“Hush!” Cordelia shouted, gesturing for her sister to close the door.
Portia threw the newspaper on the bed. “Right, what’s all this about then?”
“F-F-Father l-l-left a ci-cipher in his l-l-l—”
“Letters,” Cordelia finished for her, lifting up one of the pages and holding it under the light. Her first thought was that the letters might contain some of the glowing paint that had been on the spine of Shakespeare’s tome. “The letters he’d written to Charles.”
“N-no,” Hermione said, and to her sisters’ surprise, she ripped the pages out of Cordelia’s fingers. “I-If you p-p-please, I c-can e-explain. I-I n-n-need your p-p-p—”’
“Patience!” Cordelia and Portia finished for her, the air thickening with collective frustration in the now cramped bedroom.
“Hermione, we don’t have time for this nonsense!” Portia nearly shouted.
“I-I-I h-haven’t b-been able to f-f-finish the c-cipher,” she explained, pushing her spectacles back up her nose. Her cheeks were ruddy with the effort of speaking. “W-we m-must w-w-work together,” she finally finished.
“Naughty,” Portia said, looking over the letters. “Nicked these out from under the duke’s nose, did you?”
Hermione was incredulous. “I-I… I was s-s-simply l-leaving him a b-b-book!”
“Of course you were, my dear. Then these just wandered into your hands?” Portia jeered.
Hermione smacked her sister’s good arm with the stack of letters. Portia yelped.
Cordelia’s heart began to flutter in her chest, giddy with excitement. She laughed out loud to herself and without thinking, pulled her sisters into a crushing embrace, being careful to not upset Portia’s sling. She could not believe how quickly she’d been resigned to her fate.Never again, she promised herself,I’ll never again despair. Portia and Hermione’s laughter, abundant and raucous, filled the room.
“What’s going on in here?” a small voice piped up. Cordelia pulled away to see Bea, arms folded tightly, regarding them with a severe stare.
“C’mere,” Portia ordered, holding her arms out.
With a cry, Bea rushed into them. Cordelia could have wept from the relief of seeing her sisters happy and together. It produced a feeling of fierce protection in her.
“Right,” she said, “Hermione still needs to show us how to decode these letters and what kind of riddle will be produced.”
Hermione nodded her head. “I-I-I a-already have the f-f-first part of it d-down,” she mentioned, gesturing to a piece of paper filled with her scribbles.
“The last piece…” Portia read aloud. She shrugged her shoulders. “If Father said this is the last piece, then I am going to believe him on that.”
“F-F-Father p-p-placed m-m-money in e-each p-piece of c-correspondence,” Hermione said. Her stutter always got a little better around her sisters, the more she spoke. “I-I n-noticed that h-h-he p-provided u-unusually s-specific amounts. S-see here?”
Hermione pointed to a line, which read,…enclosed you will find the sums of 246, 127, and 139 pounds. The sisters were all huddled over Cordelia’s dressing table, following along with rapt attention.
“I-It a-appears th-that the first n-number r-refers to the l-line, the s-second is th-the word and the th-th-third is the l-letter.”
Cordelia gasped, tracing her finger over the pattern. Sure enough, three letters emerged, spelling “the.” “My goodness, Hermione, how did you first notice such a thing?” she asked.
Hermione shrugged. “F-Father and I u-used to p-play th-th-these games with e-e-each other. Th-things he p-presumably l-learned in the w-w-war.”
“He always meant for one of us to have the inheritance,” Portia whispered to herself. The thought made Cordelia’s breath catch.
“What do we do now?” Bea piped up.
Cordelia glanced at Portia, whose brows were furrowed. “Well, we need to decipher the full message. Preferably before our guests start arriving. Which means we have,” she glanced quickly at the clock on her dressing table, “exactly seven hours.”
Portia let out a low whistle. “I’ll go and fetch some parchment and ink. That’s if I don’t run into that dreadful Mr. Peverill. He arrived back yesterday and has been tailing me ever since. For what reason, I can’t imagine.”
Cordelia wondered if she was being deliberately obtuse. It was obvious to everyone except Portia that Henry Peverill had taken quite the shine to her.
“No,” Hermione replied. “L-let me g-g-go. N-no one w-will suspect m-me.”
