Bodice Ripper

Mary sat down and waited for her heart to slow down, and her brain to catch up with what James had just told her. The house had been searched? But why? Even with the knowledge that someone was working against them, to stop the investigation they'd begun—if it could be called that—what could they have hoped to find?

There had been ample time in the week since her father's death. At least four of those days were completely uninterrupted, with her hiding in the Library and pretending not to realize that something was going on. So why now, all of a sudden, had someone taken a renewed interest in the house?

The only answer she could think of was that they had figured something out, and were heading in the right direction. If she had figured something out along with James, that meant that there were still clues in the house somewhere.

The only place, though, that she had found anything was her father's journal. And she'd brought that with her to London. She had thought it would be stupid not to, and now it seemed as if she had been right to think so.

There were the scraps that her father had collected before his death, as well, but they weren't proof of anything at all. They'd had to guess at their meaning, and the guesses were hardly accurate. They were almost certainly not what the burglars had been looking for, she thought.

They were only meaningful along with the journal. So if she was going to find answers, she realized, she was going to need to look through it again.

She'd been distracted from her attempts to decipher the dense text by the discovery of the letter to James, and the subsequent research they had been doing in the study. She hadn't even mentioned that she had it to James. It wasn't exactly a secret, but somehow it felt private. As if it were hers alone.

She had taken it out again when she got back, while she packed the rest of her things back into her armoire, and now she turned to look at it. It looked so ordinary, and yet Mary was afraid of it, now. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that it was probably what had brought down the invasion of her home on her head.

She cracked the spine and read the last pages again, going backward. His "adventures" with this Pearl woman were mentioned almost daily. He certainly had been going into town quite a bit, but she'd assumed it was on business. She put it out of her mind as best she could. After all, it was her father's business, not hers.

Further, they needed to find people that her father was involved in. It was becoming clearer and clearer that they needed to find more people who had known him. If they didn't have the answers, then Roy Stump wouldn't have left town in such a rush, no doubt at the prompting of her uncle's mysterious guest.

She shuddered hard, having already guessed who her uncle had been hosting. There was no way that Davis was anything other than a kind old man. And yet, now that she thought of it, it seemed harder and harder to justify anyone else being involved.

For the past month, he'd mentioned only five names in his journal: Roy, Oliver, Davis, Pearl, and an 'M'—Mary herself, she guessed. It felt odd to read memories of herself, and she did her best to skim over those parts.

A month ago was the first mention of Pearl, and the only mention of her with her name fully written out. She lived in Canterbury, which seemed awfully far to visit a woman. Still, perhaps it was an effort to maintain his local reputation.

He'd gone out to meet her at her house—he'd given an address.

Mary got up and grabbed a pen, scrawling the address on a slip of paper and creasing it. She would need to visit the place, along with James.

Still, there was no mention of who this Pearl was. How had they met? What exactly had driven them together? It all seemed odd, altogether. Her father was a fairly well-known man, and the idea that he would be spending time with some stranger, for no identifiable reason, was unthinkable.

If there had been some formal introduction, then it made more sense. But this time there hadn't been anything like that. Mary frowned.

It wasn't likely that he would have mentioned her before—the use of her name in long-form suggested that it hadn't been written down before. But perhaps there was some clue in the pages before that was more lateral.

She turned the page back, and began reading once again. She could feel her eyes starting to strain from reading by the electric lights, as the sun went down outside, but she didn't let it stop her.

There was a mention, only a page before, of going to meet someone new the next day. They weren't referred to by name, of course. That would have been too clear. She was left only with the implication that they might have been Pearl.

What confused her more, though, was the specifics of the reference. "G2 Nu Ex."

New Ex? What on earth could that mean?

Then it clicked in her mind, and things started falling into place. That was why Mr. Stump hadn't had a will to read, even though her father had realized that he was in danger and might die soon. He used a different executor altogether. Someone else had the will.

Her heart leapt into her throat. This was a big clue: a completely secret executor? If someone were going around and trying to silence anyone connected to her father, then someone who nobody knew about would be able to tell the whole thing.

She tried to blink. It wouldn't do to get her hopes up. She'd only get hurt that way, if she wasn't careful. But it sounded good. It sounded right. This was going to be the big break, the way that they tied everything up in the end.

For the first time in a week, she saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

She marked her page with the address she'd written down and went looking for James.

18

James

James sat down on his bed. It seemed as if every time he thought he could rest his head, something more came up. He'd barely been able to sleep for the past week, between trying to set the Geis house in order and trying to mend fences with Mary. Then... other things.