Page 18 of A Question of Worth

For a moment, she could not move. The letters were bundled together with faded blue ribbon, dozens of them, her mother's careful handwriting visible on the topmost sheet. She pressed her fingertips to the edge of the paper, feeling the roughness of it, the slight indentations where the quill had pressed too hard.

I am not here to grieve,she told herself firmly, though the command felt hollow in the silence of the room.I am here to find the truth.

She began to read.

The first bundle covered the years before her mother's passing — light, warm letters filled with accounts of village life, descriptions of Eliza's progress at the pianoforte and her younger self's insistence on reading aloud from whatever novel she had discovered that week. There were mentions of her father, too, though these grew shorter and more guarded as the letters progressed.'He is at the card table again, I fear,'her mother had written in one. In another, more bluntly:'The butcher has not been paid in two months. I do not know how much longer I can manage.'

Eliza set that letter aside, blinking hard against the heat that gathered behind her eyes. She had known, of course. Even as a child, she had understood enough to feel the tension in the house, the whispered arguments behind closed doors, the way the servants looked at each other when they thought no one was watching. But seeing it written in her mother's hand, in words meant for no one but her aunt, was different. It was sharper, somehow. More real.

She reached for the second bundle, the one dated nearer to the time Lady Hargreaves had spoken of. The tone of these letters had shifted. Her mother's writing was less anxious, the words coming more freely across the page as if a weight had been lifted from her hand as well as from her heart.

'I do not know how it has come about,'one letter read,'but a portion of Harding's debts have been settled. He will not say from whence the kindness came, only that a sum was paid on his behalf by a benefactor who wished to remain unknown. I dare not ask again for he grows sharp when pressed. But the relief is immense, Letitia. The tradesmen have been paid. Cookhas stopped threatening to leave. For the first time in many months, I feel as if I can draw a full breath.'

Eliza's fingers went still on the paper.

She read the passage again, and then a third time, her pulse loud in her ears.A benefactor who wished to remain unknown.She did not need another source to feel the shape of what was forming before her. Lady Warrington had been generous, had been anonymous in her generosity, had known of Lord Harding's debts and had spoken of their easing to Lady Hargreaves. Now here, in her own mother's handwriting, was the evidence of it.

She lifted the next letter from the bundle with unsteady hands. Beneath it, folded separately from the correspondence and pressed flat against the bottom of the box, was a single sheet of different paper entirely — heavier, more formal, bearing the imprint of a London creditor. It was a receipt of payment, addressed to Lord Harding's account, acknowledging the settlement of a debt in the amount of four hundred pounds. The payer's name was not recorded. In its place, a single notation:'Per instruction of client, anonymous.'

Four hundred pounds. Eliza stared at the figure. It was not an insignificant sum — not enough to clear all of her father's debts, certainly, but enough to quiet the most pressing of them, enough to bring the relief her mother had written about with such unguarded hope. Enough, she realized with a slow dawning, to be the work of someone who cared deeply but did not wish to be known.

She set the receipt down beside her mother's letter and sat back on her heels, her hands resting in her lap, her breathing shallow. The candle guttered, its light casting long, wavering shadows across the shelves. She could feel the thudding of her heart in her chest, in her throat, in the tips of her fingers.

I found it.

The thought was so simple that it startled her. She had spent weeks following trails laid by others, waiting for Lord Ashcombe to speak to his relations, waiting for answers to come to her from outside herself. But this —this— had come from her own instinct, her own memory, her own hands pulling open a box in a quiet room at midnight.

She had found something herself.

Carefully, she folded her mother's letter and the receipt together, pressing the crease flat with the edge of her thumb. Then, without knowing quite why, she lifted both pages to her chest and held them there, feeling the paper warm against the fabric of her wrapper.

It was not proof enough on its own. She understood that. It did not name Lady Warrington, did not draw the line between the anonymous benefactor and the lady who had later sought her out at Lord Lyme's picnic. But it wassomething. It was evidence gathered by her own hand, from her own family, discovered because she had chosen to look rather than wait.

The tears that came were silent and unexpected, not of grief but of something fiercer. Relief, perhaps. Or the first stirrings of a certainty she had not dared to feel before.

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, tucked the folded pages into the pocket of her wrapper, and returned the box to its shelf. The room was as she had found it — quiet, ordered, undisturbed — save for the space where two pages had been. As she rose to her feet, her legs stiff from kneeling, she felt a resolve settle within her that was new and unfamiliar.

Tomorrow, she would write to Lord Ashcombe again. But this time, she would not be asking for guidance.

She would be bringing evidence.

8

Nathaniel frowned. "James, you must trust me."

"Trust you?" His brother threw up his hands as if Nathaniel had made the most preposterous suggestion. "When I told you that you had no choice but to do something about this matter with our great-aunt and Miss Fairleigh, I did not think that you meant to take her part!"

"Then what did you expect?" Nathaniel asked, looking about Whites and hoping silently that no other patron could hear the conversation. He would have much preferred to have spoken to his brother in private, but James had insisted on coming to Whites after their evening's entertainment at the theatre. "I said that I would do whatever I could to make certain no shadow or shame would smudge itself against our family name. That is what I am doing."

"By befriending the very young lady who is determined to pull Lady Warrington's name into the mud!" James exclaimed, half rising out of his chair. "Can you not see that, Ashcombe? If society takes note of your interest in her, if they see that you are encouraging a connection between the two of you, then what willbe said of you then? What whispers will cling to your title? Can you not see — "

"I do not see it the same way as you do, that much is clear," Nathaniel stated, interrupting his brother and quieting him with a gesture of his hand. "You do us no good by stating your upset in such loud, vehement tones." Much to his relief, his brother let out a long, heavy sigh and then, with a shake of his head, looked away from Nathaniel and snapped his fingers at a footman so he might order a drink. Nathaniel said nothing, somewhat irritated when his brother only ordered one glass of brandy rather than asking him if he wished for a glass himself.

If he wishes to be childish, then I shall let him.Drawing in a breath, Nathaniel lifted his chin. "James, I have asked you to trust me. Do you think that, despite your own reservations, you might be able to do so?"

His brother scowled. "Trusting you does not mean that I cannot give voice to my concerns."

"And what are your concerns?" Nathaniel asked, growing exasperated. "Are they not the same as my own?" He lifted an eyebrow, seeing his brother's scowl only deepen. "You know very well that my thoughts turn only to the reputation of our family and the potential damage that must be prevented. In aiding Miss Fairleigh as I am, I seek topreventall that both you and I fear may come to pass. Besides that, she has no one else to aid her. Her own father, as well you know, has shame enough of his own, even using her dowry to placate his creditors. I am glad to be of aid to her."