She Lost Her Name, She Took Back Her Place novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Why I Came

I went down the back stairs at a quarter to midnight with the card in my glove.

I did not believe the note.

I had read my father's hand for two lives.

It was very close, but the last stroke of the seven had been drawn slowly, by someone copying.

I knew exactly what waited behind room nine.

A witness. A camera. Margaux and Henri, woken by a sweet, worried voice, led to a door.

And inside it, me.

I was going to look first.

I would find the person Bianca had placed there to watch, and I would learn the shape of the trap before the trap learned mine.

I took the west corridor on the balls of my feet, past the portraits and the stuffed boar's head and the long dark window.

The old man's wing began at a pair of carved doors with a lamp above them.

A man was leaning against the right-hand door with his arms folded.

I stopped dead.

"Adrien."

"Good evening," he said.

He wore his dinner shirt open at the throat, with his tie hanging loose in his hand.

"I thought you might come this way."

"How did you know?"

"I watched Bianca leave a coat on your chair after the hunt. She sent a footman to lay it out." His mouth went hard. "I have been standing here for forty minutes, to see who else was coming."

"And?"

"No one. Yet."

He held out his hand.

I put the card and the note in it.

He read the paper once, then turned it to the lamp, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

"This is Henri's writing."

"It is not. The seven is wrong."

"I could not tell." His eyes came up. "You could. You studied his hand that closely."

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