Page 55 of Hearts of Locke Hill

Lydia’s shoulders dropped. “Oh. I see your point. We could call it a draw.”

“We could call it a lot of things,” Violet grumbled, “but I’m a lady.”

Lydia snorted.

Violet straightened. “I feel that I cannot relinquish any footing I have in this endeavor, and that means matching Mr. Burke step for step. More, if I can manage it.”

“That is a sound move, I think,” Lydia said with a nod. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Then she patted the space next to her. “Speaking of close enemies …” She waggled her eyebrows. “Ruby, come sit and show Violet what we found.”

Ruby followed and, from her floral-embossed leather handbag, produced in her fingers … a marble.

A rose quartz marble.

Violet’s breath hitched. “Where did you find that?”

“You recognize it, do you?” Lydia asked.

She reached for it, and Ruby placed it in her open palm. A flood of sentiment washed over her as she rolled the orb in her hand, recognizing the varying patterns of soft-white marbling in the pink stone.

“How astonishing it is to see something so seeminglyinsignificant and realize its utmost power over your memories.” She glanced at her friends and laughed. “My goodness. I hadn’t thought to ever see this again. But where did you find it?”

“I’ve been helping Patrick move into Cyril’s old room—the one with the secret passage to the cupola—”

Violet and Lydia exchanged a curious glance.

“—and I found the marble in a lower drawer of the desk. Patrick said Cyril had given him his old bag of marbles and assumed he missed this one. But then I remembered our conversation that day at the park.”

Violet felt warmth rising up her neck.

“How you and Cyril argued about who took whose favorite marble. You did mention a pink marble, did you not?”

She nodded.

“And you mentioned still having Cyril’s porcelain marble …” Ruby paused.

Violet looked up to find both her friends watching her expectantly. “What? It does not signify. How many children in generations upon generations have a bag of marbles in a drawer?”

“Yes, darling,” Lydia said. “But Mr. Burke seems to have removed this particular specimen before giving the others to his younger brother. So, perhaps, it does signify.”

“Not to mention that he has not occupied that room in the house above five years, as the boys shifted rooms when Henry left the nursery. So it’s not as though the marbles were languishing in a forgotten corner somewhere. He moved them with him. Quite deliberately.”

“And removed a certain pink one, quite deliberately.” Lydia’s eyes flashed.

Violet attempted to settle the nerves that had sprung to life in her stomach. “Come now,” she said, sounding far too breathless.“Finding a lone marble in the bottom of an empty desk after the occupant has left is not grounds for speculating what I think your overactive minds are speculating. Perhaps that’s where he kept the bag and it was not closed properly, and therefore, it is all a careless mistake.”

“I thought of that possibility,” Ruby said. She leaned forward. “I asked Patrick if that was the drawer in which Cyril had kept the bag of marbles.”

Violet waited. By the upturn of Ruby’s lips and Lydia’s smug expression, she could guess what was coming, and she was sure her face was fully aflame. “And?” she asked.

“Patrick pointed to the lower drawer of thewardrobeand said the bag had been retrieved from there.” She sat back, wearing a look Sherlock Holmes himself might’ve worn.

“So,” Violet said, maintaining as calm a veneer as she was capable of, “you hurried over here to tell me that a marble I once owned and, admittedly, was a favorite was found abandoned in a lower desk drawer in a room your older brother no longer occupies? A marble you are implying—and correct me if I’m wrong—has some meaning to said brother, who did not find it necessary to take with him now that he has quit the room, likely for good?”

Ruby’s brow lowered, and Lydia slowly deflated.

“And who’s to say that the bag of marbles was not once in that desk drawer? Are boys known for putting everything in its designated place?”

“Well, Cyril is,” Ruby said.