Evelyn frowned. “Told you what?”
“That you’d been in Father’s study.” Matilda looked up, her brows drawn tight. “She heard you. That night. She said she thought it might’ve been a servant, but something unsettled her, so she went to see for herself. She said nothing more, but her expression… Evelyn, sheknewit was you.”
Evelyn blinked. A flicker of cold certainty spread through her chest. “So itwasshe,” she murmured.
Behind her, Robert gave a single nod.
Matilda clutched her blanket closer. “That’s when I… I decided to do the same. Inhisstudy. I’d never dared before. Laurence kept it locked, but that night, he left the key in the drawer. I—” Her voice cracked. “I needed to know. And I found it.”
Evelyn felt her breath catch.
“The seal,” Matilda said softly, eyes glistening. “Father’s old signet. Hidden beneath a false panel in his desk. Wrapped in a linen cloth like it was nothing.”
Evelyn’s stomach turned.
“And there were papers,” Matilda went on. “Not just the ones with Father’s name. Letters—copies—written in your handwriting, Evelyn. Or whatlookedlike it. But I know you didn’t write them. And there were others… contracts, correspondences addressed to someone I didn’t recognize. Names crossed out. Dates rewritten. And one letter?—”
She swallowed hard.
“One that referenced the attack on Robert’s family carriage. In detail. Exact detail.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Evelyn stared, unblinking, heart pounding like the storm outside. She couldn’t look at Robert… not yet. Her gaze stayed fixed on her sister, who now looked small and exhausted, shivering in her blanket like a child who had wandered too far into the dark.
Matilda’s voice was down to a whisper now. “I don’t think he was just involved. I think… he arranged it himself.”
Robert staggered back a step.
The room swayed, the crackle of the fire distorted and distant, as though he were underwater. His vision narrowed, tunnelingon Matilda’s pale face and the words she had spoken, the same words that ricocheted through his mind like musket fire.
The seal. The letters. The carriage.
He couldn’t breathe.
He turned away abruptly, unable to look at either woman as he paced to the other side of the drawing room, each step heavy, each heartbeat a roar in his ears. His hand clenched at the back of a velvet armchair, knuckles white with strain.
“Are you certain?” he asked. His voice was low, dangerously quiet. “You arecertainabout what you saw?”
Matilda nodded slowly, her eyes red-rimmed now. “The wax seal bore your family’s crest, Robert. It was mentioned in one of the letters… there was even a crude sketch of it in the margins. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I thought perhaps someone had planted it, or…” That was where her voice cracked. “…or that I was imagining things. But then I found the letter describing the carriage route. The timing. The slope in the road where it would be most vulnerable.”
Robert turned away, jaw tight. Rage. Grief. Vindication. They all tangled in his chest like fire and ice, and all he could do was breathe through it.
“Where are they?” he asked harshly. “The letters.”
“In Laurence’s study. I couldn’t take them; I feared he would notice.”
He turned to Evelyn, his gaze meeting hers and in it, he saw the mirrored fury, the disbelief, the flicker of something deeper… fear, yes, but not for herself. He strode to the door, the decision made in a flash of clarity that cut through the haze of confusion and pain. But before he could reach for the handle, a hand closed gently around his.
Evelyn.
He froze. Slowly, he turned to face her. He expected resistance. A plea. He expected the measured argument of someone who wanted to keep him safe, to pull him back from the edge.
Instead, she looked up at him with clear, unwavering eyes and said the words he secretly longed to hear. “Be careful.”
His breath caught.
“Do what your heart tells you,” she added, her voice barely above a whisper. “I trust it.”
