Part 8
“You sound as though you’re discussing someone else.”
“I am trying not to say something I may later regret.”
“What would you say?”
His eyes remained on the case between them.
“That I hope she is frightened.”
Clara understood the feeling more than she wanted to.
When the car reached her street, photographers were already waiting.
Harland’s security team cleared a path to the building. Flashes struck the windows. Clara shrank back.
Edmund took off his black tailcoat and held it around her shoulders before the door opened.
She almost objected, then saw that the ivory gown would make her instantly identifiable.
They crossed the pavement beneath shouting questions.
“Miss Vale, are you Eleanor Ashcombe’s daughter?”
“Lord Ashcombe, did your family conceal a child?”
“Was Lady Wren involved?”
Clara kept her head lowered. Edmund walked beside her, one hand near her elbow but not touching.
Inside the building, Mrs. Dyer from the ground floor stood in her nightdress holding a broom.
“I told them to clear off,” she said. “One of them offered me two hundred pounds for a photograph of you taking out the rubbish.”
Sophie looked impressed. “Did you take it?”
“Of course not.”
Mrs. Dyer paused.
“I asked for five.”
Clara laughed despite herself.
Edmund, still in his white waistcoat and bow tie, looked from the broom to the old woman.
Mrs. Dyer pointed it at him. “You’re not coming upstairs unless she says so.”
Clara turned to Edmund.
He had spent the night commanding palace staff, doctors, security officers, and a chamberlain. He waited for her permission without protest.
“You can come up,” she said. “For ten minutes.”
Her apartment was small enough that Edmund appeared to occupy too much of it merely by standing inside. He looked at the secondhand sofa, the books stacked beneath the radiator, and the piano squeezed against the wall.
Margaret’s photograph stood on top of it.
Clara noticed him looking.
“That was my mother.”
Edmund approached the photograph.
Margaret Vale had broad cheeks, silvering hair, and a smile that made formal photographs seem like private jokes. She wore the same ivory purse tucked beneath one arm.
“She raised Eleanor’s child while knowing who she was,” he said.
“She raised me.”
“Yes.”
The correction settled between them.
Edmund bowed his head. “I am grateful to her.”
Clara did not know whether gratitude from him would have pleased Margaret or made her suspicious.
Probably both.
Sophie disappeared into the kitchen and returned with three mugs.
Edmund accepted instant coffee without comment.
Clara sat at the piano bench because the sofa was covered with discarded clothes hidden beneath a blanket. The folded letter lay on her lap.
“What happens tomorrow?” she asked.
“Today,” Sophie corrected. “It’s nearly two.”
Edmund looked at Clara. “Dr. Levin can arrange a test at a private clinic. You will choose whether to attend.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then we proceed without it.”
“How?”
“We investigate the letter and Beatrice’s records.”
“You would believe me?”
“I believe the key belonged to Eleanor. I believe Beatrice took part in separating a child from her. Whether you are that child is a question evidence can answer.”
Clara appreciated the distinction even though it hurt.
“I’ll take the test,” she said.
Sophie placed a mug beside her.
Edmund took a card from his pocket and wrote a number on the back.
“This reaches me directly.”
“Do you usually give personal numbers to women you meet at balls?”
“No.”
“Good. I’d hate to feel ordinary.”
He almost smiled.
At the door, he stopped beside Margaret’s photograph.
“Miss Vale.”
“Clara.”
The name seemed to surprise him.
“Clara, Beatrice may have told us only what she believes can be proven. Do not assume the worst is behind us.”
She looked at the letter.
“I don’t.”
After he left, Sophie locked the door and wedged a kitchen chair beneath the handle, though the lock was new and the chair would have done little.
Clara removed the gown in the bathroom. A loose thread hung from the satin near the hem. She thought of the woman who had altered it, pinning the fabric while saying Clara had the narrow shoulders designers imagined all women possessed.
On the inside of her right glove, a faint gray line marked where the key had rested.
Clara sat on the closed toilet and cried again, silently this time.
Sophie waited outside.
When Clara opened the door, her friend handed her an old T-shirt and said, “You don’t have to decide how you feel tonight.”
“Apparently I have two mothers, a grandfather, and an alleged kidnapper. I should probably form an opinion.”
“You’re tired. Your opinions are terrible when you’re tired.”
“That’s rude.”
“You once decided to cut your own fringe at three in the morning.”
“It grew back.”
“Not emotionally.”
They slept in the same bed as they had during university, with the curtains shut against camera flashes. Clara woke at six to the sound of a lullaby she could not place.
For several seconds she thought someone was singing in the room.
Then she realized the melody was in her head.
The DNA test was completed that afternoon.
Dr. Levin’s clinic used a discreet entrance beneath an office building near Harley Street. Clara provided a cheek swab. Edmund did the same. Neither watched the other.
Results would take two days.
The police searched Beatrice’s house that morning and recovered the box beneath the floorboards. It contained ledgers, letters, photographs, clinic invoices, and three passports issued under Eleanor’s name and variations of it.
One letter mentioned Morrow House.
Harland found the name before sunset. It was a privately funded residential home near the French-Italian border, established for women recovering from trauma, addiction, or family violence. It had closed four years earlier after the death of its founder.
The records had been transferred to a charitable archive in Lyon.
May you like
Edmund called Clara.
She listened while standing in the community center’s locked music room. Reporters waited outside the main doors. Classes had been canceled because several parents feared their children would appear in photographs.
