Page 62 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
"No." Nell frowned. "But I have not asked."
"Well, all will be clear soon," she said, her voice suddenly brisk and businesslike. She pushed herself from the bed and motioned for Nell to follow. "He will likely be back within the hour with Therese in tow. If you do not wish to receive her in your dressing gown, I suggest you put on some clothes."
Nell found herself putting her feet to the floor, her brow furrowed in confusion. "Why has he gone to get Lady Dempierre? It is rather late, and you obviously hate one another."
"I do not hate her! We have been friends our entire lives!"
Nell blinked at her aunt, true befuddlement writ on her face.
"Clothes, Nell," Zelda ordered before she could speak, "then you may ask all the questions you like."
Chapter 27
It was all Nathaniel could do to not rush across the room the instant he returned and gather his wife in his arms.
She was seated on the sofa, the painting and its frame in a neat stack to her left, and she had chosen to read rather than spend time conversing with her aunt. The sight of her messy braid and the spectacles perched on her nose heartened him, for he had felt a true fear only moments ago that she had been lost to him forever.
Therese Dempierre had been waiting for him on the fringes of her party, which was still a bustling affair at this late hour. She had met him in the vine-covered corridor, as though she had sensed his arrival and intent. She had declined to converse on the drive over, which was well and fine for Nathaniel, as he'd already been given quite enough to process tonight. According to Zelda, however, there was a final piece of the puzzle which only Therese could provide, and so, it was necessary to retrieve her.
"Nathaniel," Nell said, a throaty emotion in her voice that seemed to mirror his own. She rose from her seat and crossed the room to him, stopping just short of making contact, uncertainty magnified in the round frames of her spectacles.
"Eleanor," he replied, reaching forward to take her hand. "All is well. Please, come sit beside me."
She nodded, gripping his hand tight enough that he could feel her wedding band, cool against the heat of his fingers. As often as he'd felt the warmth of their bond from the flash and glitter of the gems in that ring, it was in this moment that its symbolism felt most tangible to him.
They sat together on the settee, waiting for the other two women to find their places across from them. Lady Dempierre's eyes had fallen immediately to the dismantled portrait, and before she sat, she knelt before it, her eyes wet with emotion as she beheld the faces of the friends she had lost.
This surprised him. Deeply.
It was a certainty that she had known about the ledger hidden in the portrait, and as such, it had never occurred to him that her desire to see his mother's face again had also been sincere. She turned, brushing her fingers beneath her lashes, and sat down so close to Zelda Smith that no one would have guessed at the way they had been speaking to one another mere hours ago.
Nell squeezed his hand, looking over to him in curiosity. It seemed that whatever Mrs. Smith had used her alone time to convey, it had not been particularly explanatory.
"I found a ledger book tonight, concealed in the cavity of the family portrait," he said, speaking to his wife directly. "It was upon reviewing some of the entries in the ledger, and recognizing their correlation to what we found underground, that I made a startling discovery, one which you have certainly known all along. The Silver Leaf Society smuggles people between war zones."
"Not just anyone," Zelda said quickly, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. "Prisoners of war, those separated from their families, and the odd special case. It is a service of humanity, not country. Your parents were not traitors, Nathaniel, but they were not patriots either, and in the end, this fact is what killed them. The Silver Leaf Society did not engineer their deaths, but we do feel responsible for what happened, and we always have."
He nodded, heaving a sigh as he turned back to his wife. "I am not a killer," he said in a properly sheepish fashion. "I suggested the murder of Alex Somers in an effort to determine whether or not he was in mortal danger for crossing what I believed to be a dangerous enforcer of the Crown. Had you or your brother agreed, I would have confirmed my suspicions about my family's demise and, of course, found a way to spirit Lord Alex to safety. In my self-involved hubris, I completely forgot about this deception and what it might have meant to you and your brother."
She blinked at him, and replied only with a faint, "Oh."
"Mary and Walter were forced to change the terms of a prisoner swap in Calais on the day that they died," Lady Dempierre said, twisting her hands in her lap. "The baby was never supposed to have gone along with them, but the poor darling had been down with colic and your mother couldn't bear to part from her. Mary was the linchpin in our entire operation, and she had no choice but to attend the exchange personally, so she brought Alice along. It was supposed to be a short, speedy affair, and one Mary could not miss lest she risk all that was at stake in our future."
"It should have been simple," Zelda added, exchanging a glance with Lady Dempierre. "It had always been simple before, but this was the first time that we were being paid with a British soldier, a prisoner of war, rather than simply valuables or a civilian caught on the wrong side of the conflict. We should have anticipated complications."
"As soon as they had their man, they turned on us," Therese said, tears brimming at her eyes. "They shot your father and our rescued soldier where they stood. It is impossible to know what might have happened if not for the Frenchman who'd made the passage with them. Mary turned to him and shoved Alice into his arms, and then charged the gunman, gripping a knife she had concealed in her skirts. She did succeed in killing your father's killer, but at the cost of her own life."
There was a heavy beat of silence. Nell's grip on Nathaniel's hand was pure steel, and felt, somehow, like protection from the horror hovering in the air.
"The baby lived," she said, her voice thin and hopeful. "Is that what you are saying? Alice Atlas lives?"
Nathaniel held his breath. It was surely too much to hope, too farfetched to believe, and yet, both women were nodding.
"Her name is now Isabelle, for by necessity, she could no longer be an Atlas. She is quite safe, happy by all accounts, and lives in the Côte d'Azur, raised as a daughter by the man who saved her," Therese explained. "She doesn't know who she is. It would have been unsafe for her to know, and it would have been impossible to bring her home."
"Which isn't to say we didn't try," Zelda said pointedly. "We got a letter from the man, some months later, telling us in a roundabout way what had happened, but when we tried to return to the cove and plan a retrieval ... well ..."
"Your uncle tried to shoot us," Therese provided flatly. "He must have known the truth of Mary's doings at some point, but he had twisted them since her death, become confused. He told us if he ever saw either of us again, he would kill us like we had killed his sister."
