Page 63 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
"We never knew exactly where Alice had been taken. Neither of us even knew the prisoner's surname," Zelda said, motioning to the book in Nathaniel's hands, "until tonight."
"Isabelle's adoptive father obviously could not be explicit in his missives," Therese explained. "And he had every reason to believe I knew just as much as Mary would have, especially as I had no means to write him back. When we received a letter last spring alerting us to a rather extreme change in circumstances, we knew we had to act."
"Why in the name of God couldn't you just have told us this in London?" Nell demanded, echoing Nathaniel's exact reaction to the portion of this information that he had gotten from Zelda earlier. "We were all in the same room together months ago!"
She answered Nell the same way she had answered Nate. "Your husband would not have believed me. He never trusted me to begin with, and if I had come out of the wings with wild stories and demands that you speak to Therese or find the portrait or grant me access to the cove, none of those things would ever have happened. I knew it would only take a short while at Meridian before you inevitably discovered much of this story on your own."
Nell did not immediately respond, her little body tense with anger as she glared at her aunt across the room. "We are not pawns for you to move across the chessboard."
"She isn't wrong," Nathaniel said begrudgingly. "I had quite a lot of misinformation, built on a hearty foundation of my own hubris. I would have reacted poorly to being directly confronted with any of this, especially prior to knowing you."
"We had hoped there would be more time," Zelda said, with as much of a tone of apology in her voice as she was capable of mustering beneath her customary crispness. "But events outside of our control forced us to move our plan up exponentially. I will say your surprise elopement did not help matters. The important thing is that I have many mechanisms in the works to retrieve your sister and reveal her identity to her, but we need access to the cove, and we need that ledger."
Nell did not answer on his behalf, instead turning her head up to search his face, her cheeks featuring two spots of bright pink where she wore her outrage.
"We could not simply tell you, dear," Zelda put in impatiently. "With all the other dishonesty at play, it seemed cruel to launch you into marriage with instructions of manipulation. Surely you can see the sense in that. You've always understood the importance of what we do."
It was clear now to Nathaniel in a way it never had been before, why someone like Nell would have become involved with her aunt's cause. She hadn't been motivated by funds nor hungry for prestige. The Silver Leaf Society was, somehow, amidst all the dark doings, ultimately a mission of compassion, not a game of cold espionage.
"Will my sister even wish to come back here?" he asked, breaking from his wife's intent gaze to turn back to the interlopers. "She has spent her whole life believing herself someone else."
"We can't know the answer to that, Mr. Atlas," Therese replied. "We simply believe that, in her place, we'd wish to know the truth."
"Precisely," Zelda agreed. "Which is why we must act now if we are going to act at all, before she can be married."
"Married?" Nell and Nathaniel repeated in a confused unison.
"Well, yes," Therese said with a strained smile. "That's the other matter we must discuss, if you are amenable to moving forward, that is."
Nathaniel sighed, glancing down at his wife for long enough to see her quick nod. Unspoken between them was the same thought: So much for tonight being their final mission with the Silver Leaf Society.
He tossed the ledger across the room, which was caught deftly by Zelda Smith, whose expression had changed rapidly from weary confession to an anticipatory smile.
"All right, then," he relented. "What's next?"
* * *
The sun had already crestedthe horizon by the time the Atlases sent their guests back to Dover.
Nell reasoned that they had expected to be awake all night in the first place, though the evening of dancing and laughter she had imagined was a far cry from the reality of what had unfolded around them. It was unquestionably a relief when they returned to their home, free of guests, and shut the door behind them.
They ascended the stairs in silence, their hands linked. If the maids attending the early-morning fires found anything amiss in this appearance of their employers, they did not express it, at least not so far as either could see.
The bedroom looked more welcoming than it ever had with slats of pink and orange dawn light floating through the break in the curtains, landing upon their bed like arrows pointing the way to rest, at long last. Nell removed her spectacles and began to work her way out of the simple dress she'd put on at her aunt's behest, listening to the thump of her husband's shoes hitting the floor and his sigh of relief as he dropped backward onto the pillows.
Nathaniel was as ruffled as she'd ever seen him, with blue smudges beneath his closed eyes and a slackness to his face that one might expect of a man who'd been to hell and back. How was it possible that he was still so beautiful, even like this? She couldn't help but smile, crossing the room to sink onto the bed next to him. She reached up to brush the unruly wave of his hair, which only escaped in these stolen hours, when the confines of careful styling could no longer tame it. She ran the silken tresses through her fingers, remembering the first time she had seen it in its natural state, that morning at the inn, and how impossible it had seemed at the time that she could ever touch him like this, of nothing but her own accord.
She thought perhaps he was asleep, but his lashes fluttered, his eyes opening to settle onto her as she touched him this way.
He turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm, leaving them both adrift for a moment in this moment of silence and peace. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down to his side, and heaved a heavy sigh, knowing that they could never go back to the simplicity of their lives before tonight.
"Eleanor," he said after a moment, stroking his fingers down her back. "I am so, so sorry."
"Nathaniel—" she began, but he shook his head, unwilling to be silenced.
"Everything that has gone wrong has been due to my bullheadedness," he insisted. "I was so certain that I had the right of things and was too proud to admit to you when I began to wonder otherwise. I was afraid of losing you, if you ever found out what my intentions had been at the beginning. I swear to you, I was done with it. Kit will tell you. It was not worth the cost of the future to excavate the past."
"Kit knows?" she asked, tilting her head up to meet his eye.
