He smiled.
They worked until the last shelf stood straight.
Then Emily washed her hands and offered him tea from a battered kettle.
Daniel accepted it as if it were the finest hospitality in the county.
“I received news about the men who attacked my carriage,” he said.
Emily set down her cup.
“The constable found them?”
“One of them.”
The prisoner was a former groom named Isaac Rook, who had recently worked for a contractor associated with the railway scheme.
He had admitted taking the dispatch box but claimed that the instructions came from a man he knew only as Mr. Gray.
The payment had been delivered in advance through a public house near the coaching road.
Rook insisted that he had been told to frighten Daniel and take the documents, not to injure him.
“Do you believe him?” Emily asked.
“I believe he is afraid of the man who hired him.”
“Could that man be Father?”
“Possibly.”
Daniel watched her face.
“I will not conceal evidence if it points to him.”
“I would not ask you to.”
The answer surprised them both.
Emily had spent so many years trying to protect her family’s reputation that speaking plainly felt like stepping into cold water.
She did not enjoy the thought of Arthur facing criminal accusations.
She simply no longer believed that his title should protect him from consequences.
Two weeks later, Mrs. Fenwick received a letter that changed the investigation.
It came from a retired surveyor named Thomas Wren, who had worked on the eastern boundary twenty years earlier.
Wren claimed that Arthur had ordered an older map removed from the estate archive.
The missing map showed the trust meadow extending farther south than the recent railway plan admitted.
Wren had kept a copy because he suspected the alteration was deliberate.
He agreed to testify if his travel expenses were paid.
Mrs. Fenwick arranged his journey immediately.
Before he could leave home, someone broke into his cottage.
The intruder searched his papers and destroyed a cabinet.
Wren escaped injury because he had been visiting his daughter.
The copy of the map survived in a tin box beneath his hearth.
When Emily learned of the break-in, she felt fear return with a force that surprised her.
The dispute was no longer confined to accounts and signatures.
Someone was willing to frighten witnesses to keep the boundary hidden.
Daniel insisted that Wren stay in a guarded lodging until the hearing.
Emily agreed that the precaution was sensible.
