Page 119 of The Bastard's Iberian Bride
The word spoken by Kincaid had a note of finality, but he went on. “Now. Agruen thinks your mother had something from your father, something about him. And that leaves you in great danger.”
Her thoughts whirled. Could the treasure be a means of blackmail?
A thread of nausea twisted in her and she swallowed it down. “She had nothing. Nothing. A letter he sent her, a letter that said nothing.”
“Where is it?” Tellingford asked.
Her mother hadn’t shared that letter with Tellingford.
“I have it.” Bink’s voice was wooden.
“It might be in code. We’ll need to see it.” Tellingford and Kincaid held a private conversation of back and forth glances.
Her husband stirred on his chair. “I have it in safekeeping.”
Her heart skipped. He’d left it at Betty’s, with her desk.
Pah, the desk was nothing, an empty shell without even any secret compartments.
She swallowed hard. Paul Heardwyn left her almost nothing and no one would believe it, least of all Agruen.
But of course, there was also the ring.
“Agruen took my mother’s ring.”
“What?”
“I found a ring among her things. It was, according to Agruen, a part of a puzzle ring. The pieces go together, you know? It had a, a hand.”
“A gimmal ring,” Kincaid said.
“Yes, well, Agruen took it from me. He stole it when I visited Cransdall the summer after Waterloo.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there, and it disappeared from my room. He’d been interested in it, so I had a maid snoop around, and then I confronted him, and he told me he was keeping it. And if I told anyone, he would say that I had been…” she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been such a fool. “He would say I’d had congress with him.” She shivered. “Which I didn’t.”
“I will kill him,” Bink said, gruffly.
“The rings might hold a key,” Tellingford said.
“To what?” But even as she asked, she knew—the letter must be coded. They must get the rings back to uncode the letter, to find—
“What are you not telling us?” Bink asked. “What are you seeking, and why should Paulette give it to you?”
“Sit down, Tellingford,” Kincaid said. “Bakeley, go and check who’s listening at that door.” He settled on the corner of the desk and began his story.
