Page 6 of A Legacy of Lies

Chillingworth approached without hurry, his expression calm and reserved. He laid out a fresh coat, trousers, and linen with practiced care. “I have prepared your uncle’s chamber for you, sir. A bath has been drawn. If it pleases you, I will see to your riding clothes.”

The words were proper, the tone even, but Nathaniel heard the faintest hesitation before your uncle’s chamber. The reminder hung between them, thin as parchment. This was his Uncle Charles’s place, not his.

Nathaniel shed his riding coat, letting the chill of the road fall away. Chillingworth received it with gloved hands, his movements so controlled that they betrayed nothing of his thoughts. And yet Nathaniel sensed eyes upon him, judged as surely as by the portraits in the gallery.

As the valet laid out dry linen, Nathaniel studied the man in turn. How many years had he served? How much had he seen? Loyalty was written in every line of his bearing, but grief lingered too.

Nathaniel’s voice was quiet. “You were with my uncle for a long time.”

“Since his marriage, Your Grace.” A pause. “He was a good master.”

Nathaniel gave a short nod, unsure what reply courtesy required. The words fell between them final and heavy as the close of an oath. And what am I to you, then?

He changed quickly, the warmth of fresh cloth seeping into his skin. Yet the unease did not lift. Even though he was donning his own clothes, he wore the mantle of another, stitched with expectation and judgment.

When Chillingworth bowed himself out with the wet clothes, the chamber seemed too close, the fire too hot. Nathaniel’s gaze lingered on the closed door, a memory rising unbidden. His boyhood-self stood awkwardly in this same chamber, cuffs undone, while Chillingworth’s precise fingers fastened the buttons. How strange that nothing in the man had changed, yet everything in Nathaniel had. The years between seemed to collapse, leaving him caught between past and present, child and duke, all within the same suffocating walls.

Restlessness stirred. He poured a measure of brandy but did not finish it, setting the glass aside. The library called to him with its ledgers, books, and its memory. If the house expected him to be its master, then he would begin with its mind, written in ink and bound in leather.

Taking a lamp from the sideboard, Nathaniel stepped back into the corridor, leaving the warmth of Charles’s chamber behind, and made his way to the library.

The library was a cavern within the cavern, lined with shelves that rose to the dark rafters. The air carried the dry, sharp scent of vellum and leather mingled with damp stone. Nathaniel stood in the dimness, lantern light flickering across rows of volumes, the gold letters on their spines dulled by years of neglect.

He brushed his fingertips along one row, leaving faint streaks in the dust. The books seemed untouched for decades, their subjects sprawling from theology to travel, from poetry to law. His hand paused on a series of estate ledgers bound in brown calf. The bindings cracked when he opened them, the pages filled with neat columns of ink of rents collected, tithes paid, and debts marked. He bent closer, the solicitor in him quick to read the language of accounts, yet the scale was beyond him. One margin note caught his eye, faint and cramped. It was an unfamiliar name beside a sum paid out year after year. No tenant, he recalled, no clear tithe. He traced the entry with his thumb, as if pressure might conjure its meaning, but the ink remained mute. Secrets hid between the columns of figures, waiting for a hand willing to uncover them.

The numbers stretched back generations, a burden of obligation that no writ or deed could reduce. He had traced heirs through tangled codicils, unraveled claims across oceans, yet now he stood as the heir himself, bound not by parchment but by blood. His jaw tightened.

I know how to prove a man belongs to Hartleigh. But how do I prove I am worthy to lead it? Worthy to stand among the dukes of Hartleigh as their peer?

A gust rattled the tall windows. The flame in the nearest lamp flared and then dipped, leaving shadows that crept closer. Nathaniel rubbed at the page, though no smudge marred it. The unease was not in the ink. It lived in him.

*

Clara hesitated at the library’s threshold, half wishing Eleanor had sent Edith instead. The corridor behind her held its breath, warning her to turn back. She opened the door. The air tightened around her. He was a solicitor, and such men missed nothing.

She entered with light, her steps precise. He stood alone at the desk, bent over a ledger, the lamplight throwing his shadow large across the shelves. She waited a heartbeat.

“Excuse me, Your Grace. My lady asks that you join her in the smaller dining parlor for supper,” she said, curtsying.

Nathaniel closed the ledger but left his hand resting on it, as though reluctant to surrender its secrets. “The smaller parlor?”

“It’s warmer,” she answered. “The great hall never holds heat.”

His gaze shifted from her to the volumes spread on the desk. “You have lived here some years, haven’t you, Miss Whitmore?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

She watched as he tapped the ledger. “Then perhaps you can tell me. What else lies buried in these accounts?”

Color rose in her cheeks. Was he speaking of her? Did he know? Had Lady Eleanor warned him of her father’s ruin, the debts and disgrace that clung to the Whitmore name like mildew? The scent of vellum and damp leather seemed suddenly sharper, suffocating, carrying her back to the counting house where her father once stood accused. Nathaniel’s gaze across the desk was as steady, the gaze of a man accustomed to judgment, and for one dreadful instant she felt the floor tilt beneath her, as though the verdict had already been pronounced.

“I see only figures, sir,” she replied, hands tightening on the folds of her gown. “Rents and dues, nothing more.”

His gaze did not leave her. She forced her hands to remain still, though her voice betrayed her with a faint tremor. Heat prickled at the back of her neck as though she stood before a magistrate again, accused of sins she had not yet committed.

His scrutiny landed on her. Surely, he saw through her. Had he judged her already?

The silence stretched until it pressed against her ribs. He leaned back slightly, his gaze steady, his thoughts sealed away. Did he find her answer lacking? Was he evaluating her, as a judge would evaluate a witness? She lifted her chin a fraction, holding tight to what remained of her dignity.