“Where was he?”

“I don’t know.

He said he had been injured.

He could not return because Edmund had men watching Catherine and you.”

“Do you still have it?”

Beatrice nodded.

“Inside the blue volume in my cabinet.”

Mrs.

Fenwick found it.

A book of Tennyson.

Inside the back cover was a yellow envelope.

Eleanor recognized her father’s handwriting before the paper reached her hands.

She almost dropped it.

Beatrice,

I failed to take the evidence where it needed to go.

Edmund believes me dead. Let him continue believing it.

I have hidden the certified copies where only Eleanor might someday understand to look.

Tell Catherine nothing unless it becomes safe.

If my daughter grows up believing me a thief, I pray she will someday forgive me.

Better she hate a living coward than mourn beside her mother’s grave because I tried to be brave twice.

N.W.

Eleanor could not see.

Tears covered the page.

Her father had not abandoned her for money.

He had left to keep her alive.

It did not erase the pain.

It did not restore eighteen birthdays.

It did not return her mother.

But the shame Eleanor had carried since childhood suddenly belonged to someone else.

Lord Edmund.

Adrian.

The family that manufactured a thief because the truth threatened their fortune.

Eleanor pressed the letter to her chest.

Then she saw one line again.

where only Eleanor might someday understand to look.

She frowned.

“What did my father teach me?”

Beatrice said, “Many things, I imagine.”

Eleanor thought.

Numbers.

Bookkeeping.

Codes.

Maps.

He had loved riddles.

On rainy Sundays he hid pennies and left clues.

When she was eight, he gave her a phrase she never understood.

When numbers lie, ask what they are counting.

She looked again at the letter.

There were small marks beside several lines.

Not punctuation.

Tiny dots.

One.

Four.

Three.

One.

Five.

She counted words.

Extracted letters.

Dr.

Vale watched.

“What are you doing?”

“Listening to my father.”

Twenty minutes later she had six words.

BENEATH THE SAINT WHO HAS NO FACE.

Mrs.

Fenwick crossed herself.

Lady Beatrice whispered:

“The chapel.”

Blackthorn’s private chapel stood beyond the winter garden.

It had not been used in years.

The roof leaked.

Ivy covered one window.

Along the wall stood carved stone saints brought from France two centuries earlier.

One statue had lost its face during a fire.

Saint Jude.

Patron of lost causes.

Eleanor almost laughed.

Of course.

They removed the base panel.

Nothing.

Then Eleanor noticed the statue stood half an inch higher than the others.

Thomas and Dr.

Vale pushed.

Stone scraped.

Beneath it lay an iron box.

Nineteen years of dust covered the lid.

Eleanor’s hands shook as she inserted the tiny steel seal into a recessed opening.

Click.

The box opened.

Inside were documents wrapped in oilskin.

Ledgers.

Letters.

Certified accounts.

Bank drafts.

Names.

Politicians.

Bankers.

Trustees.

Lord Edmund Blackwood had not acted alone.

The theft was enormous.

Far larger than the £38,000 blamed on Nathaniel.

Nearly

£600,000

had been diverted over twenty-five years.

A fortune.

Enough to build hospitals.

Schools.

Homes.

Enough to explain everything Blackthorn had become.

Eleanor turned pages.

Then found a document that did not belong with the accounts.

A death certificate.