“Put me down gently, Elijah.

My leg!” Catherine Whitmore cried as the carpenter carried her through the upstairs doorway.

Elijah Carter bent his knees to keep her injured ankle from striking the bedframe, and he heard the quiet crack of the floorboards beneath his weight.

Catherine had slipped beside the locked cellar door that afternoon, and the swelling above her boot had grown large enough to make every movement painful.

She had refused the maid’s assistance, insisted the physician was unnecessary, and ordered Elijah to carry her himself.

He had obeyed because a command from the mistress of Riverbend Plantation could become a punishment the instant it was questioned.

He was setting her against the pillows when the door slammed open.

Colonel Richard Whitmore stood in the doorway with a pistol in his right hand and a look that made Elijah’s stomach turn cold.

“Get your hands off my wife!” Richard shouted.

Elijah moved away immediately and raised both hands, palms forward, leaving no doubt that he carried nothing.

“Sir, she fell near the cellar.

I only brought her upstairs.” Richard aimed at the center of his chest.

Catherine grabbed the wooden bedframe.

“Richard, lower that gun.

Elijah saved me from the stairs.” “Stay quiet, Catherine.

I will deal with him.”

Elijah noticed a dark mark on Richard’s cuff, a smear of the same red clay that coated the cellar steps.

The colonel had been away inspecting tobacco fields, or so the household believed.

Yet the clay came from the older foundation below the west wing, where workers had been forbidden to go for months.

Catherine saw it too.

Her face altered from pain to recognition.

“Then explain why my sister’s name was written on the cellar wall.” Richard’s pistol trembled once.

The only sound in the room was the clock above the mantel ticking toward five.

“Your sister has been dead for fourteen years,” Richard said.

Catherine shook her head.

“Someone scratched Lydia’s name into the plaster beside an iron ring.

The marks were fresh enough to leave dust on my fingers.” Richard took a step toward her.

“You were hurt and confused.” “I know my own sister’s handwriting,” Catherine answered.

“She always made the final stroke of the letter y turn backward like a hook.” Elijah had seen that hooked letter as well, not today, but three weeks earlier when Richard ordered him to strengthen a floor joist in the abandoned milk room.

At the time he had told himself the name belonged to someone else.