Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

As Grace readied for dinner, she tugged another letter from the box belonging to Frederick's grandparents, grinning at the recollection of their sweet adoration for one another. Oh, she hoped she and Frederick would create such a tender romance. They'd gotten off to a fantastic start. She skimmed a finger over her lips at the thought of their most recent romantic interlude. All afternoon.

She sighed. What a perfectly delightful man!

As her fingers skimmed over the papers, she touched paper of a different texture tucked at the back of the box. Newer. Not worn from time.

How curious.

Carefully, she removed the sheets and unfolded them. At the top of the first page, she read the words:

I, Edward Richard Phineas Percy, the sixth Earl of Astley, being of sound mind and mortal body, do make my last will and testament. I revoke all previous wills in my name.

Grace's fingers clenched reflexively against the paper. The date by Edward's signature at the bottom of the page marked only one week before he died. She skimmed over the document, not fully understanding some of it, but what she did comprehend was that this will left everything to Frederick alone, bequeathing nothing to Celia or even Lady Moriah.

Grace met her own reflection in the mirror. "We have a motive."

But for whom? Celia or Lady Moriah? Or some third player in the game?

Grace turned to the next page, and a shiver slipped up her arms from her fingertips.

Two lines from a shaky hand marked the page:

Frederick, my brother,

I have wronged you beyond forgiveness. Do what I could not.

Grace stood so fast her gilded chair nearly tumbled over.

"Lady Astley?" Ellie called as Grace ran for the door. "I still need to set your hair."

"What care I for hair when there is such a discovery upon us, Ellie." She jerked open the door and peered back at her wide-eyed maid. "I must find Lord Astley at once."

Frederick stood just outside his office, speaking to Brandon and looking rather dashing in his evening tails. Grace almost lost her train of thought in order to give him the thorough appreciation such a figure deserved, but she blinked from her stupor and focused on the task at hand.

"Frederick. I found something."

Frederick's head came up, and Brandon's eyes grew wide as she approached at a pace quite unlike a countess. Perhaps her wild hair had something to do with it as well.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded and took Frederick by the hand, pulling him into the study away from listening ears. "You come too, Brandon. I think we'll need an extra pair of eyes."

Brandon looked to Frederick, who hesitated for only a moment before gesturing for Brandon to follow. As soon as the door clicked closed, Grace pulled the paper from behind her back and turned it for Frederick's view. "I found the will. Your brother must have known you'd want your grandparents' letters, so he hid it there for you to find. It's proof of what you already knew. Edward had written her out of everything." Her breath pulsed as she tried to calm down. "Not only Celia, but your mother too."

"What are you talking about?" Frederick took the paper and read over the words, his face paling. When he turned to the next page, he pressed his palm to his head and collapsed into a nearby chair.

"He…he wrote to me." Frederick's words emerged on broken air.

He worked his jaw as if attempting to control his emotions. Oh, her dear \hero. She lowered herself to her knees by his chair and rested her hand against his arm, drawing Frederick's watery focus back to her. "He called me brother ."

Grace's vision blurred at the mingling of grief and gratefulness weaving across Frederick's features. For too long he'd carried the label of outcast , unforgiven especially by one of the most important people in his life, and now, painfully late and from the grave, his brother offered healing.

Frederick drew in a shaky breath and wiped a hand across his eyes. "I'll present this to Piper when he arrives and phone Detective Miracle." He sat up straighter. "But he'll be here in a few days to look at it himself." He offered the will to Brandon. "The signature looks authentic."

Brandon studied the paper and nodded. "Indeed, sir."

"I hope this will provide you some peace, knowing he thought of you at the end." Grace stood and wrapped her fingers around his. "That he believed in you."

Frederick cleared his throat. "There is a measure of solace in that."

"I'm only sorry I didn't find it sooner." She sighed. "I'd have gotten through the letters yesterday if I hadn't been so tired from another ghost hunt."

The dinner bell sounded from the other side of the door, so Grace moved in that direction, but Frederick caught her by the arm. "What did you say?"

Grace looked from Brandon to Frederick. "I wish I'd found the will sooner?"

"Something about a ghost hunt?"

"Oh goodness, yes. Brandon can attest to it." She leaned forward, the tantalizing details of the past two nights still tingling near the surface of her memory. "One of the servants said there was a ghost living in the east wing." She paused, shaking her head. "Well I suppose, it's not really alive, so it's not living in the east wing, but haunting the east wing. I went in search of it so you wouldn't have to be bothered when you returned home."

His eyes narrowed as she continued.

"But I'm afraid you'll have to be bothered, because the first night I saw the ghost, but it disappeared before I could identify it, and the second night, the ghost never appeared at all."

He was blinking like he had something in his eyes.

"I don't really think it's a ghost." Grace offered, trying to remain sensible. "But someone certainly walks about the east wing in a white gown, moaning at night."

