“This letter I found… it wasn’t orders, it wasn’t collusion. It was a warning. Someone linked him to the attack. He was trying to find outwhy.”
Her hand reached for the lapel of his coat. She needed something solid. The floor felt suddenly far away.
“But I… I saw the crest,” she whispered. “His seal was on that letter, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Robert said, lifting his eyes to hers. “But see here… in this letter, he writes to the Crown.” He paused to search for another letter, then one more. “In these as well. He wrote several times. He was furious. Desperate. I think he was trying to understand why his name kept appearing in reports and documents he never signed. He suspected his signet had been stolen.”
“Forged,” she echoed what they both were thinking. Her knees nearly buckled. “But he never mentioned any of this to us.”
“He wouldn’t have,” Robert said grimly. “Not if he knew how it would look. You said it yourself, he believes himself untouchable. What would it do to a man like that, realizing he’d been used?”
Evelyn’s thoughts raced. The study’s oppressive silence still seemed to cling to her skin. “So… he was a pawn in this game?”
“Worse,” Robert muttered. “He was a witness who didn’t even know he’d seen something.”
He drew out another letter, one she hadn’t noticed him slip away, and unfolded it. “Here… this is the official reply fromthe Crown. They agreed. The seal was compromised. The King ordered it changed, publicly, in the presence of high witnesses.”
Evelyn leaned in, her breath warm against his shoulder. She could just make out the neat, stiff script beneath the candle wax blot:…and in accordance with the Office of the Privy Seal and His Majesty’s judgment, your signet must be considered forfeit…
Her breath caught. “So… he isnotinvolved in the death of your family.”
Robert’s voice darkened. “I thought him the worst things a human being could be accused of. And he was none of them.”
The words were flat, bitter, but Evelyn saw more than the bitterness; she saw the fracture in him, the crack of doubt that had been held closed by rage for far too long.
She reached for his hand, curling her fingers into his. “Robert. You couldn’t have known. You had every reason to believe he was?—”
“Complicit. Guilty.” He looked at her. “I came into his house with blood in my mouth.”
“But you’re not leaving it that way,” she said, reassuring him. “This changes everything.”
He nodded, slowly. But then, his brow furrowed, eyes turning inward again. “One question remains.”
Evelyn knew before he said it.
“Whostolethe seal?”
They stood there, side by side, as the ancient house held its breath around them.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Could it have been someone close to him? Someone with access to his office?”
“Possibly,” Robert agreed. “Or someone who intercepted his correspondence. Someone who knew enough about your family’s dealings to make the forgeries believable.”
“Someone who wantedbothour families destroyed,” she said quietly.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Because the idea had already begun to take root between them. It was not a single person, not a name but a shadow. A presence. Someone clever enough to copy a seal and cruel enough to use it to start a blood feud between noble houses. Worst of all, it was someone who was still out there.
What neither of the seemed to realize was that they lingered there too long. Even as Evelyn opened her mouth to speak again, a faint sound met her ears. It was a soft scuffle. A shoe dragging over stone? A creak that did not belong to the house’s usual nocturnal sighs? It came from upstairs, or perhaps the servants’ corridor, but it was close.
Robert heard it, too. His head snapped toward the hallway, his eyes narrowing with the precision of a predator. Evelyn felt his body still, every line of him going alert, controlled and terrifyingly calm.
She didn’t need to speak. Neither did he. They moved in perfect synchrony as they huddled all the letters together and placed them back in the drawer. He knelt swiftly, with the last letter still hidden inside his coat, and slid the hairpin back not the lock. The faint click of tumblers falling back into place was almost too soft to hear, but Evelyn heard it. Her pulse, by contrast, roared in her ears. They immediately headed out of the study and eased the door shut with a careful hand. Robert proceeded to lock that as well, then, he rose swiftly.
They crept back through the corridor, careful not to disturb the creaking floorboards that Evelyn knew too well. The moonlight was gone now, swallowed by a passing cloud, and the darkness felt thicker. She could feel Robert at her back, his hand brushing against hers every few steps to guide her along without a word.
The sound behind them came again. Faint, shuffling. Perhaps nothing. But perhapseverything.
