The Necklace They Gave Me Last novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Her Mother's Note

The butler sat at my mother's kitchen table with his suitcase between his feet and his hat on his knee.

Dermot put a cup of tea in front of him.

"You didn't have to resign," I said. "Dad will blame you for last night."

"Your father can't blame a man who left before breakfast." He took a small sip. "I put his charm on his desk. It was tin with brass paint, miss."

"Tin."

"I looked at it when I got home last night. Every charm on those trays was made in the same shop, last month."

Dermot's head came up.

"Last month," he said. "Dorian ordered them. I signed the invoice for six pendants and a charm, and he told me it was for the gala."

He said it slowly, and then he said nothing else.

The butler laid a hand on the table.

"The one I gave you at the gate is your mother's, Miss Susannah. She gave it to me the week before she died. She told me nobody ever looks twice at an old servant's charm."

I thought of his hand closing around the empty one at the lawn table, and of him looking at me the whole time.

"You knew they'd leave me out," I said.

"I knew she was afraid they would. I'd been keeping this for fifteen years."

He reached down into his suitcase, pressed along the lining with his thumbnail, and drew out a cream envelope gone soft at the corners.

My name was on it in the long slanted loops.

I did not open it.

I stared at it so long that Dermot stood up.

"I'll give you the room," he said.

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