Mara could barely hear him over the pounding of her heart.
“What did he do?”
“They fought.”
“And?”
“He pushed Thomas.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Ocean.
Cliffs.
An empty car.
Her mother’s years of waiting.
Her own seventeen years of wondering.
“He fell?”
“Yes.”
“Into the ocean?”
Adrian hesitated.
Mrs. Finch noticed.
“So you don’t know.”
Adrian looked at her.
“What?”
“You weren’t there.”
“No.”
“Then you only know what Charles wrote.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Finch stared toward the dark windows.
“Thomas didn’t die that night.”
Mara opened her eyes.
“What did you say?”
The old housekeeper’s hands trembled.
“I saw him three days later.”
Mara stopped breathing.
“He came here.”
Adrian went pale.
Mrs. Finch continued.
“It was after midnight. He was injured. His head was bandaged. He came through the servants’ entrance.”
“Why?”
“To see Harrison.”
“Harrison was already dead,” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Finch looked at Mara.
“When Thomas learned that, he asked for one thing.”
“What?”
“The original will.”
“Did he find it?”
“No.”
Mrs. Finch swallowed.
“Then he left.”
Mara’s voice became barely audible.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never saw him again?”
Mrs. Finch shook her head.
Mara turned away.
Her father had survived.
For three days at least.
He could have come home.
He could have called.
Instead he had vanished voluntarily.
Why?
Then she remembered the ring.
“If he came here after the cliff, why was the ring in Charles’s safe?”
Mrs. Finch looked confused.
“He was wearing it when he came here.”
The room went still again.
Adrian frowned.
“That isn’t possible.”
Mara pulled the ring from her pocket.
Mrs. Finch examined it.
“Yes. That’s Thomas’s.”
Mara turned it over.
There.
Inside the band.
Tiny scratches.
T.B.
Thomas Bell.
Adrian stared.
“Then how did my father get it?”
A voice came from the library doorway.
“He didn’t.”
Everyone turned.
An elderly man stood there.
Tall.
Thin.
Silver-haired.
He wore the dark suit of Blackthorn House’s chauffeur.
Mara knew him.
Everyone did.
Samuel Gray.
He had worked on the estate for eleven years.
He rarely spoke.
Just like Mara.
But now he was staring at the ring.
And crying.
Mrs. Finch whispered, “Oh, God.”
Samuel entered.
Adrian frowned.
“What are you doing?”
Samuel ignored him.
He walked toward Mara.
Every step seemed to cost him something.
Mara stared at his face.
The scar beside his ear.
The slightly crooked nose.
The brown eyes.
Something inside her began screaming.
“No,” she whispered.
Samuel stopped.
Mara backed away.
“No.”
His voice broke.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head violently.
“No.”
“Mara—”
“Don’t.”
He reached toward her.
She slapped his hand away.
“Don’t you dare.”
Celeste covered her mouth.
Marcus stared between them.
Adrian seemed unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
Mara’s entire body shook.
Because suddenly she remembered things she had never noticed.
The way Samuel sometimes watched her from across the courtyard.
