Page 81 of A Single Thread of Moonlight

From the smirk that Nick flashed over his shoulder at me as he headed upstairs, I could tell that he, at least, knew precisely what I was thinking.

“What a good idea, Lady Wynter. If you’ll excuse me.” Gathering the horse blanket about me with all the dignity I could muster, I trudged up the stairs, hurrying to catch up with Nick.

“Our conversation is not over,” I said in a low voice when we reached the landing. I put my hand on his arm, tugging him round to face me. “I want to know the truth about Stefan. It’s time you trusted me.”

“Trust you?” Nick’s voice was quiet but simmering with something dangerous. We were standing perilously close to one another. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“Of course you know who I am,” I replied quickly, trying to deflect the accusation in his tone. “I’m Iris Grey, talented seamstress.”

“You’re a tornado in a pretty dress is what you are!” he snapped, and then he turned and stomped off, leaving me behind.

I felt strangely flattered.

Matilda clucked in horror when she saw me, and it took two hot baths before I felt actually clean.

The baths gave me time to think. I decided to take a moment here, in the quiet of my room, to go through the bundle of letters I had found in the chimney and the file from the solicitor’s office more carefully. It was time I found out more about my father. It was becoming increasingly clear that I had known very little about him, and amid all the other revelations, that was the one that hurt the most.

I lifted out the box and spread my mother’s embroidery on the bed. I stared for a long time at Rapunzel in her tower, at the amber eyes of the big bad wolf.

“Little cub,” my father had called me. He said that we were wolves. Fierce guardians of our land, wild and free.

But wolves were predators too. Had there really been this whole other side to him? One that I never knew?

I read through the letters between my father and his solicitor. They painted a fairly clear picture now that I had both sides of the correspondence. It seemed that it hadn’t taken long for the shine to wear off after he married Helena. Unlike my mother, she had not been content to be kept at home, shut away. That, at least, made sense – there was nothing docile about Helena. I imagine she had made her own desires fairly clear.

Mr Fortescue had adopted a reasonable tone in his letters, trying gently to dissuade Father from following what he felt was an unnecessarily extreme path – he had clearly been horrified by the idea of divorce. He repeatedly assured my father that Lady Scott-Holland was a good and virtuous woman.

Father’s answers were more blunt.

Blasted woman won’t stop hounding me about throwing a house party, inviting a group of guests to stay and make free with my hospitality. I’m certain it’s because she has a lover she wants to sneak in right under my nose. But I’ll not have it. I tell you there’s nothing that will get past me, nothing! I want you to hire an investigator, find out who the man is. I’ll drag her through the courts if she thinks to make me a cuckold!

His handwriting grew increasingly spiky and erratic. I tried to remember how he had been during this time, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t seen much of him, I realized. I had blamed Helena for his long absences – but perhaps it had been down to something else entirely. His own paranoia, his drinking.

I turned again to the will. I could only assume that had he not died and had he divorced Helena, Helena and her daughters would have been cut out entirely.

Then again, the small amount he had left to Helena – enough only for her to live a kind of shabby genteel life, nothing like she had now – was almost an insult in itself. I wondered how Helena had felt when the will was read to her. It was fortunate that he had made such provisions for her daughters that she could remain comfortable herself. A messy divorce would have changed all of that.

I was leafing through the pages of the will again, looking for anything unusual. There was something odd about the first page that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was as if the words were lined up differently to the rest, or as if there was more white space on the page. I noticed on the edge of one of the sheets of parchment a thin red line. On closer examination I saw that there were similar marks on several of the pages; the staining I had noticed on my initial view. It looked almost like blood. I peered closer at the pages, fanning them out on the bed.

I sighed. Not blood. Wine. Just further proof that my father was the drunk everyone said he was. There was a neat ring on the edges of the pages, where he had obviously set his glass down on top of them as they were spread over his desk.

Only the ring was not complete. I frowned, tilting the pages. I leafed through the clean pages, looking for any more that contained the red marks. There were none.

I picked up the pages that were marked and read through them. They included the pages about me and my stepsisters. Then I laid them out again, a tingling feeling rushing through my limbs.

There was a page missing.

The circle didn’t quite line up, as if someone had removed a page.

I read the final words before the missing page.

To my daughters, I leave the entirety of the estate and all of my assets outside of the bequests mentioned here, to be held in trust until

The top of the next page continued,they each reach the age of one and twenty. Until such time, the bequests are to be held in trust by my wife, Lady Helena Scott-Holland.

The sentence made perfect sense. And yet, when I looked again at the circle made by the glass it was clear that something was not right.

A feeling of certainty spread through my bones. There was something wrong with the will. There had been all along. I just needed to find out what it was. But how?