
Every remaining trace of color left Beatrice’s face.
Edmund released Clara and turned fully toward her.
The applause faded. A new piece began, lighter than the moment deserved.
Beatrice looked at the guests gathering near the exhibition and seemed to calculate how many of them had heard. She had spent her life understanding rooms: where power stood, where gossip collected, which doors allowed escape without appearing to flee.
“This is not a conversation for a ballroom,” she said.
“No,” Edmund replied. “It is not.”
He closed the music box. The lullaby stopped in the middle of a phrase.
Clara flinched at the silence.
Edmund saw it and opened the lid again. The melody resumed, a little warped, as though the mechanism had taken offense at being interrupted.
That small act unsettled Clara more than his accusation had. He had noticed what the sound meant to her before he had any right to care.
“Mr. Harland,” Edmund called.
His private secretary appeared from behind a cluster of diplomats. Thomas Harland was forty, discreet, and gifted with the expression of a man who had never overheard anything in his life.
“Ask the foundation director to announce a brief technical delay in the exhibition,” Edmund said. “Then have the west library cleared.”
Harland glanced at Clara, the open music box, and Beatrice’s strained grip on her fan.
“Yes, my lord.”
“And find Dr. Levin.”
Beatrice laughed once.
There was no amusement in it.
“You are summoning a physician?”
“I am summoning a man who can collect evidence properly.”
Clara pulled her hands back toward herself. “Evidence?”
Edmund’s attention returned to her. “I will not ask you to accept anything based on resemblance or an old melody.”
“That is not what I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about?”
Clara looked at the guests pretending not to stare.
“That you have already decided what I am.”
The words stopped him.
She placed the sealed letter back in her purse.
Beatrice’s eyes followed it.
Edmund noticed.
“Miss Vale,” he said, with more care than before, “I have decided only that the key belonged to my daughter.”
“Your missing daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And that picture shows her with a baby.”
“Yes.”
“And now everyone in this room is going to decide the rest.”
The nearest guests shifted their attention to paintings, curtains, and one another’s jewelry.
Edmund had spent decades enduring public scrutiny without allowing it to alter his breathing. Clara watched him realize that she did not possess the same armor.
“We will leave separately,” he said. “You first, with Mr. Harland.”
“I came with someone.”
“Who?”
“My friend Sophie. She works with me.”
May you like
Edmund looked around as though a young woman employed outside aristocratic circles might be identified by different plumage.
Clara pointed toward a column where Sophie Bell stood in a borrowed green dress, holding two untouched glasses of champagne and looking prepared to use one as a weapon.
