Part 6
“Not more than it belongs to you.”
She glanced at the music box. “You knew her.”
“I knew part of her.”
The answer surprised them both.
He sat in the chair opposite Clara. It was the first time he had lowered himself to her level since entering the library.
“My daughter and I quarreled before she disappeared,” he said. “She asked me for money. I thought she was being manipulated by someone she refused to name. I told her I would help only if she came home and accepted conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“That she end certain friendships. Submit her finances to family oversight. Speak to a physician I trusted.”
“Be controlled.”
“Yes.”
The bluntness checked Clara’s anger.
Edmund looked at the floor. “At the time, I called it protection.”
Beatrice closed her eyes.
Clara thought of Eleanor’s line: She will say she acted to protect me.
“Everyone was protecting her,” Clara said. “She must have been terrified.”
No one contradicted her.
A knock sounded at the door.
The palace chamberlain entered, wearing an expression of grave diplomatic concern.
“My lord, several guests witnessed the incident near the exhibition. A photographer captured an image of Miss Vale with the music box.”
Edmund stood.
“Confiscate the camera.”
The chamberlain hesitated. “The image has already been sent to an agency.”
Sophie whispered, “Modern technology. Charming.”
The chamberlain continued. “The palace communications office needs guidance.”
Edmund’s reflex was immediate. “There will be no statement.”
Clara looked at him.
He caught the look and stopped.
“What do you want?” he asked her.
She had no answer ready. She wanted to return to the small apartment she shared with Sophie, remove the gown, scrub the palace scent from her skin, and hear Margaret complain that rich people never served enough food at formal events. She wanted the letter to be less specific. She wanted the woman in the photograph to have a face.
“I don’t want my name released,” she said.
“It may already be known,” Harland warned. “The guest list was published.”
“Then don’t confirm anything.”
Edmund nodded to the chamberlain. “Say only that an item in the exhibition required inspection and that speculation concerning a guest would be inappropriate.”
The chamberlain left.
Beatrice rose.
Harland blocked the door again.
“I need air,” she said.
“You need legal counsel,” Edmund replied.
Clara studied her.
“Are you going to tell the police?”
Beatrice looked at her with a strange, wounded surprise. “Would you prefer I didn’t?”
“I asked what you were going to do.”
“I will speak to them.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
Edmund’s expression suggested he did not trust the answer.
Beatrice reached for her fan, then left it on the mantel.
“Before I do, there is something you should know. Eleanor’s address in the letter was not her last one.”
Clara’s heart struck once, hard.
“You knew where she was?”
“For a while.”
“Is she alive?”
Beatrice looked toward the sealed windows.
“She was alive twelve years ago.”
The blankness inside Clara cracked.
Edmund gripped the back of a chair.
“Where?”
“A village outside Montpellier. She called herself Elena Rose.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“She asked me not to.”
Clara stood so fast the chair legs scraped the floor.
“You expect us to believe that?”
“No. But it is true.”
“You said you didn’t know where she went.”
“I said I did not know where she went after Saint Orlan. Years later, she contacted me.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted the name of the family raising you.”
“And you told her?”
Beatrice’s silence gave the answer.
Clara stepped toward her. “Why not?”
“By then Margaret had moved you to England. She was afraid Eleanor would take you.”
“She was her mother.”
“She was ill.”
“You had made her ill.”
“No.” Beatrice’s voice sharpened. “I worsened it. I frightened her. I lied to her. I will answer for those things. But Eleanor had been unwell before you were born, and after Adrian died she became reckless. She stopped sleeping. She heard him speaking in empty rooms. She walked into traffic carrying you.”
Clara’s anger faltered.
Edmund said, “You never told me that.”
“She made me promise.”
“You seem to have honored only the promises that kept her isolated.”
Beatrice took the blow without defending herself.
“When she contacted me years later, she was stable,” she said. “She had built a life. She wanted to know about Clara, but she was afraid that returning would expose what she had done while ill.”
“What had she done?” Clara asked.
Beatrice glanced at Harland and Dr. Levin.
Clara understood.
“Get out,” she said.
Dr. Levin left immediately. Harland waited for Edmund’s nod, then followed. Sophie stayed.
Clara did not ask her to leave.
Beatrice sat again.
“Before you were born, Eleanor suspected my husband had helped divert foundation funds. She entered his office and took records. He caught her. They struggled. He fell down the stairs.”
Edmund’s face changed. “Martin’s fall was not an accident?”
“He had been drinking. He grabbed her. She pushed him away.”
“He died three days later.”
“Yes.”
“And you used that against her.”
“I told her the police would call it murder.”
“Would they have?”
“I don’t know.”
Clara stared at Beatrice. “You told a grieving pregnant woman she had killed your husband, then stole her child until she signed away the evidence.”
Beatrice’s voice dropped. “Yes.”
Sophie stood beside Clara, close enough that their sleeves touched.
“Why would Eleanor contact you after that?” Clara asked.
“Because trauma does not make people sensible. Because I was the only person who knew everything. Because she hated me. Because once, before any of this, she loved me like a sister.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she still in France?”
“Not when we last spoke.”
“When was that?”
“September 2014.”
“What did she say?”
Beatrice looked directly at Clara.
“She said she had seen you.”
The room seemed to narrow around them.
“Where?”
May you like
“In London. Outside your school.”
Clara remembered no elegant stranger, no woman watching from a car. She remembered rain, packed lunches, a broken green gate, Margaret waving from across the road.
