“Anything you can make out?” Ben sniffed as he set the needlework back down. Suddenly sentimental, he used his clean sleeve to wipe away the dust on the surface of the desk.

“Words, mostly.” Jacques’s voice filled in the background. “She says ‘need more,’ ‘where else,’ and a handful of names. I think.”

“What names?” Ben stopped wiping when his sleeve snagged against a rough dip in the wood. He leaned down to observe it, brushing away more of the filth until the lines made sense. Inside a heart, two letters had been sloppily scratched in. He followed the grooves of the first—an ‘S’—but could not determine the second. A...R, or is it an H?

“Leyda Leone.”

Ben straightened. “What?”

“Did you not hear me?”

Ben shot Jacques a confused look. “No. What did you say?”

His friend’s shoulders sagged, reflecting the bow of his mouth. “I said ‘Arthur, Verity, Helena, Benoît, and Leyda Leone.’ Is it family?”

“Yes, but...” Ben ran his fingertips over the letters again. “That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“Those names. Everyone on that list has been dead for decades,” Ben said. “Except me. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only Benoît in the family.”

“What could it mean?”

Ben shrugged, instead tapping his fingers to indicate his own findings. “She carved some letters here. There’s an ‘S’ and another, but I can’t tell what.”

Jacques tucked his notes back into the drawer by Soleil’s bed and inspected the little message on the desk. Like Ben, he leaned in until his nose was inches from brushing against the wood. He squinted but could not discern what it was.

“A love letter?” Jacques offered. “Was there anyone courting her at the time?”

“No.” Ben shook his head. If his sister had closed herself off to him, there was no doubt in his mind she’d done the same for others. But the heart and the letters mean something.

“That you know of,” Jacques said. “If I may be so bold, it looks to me like your sister might have been keeping someone a secret.”

“But why?” Ben’s brows creased.

“Who knows.” Jacques shrugged. “Why do any of us keep secrets?”

Ben grimaced. Between Soleil’s cryptic notes and carving on the desk, he couldn’t be sure what she had been up to. The dream he’d had the night before—the memory—made him wonder about the day she died. If someone had truly pushed her, could it have been the person whose initial she’d embossed into the wood? He thought about the betrayal in her eyes, the way it shone so clearly in her gaze. Was it possible that she trusted someone enough to give him her heart? If she was seeing someone, it made sense that she would search for a way out.

Was that why you wanted the gold? Ben approached the window and looked out toward the moors. How many times before had she done the same? Longing for something, for someone. He wondered if she lingered still, her spirit locked up with the dust in a room their home had forgotten. Ben blinked; he swore he could see her there on the moors, standing at the cliff’s edge with the wind whipping at her hair. When she looked back, the faceless woman from the night before found him watching from the window.

Ben blinked the vision away, petrified by his own fear and confusion.

Soleil might have shown him a part of the truth, but it did not quiet the scratching at the back of his mind. There was more to her death: he knew it, and the answers were somewhere in her long-forgotten room.

GOLD

REMI

Remi returned to her room after her evening bath, the afternoon having sailed by without further disturbance. Truthfully, she’d experienced enough melodrama for one day and was tired of it before supper. Passing on the simple stew Martin had prepared, she retired to her room and found solace in the quiet of the empty washroom. Exhaustion wore on her like one of Tante Beline’s drab hand-me-down dresses, thick and uncomfortable as it pinched every part of her body.

Too much of her time was spent worrying over everyone else lately.

“I can feel it in my bones,” she said aloud, stretching her arms above her head. The room echoed with the gentle lapping of the bathwater against the tub.

Soon enough, if all went according to Hugo’s design, Elise and her affair would be one less concern. Their marriage would end it and lift the weight from Remi’s chest. Elise was the closest she had to a sister and the only person who stood between her and Beline. Elise would be well and truly gone after her wedding, and Remi would again be alone.

We’ll have to make up, she thought, her heart too heavy to consider the alternative.

Remi abandoned the lukewarm bath water and dried herself off. Once in her nightgown and robe, she padded silently back to her room. Inside, she went to her dressing table and sat for a long moment, staring at the sheet covering the mirror. She didn’t remember placing it there, but Tante Beline had been insistent about the tradition. Doubtless she was the culprit. Remi frowned and pulled it away.

The dead be damned, Remi thought, finding her pale reflection in the mirror. She desperately needed a good night’s sleep.

Remi turned and pulled open the side drawer to fetch her brush. There was an empty space where she’d last placed the box that held her locket. There was nowhere else it could be. Her blood ran cold.

“My locket.” Remi dove into the drawer, forgetting all logic.

Did Sylvie steal it? It was a terrible thought, one that she regretted immediately.

Remi abandoned the vanity and rushed to the bedside table. She pulled open the drawer and rifled through the small trinkets within, her frustration rising with each discarded bauble. The note was there, on the very top, right where she’d left it after lunch. But the locket was nowhere to be found amongst the junk.

“Where did it go?”

“Where did what go, Madame?” Sylvie’s voice was like a little bell.

Remi straightened and breathed deeply. When had she come in? Why didn’t Remi hear a knock? Her ears were ringing from panic.

“My locket is missing.”

Sylvie made no reply.

“Don’t you remember? It was Edgar’s wedding gift to me,” Remi said, her eyes falling on the young woman at the door. She had a tray in her hand; it shook slightly in her grip.

“Do you know where it is?” Remi asked.

“No, madame.”

A tense beat passed between them, and Remi straightened, leveling her gaze at the maid. She almost looked ill.

“Did you take it, Sylvie?” Remi attempted to keep her voice even.

Her maid’s grip on the tray tightened into a white-knuckled grip. “No, of course not, Madame! I would never!”

Remi’s building anger wavered.

“I promise.” Sylvie’s eyes teared up as the china on the tray shook.

It was a harsh and damaging accusation, Remi knew. Maids could be let go for far less. She had no proof to say otherwise, and Sylvie was usually quite honest. With a deep breath, she relaxed her shoulders.