The Girl They Buried Alive
The west library smelled of dust, leather, and damp stone.
A fire hissed low in the grate. Outside, rain pressed softly against the long windows.
Edward dismissed the footman at the door and told a maid to bring hot water, tea, and milk for the baby. Then he stood by the mantel, not sitting, as if he did not trust his own bones yet.
Mara sat on the edge of a green settee, her son in her lap, one hand rubbing the spot where Cecily had struck her.
Her baby had finally gone quiet after drinking from a bottle she had tucked into her bag. He was watching the fire with the solemn concentration of the newly safe.
Edward placed the pendant on the table between them.
“Tell me everything you know,” he said.
Mara let out a breath that shook at the end.
“Not much,” she admitted. “I was raised in three foster homes and one church hostel. My foster mother, June Mercer, was the only one who ever talked about my past. She said my birth mother died when I was small. She said there had been money once, then none. She said people had asked about me years ago and then stopped.”
She paused, looking at the crest.
“When June was dying, she gave me this and said my mother wore it hidden under her clothes. She told me if anyone ever used the word nobody on me, I should come to the sea house with orchids and ask for Anna Ellison.”
Edward shut his eyes for a second.
Anna.
He remembered a British-American violinist with honey laughter and the courage to marry a man the family wanted obedient rather than happy.
Lord Daniel Sterling had not been in line for the throne. But he had carried royal blood, royal scandal, and royal consequences. His marriage to Anna had been acknowledged privately, then buried publicly after a fatal crash off the western coast. The official story said Daniel, Anna, and their little daughter had all been lost.
Edward had never believed the child’s body was found. He had simply been told the matter was closed.
He looked at Mara again.
“Your father’s name was Daniel Sterling,” he said. “I would stake my career on it.”
Mara stared at him.
The room went hollow around the words.
“No,” she said at last. “That can’t be real.”
“It may be very real,” Edward answered. “And if it is, then someone erased you on purpose.”
A knock came at the door.
Before Edward could answer, it opened and Cecily entered without invitation.
Her composure had been repaired, but only from a distance. Up close, the skin around her mouth had tightened.
“This has gone far enough,” she said. “Colonel, you are frightening a vulnerable woman with fantasies.”
Mara stood so suddenly the settee creaked.
“You knew my mother,” she said.
Cecily smiled without warmth. “I know opportunists when I see them.”
That was when Mara noticed something she had missed in the hall.
Cecily was not looking at her face.
She was looking at the pendant.
Not with confusion.
With history.
Mara felt a strange steadiness come over her.
“Then let the truth embarrass me,” she said quietly. “If I am lying, prove it. If I am not, stop calling me nothing.”
Edward turned to the door.
“Send for Mrs. Lennox from the old estate wing,” he told the maid outside. “And ring the Crown solicitor on the private line.”
Cecily’s head snapped toward him.
May you like
“Edward, do not be absurd.”
“Absurd,” he said, “is how many years this house has managed to live with a grave that may be empty.”
