Page 75 of A Single Thread of Moonlight

“Forgive me,” I said. “I am indisposed. Perhaps we can continue our conversation another day?”

“Of course!” Mr Fortescue agreed with alacrity. “I am at your service. Any time, Miss Fox.”

I gave him a weak smile, which brought a tender light to his eye. It was obvious that I had done myself no disservice – here was a man who liked his women fragile. We made our way as quickly as possible to the door.

“Did you get it?” Cassie asked breathlessly as we bundled into the carriage.

“Yes, yes, I got it.” Cassie fell back in her seat and laughed, while I wriggled uncomfortably, retrieving the file from where I had hidden it, stuffed underneath my dress.

“I just took the whole thing,” I said. “Thank goodness for wide skirts.”

What I held was a thick packet of documents, and as I began sifting through them on the seat of the carriage, I saw that it included everything from letters with tenants, and negotiations on the sale of farmland, to bills for jewellery that must have belonged to my mother.

“Here it is!” I exclaimed, pulling out the will, which was surprisingly short, written in a looping hand that I recognized from his letters as belonging to Mr Fortescue. It was also less pristine than I had imagined such an important document to be, the pages rumpled and stained in places. I scanned it, looking for clues, running my finger down the pages past all the long-winded legal talk.

To my daughters, I leave the entirety of the estate and all of my assets outside of the bequests mentioned here, to be held in trust until – here I turned the page– they each reach the age of one and twenty. Until such time, the bequests are to be held in trust by my wife, Lady Helena Scott-Holland. To Lady Scott-Holland, I make a separate bequest of seven hundred pounds annually, until the date of her death, or upon her remarriage.

“Seven hundred pounds?” Cassie frowned. “That is a very small sum for Mama.”

“Yes, it is,” I said slowly. “She certainly hasn’t been living on that.” Not with all the renovations on the house, and the clothes, and the new carriage and every other luxury going.

“You’re right,” Cassie agreed grimly. “She’s been spending the estate’s money.”

“I suppose she thinks with it coming to you and your sister it’s as good as hers anyway.”

Cassie nodded in agreement. “Her spending has increased in recent years. She must have been sure you weren’t going to come home to claim your part.”

“But this tells me nothing!” I exclaimed. “Nothing we didn’t already know, at least. I cannot access my inheritance until I’m twenty-one, Helena holds the purse strings. There’s no language in here about anything personal set aside for me – my mother’s jewellery, the contents of the house, my horse. I can’t believe that there wasn’t anything Father wanted to leave just to me!”

I flicked through the remaining pages, but they simply listed small sums to be discharged to various friends, relatives and servants in gratitude for their service. I was not mentioned at all. Each page was signed by my father, and I knew that had Helena interfered with the will she would not have left herself so small a sum – it was practically an insult.

“I suppose he thought he could trust Mama to look after you,” Cassie pointed out.

“His mistake,” I muttered, suddenly furious at the man who had abandoned me without any protection.

I was putting the papers back into the packet, when I spotted one that I had missed. It was an envelope, written in my father’s hand.

I opened it and unfolded the letter inside. I noticed that my father’s handwriting was shaky, and ink spattered, and that the letter was dated shortly before his death.

Dear Sir –

I should like to amend the petition to the court to include further details of my wife’s failures as a spouse. She is a damnable woman, and I am determined to go ahead with these proceedings despite your advice. I never should have married her! Divorce may be messy, but it’s a damn sight better than being forced to live with this harpy. I will show the world what she is. You say you have found no evidence that she has been unfaithful and that therefore I have no grounds for divorce, but I tell you the woman is as devious as they come! I am convinced of her treachery. If you cannot locate her lover then I shall find one myself. There are plenty of men of my acquaintance who I’m sure could be persuaded to come forward. Nothing will sway me from this course. I will await your response.

I gasped. “What is it?” Cassie asked, noticing my shock. “Is it something to do with the will?”

“No,” I whispered. “It’s much worse.” I handed her the letter. “The letter from the solicitor I found up the chimney wasn’t about Father’s will at all; it was a reply to this. My father wanted to get a divorce.”

Cassie’s own horrified gaze met mine, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing that I was.

There was no way that Helena would have survived a divorce. The proceedings were a spectacle, having to be held in open court and reported on in all the papers. To divorce Helena, my father would have to have proven adultery and named her lover in court. That was the law.

Did Father really believe Helena had been unfaithful? Or was that merely to have been a fiction, to ensure the divorce proceedings went ahead? When he said he could persuade someone to come forward, was he hinting that he could buy them off? My stomach lurched at the thought.

Whether the judge granted the petition or not, Helena would have been ruined.

I had been looking for a motive, a reason why Helena needed my father dead in order to provide for her own family, and now I had certainly found one. It explained the argument that Tookes had heard too – she would have been cut out of the will altogether, along with her daughters.

“Cassie,” I said quietly.