Chapter 14: Forty Signatures

I read the note once, and crumpled it, and pulled my dress back on with shaking hands.

He had left the warmth of the bed, and I could still feel him on my skin.

The door was not locked from outside anymore.

Eileen stood in the passage with a canvas laundry bag over her shoulder and her red braid half undone.

"I tried to stop him," she said. "He walked right past me."

"He's got a fever and a hole in his shoulder."

"I know. Merrick went after him." She shoved the bag at my chest. "Look inside."

I opened it.

There was a tin of tea on top, the same dented tin Honoria carried to my room at ten every night.

Under it lay a stack of cream paper, thick and heavy, with the Ravenhurst crest at the top.

I took out the first sheet, and my stomach rolled.

It was my name, written over and over, forty times down the page, in the neat looping hand from the forged petition.

The E had its little curl on every one.

On the last line, the signature had finally come out perfect.

"Her desk drawer," Eileen said. "The one with the double lock. I had a hairpin and a bad lock."

"Eileen."

"The ledger's in there too. Every pound of rue she bought, with the dates."

She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.

"I've been waiting a year to be useful."

"You have been the only thing in that house that was."

She let out a wet laugh.

Then I heard boots in the stone passage, two sets, fast.

Eileen shoved me behind the door and picked up the iron washstand pitcher.

A hunter in a black coat came round the corner.

He was a big man with a rifle on his back and a radio on his belt.

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