“You promised she believed the death,” Sutter said.
Richard replied, “She did until the mark appeared.” Fane muttered that Lydia should never have been allowed to write anything.
Briggs asked when the papers would move.
“Before morning,” Richard answered.
Mrs.
Fenwick led Catherine toward the stairs.
“They will come for the register,” the housekeeper whispered.
Catherine had hidden the blue-covered book with Elijah, and now she understood why time mattered.
She asked Mrs.
Fenwick whether Richard had ever discussed selling her own inheritance.
“He borrowed against it,” the housekeeper said.
“You signed papers you thought were household expenses.” Catherine could not recall those signatures clearly.
Many documents had been placed before her during meals, each accompanied by a request that she trust her husband.
She thought of Lydia asking to see the first page before signing anything.
Catherine had called her suspicious.
The memory burned.
In her room Catherine wrote two letters.
One went to her cousin Rebecca, a widow in Richmond who had never liked Richard.
The other addressed an attorney recommended by Lydia years earlier, a man named Stephen Alden.
Catherine did not know whether either would help, but she refused to leave all the evidence in her husband’s hands.
She sealed the letters with plain wax and gave them to Mrs.
Fenwick, who would pass them to a traveling seamstress instead of the estate post.
Then Catherine asked for a second lamp.
If Richard tried to search the house during the night, she wanted enough light to see his face.
Chapter 13: The Child at the Pear Tree
The plan to move James almost failed because a stable boy overheard two men discussing the garden gate.
Elijah saw the boy hurry toward Crowe and intercepted him beside the water pump.
His name was Peter, and he was sixteen, frightened, and desperate to earn favor with the overseer.
Elijah did not threaten him.
He asked whom Crowe would protect after the information was delivered.
Peter looked confused.
“He said I’d be allowed to work in the big house,” he answered.
Elijah asked whether Crowe had kept his last promise, the one involving Peter’s mother.
The boy’s face changed.
Crowe had promised to keep her from being sold, then watched without protest as she was sent away.
Peter sat on the pump ledge and rubbed his palms together.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Elijah said he wanted no more harm to come to James.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Elijah added.
“But you know what happens when a child goes into the wagon.” Peter nodded slowly.