"Why haven't I heard of this before now?" Frederick turned to Brandon.

"It only began during your travels to the States, sir."

"So it isn't a figment of Lady Astley's"—he stumbled over his words as he met her gaze again—"most remarkable imagination?"

She smiled her appreciation at his careful choice of words. "I do have an overzealous imagination, but I rarely see things that aren't there. I only pretend to." She smoothed her palms across her waist. "I plan to search for our ghost again tonight and would be ever so grateful if you'd join me. If not, I'll have to enlist the services of Brandon again, and I'm fairly certain he'd rather not be party to another ghost hunt."

Brandon coughed, something he seemed to do quite often, if she thought about it.

Frederick took a great deal of time to resurrect a response. "I'll be happy to take over my butler's place as your sleuthing partner."

"Sleuthing partner. It sounds much more delightful when you say it." Grace braided her hands in front of her and brought them to her chin. "But I think I've sorted out the mystery of our ghost, and I hope to uncover the truth tonight."

Frederick had envisioned many opportunities in his life, but sneaking through the east wing in search of a ghost? He'd never even remotely imagined something this bizarre. Of course he'd never expected his life to have Grace in it, and Grace changed everything.

He held the lantern ahead of them with one hand and Grace's hand with the other as they entered the Morning Room. Whether from Grace's influence or the memory of his brother's body, a cold sweat broke out over Frederick's skin. Ghosts didn't have to float into view to impact a life. Sometimes they haunted thoughts and memories.

At the recollection of the hastily scrawled note, Frederick's throat tightened. Edward had forgiven him. Believed in him even, as Grace had said. Some lost piece within Frederick's heart emerged from hiding to make his heart whole again.

"The last time she came from the hallway."

Frederick shook away the gathering tears and looked down at his wife. "She?"

"From the timbre of the moan and the flow of the skirts, our ghost is female."

His gaze shot to the ceiling, laughter tickling to release the tension. "Of course she is."

"Doubt as you may, Husband dearest, but I can assure you I'm more educated about ghosts than you are," she whispered, her eyes glinting in the golden lantern light.

He held her gaze, hoping his touch, his expression somehow communicated how much she meant to him. "I have no doubt, darling."

"I love it when you call me darling." Her grin surfaced. "You always say it so sweetly, as if you like it, even when you're doubting my clearheadedness."

Despite the gloomy theme to the room, his smile spread, and he placed a kiss on Grace's head. "I like you, clearheaded or not."

"I'm ever so glad you do, since we are bound to each other for all eternity."

Being bound to her was one of his favorite activities.

They moved around the room in tandem, steps quiet. And then he heard it. A swelling moan, rising from the deep recesses of the wing. He nearly dropped the lantern, his gaze searching the shadows. The moan rose again. He pushed Grace behind him and searched the darkness for the origin of the eerie sound.

"Blow out the lantern" Grace whispered from behind him.

"What?"

"If it's a real ghost, the lantern light will keep us from seeing clearly.

If it isn't, the light may cause her to stay away."

"Grace, I don't—"

"There's enough moonlight to help us." She ducked beneath his arm and blew out the flame.

The sound emerged again. Closer. His eyes adjusted to the moon's glow from the windows, and he reached back to wrap his fingers through Grace's, keeping her near. Safe. Or as safe as a ghost hunt could keep anyone.

A white flutter of cloth slipped in and out of his periphery through the room they passed to their left. Frederick's blood went cold. He pressed Grace back against the wall, shielding her as he peeked around the doorframe.

"Isn't this romantic?" Grace's whisper pulled his gaze to her face. She was almost smiling. "You're ever so good at protecting me."

Frederick drew a blank for response, so he switched his attention back to the room, but the ghost was gone.

Her moan rose from the adjoining room.

"She's saying something. Do you hear her?" Grace's question spurred him farther down the hall. "Can you make it out?"

Three syllables.

"The last word is me," Grace murmured, his sweet bride not intimidated in the slightest.

The words became clearer as they stepped over the threshold into his brother's office.

Frederick's breath halted. " Forgive me ."

Icicles of awareness slid a chill of cold sweat down his neck. What sort of fictional world had Grace brought into his real life?

Bent over Edward's desk, the moonlight draping a luminescent glow over her contorted face, stood his mother. She wept as she scanned his brother's desk, shifting through the pages, eyes fixed and unblinking.

"Mother?" the word scraped over his dry throat, barely making a sound.

"She's sleepwalking," Grace's voice came near his ear. "Do you see her face?"

"Charles," her wild cry upheaved with a new rush of volume. "Edward."

Frederick couldn't move, transfixed by the scene before him, haunted by a myriad of questions. What drove his mother to such grief that she'd seek consolation in her sleep?

Her body shuddered beneath the weight of her sobs.

He'd never seen her weep, and now in the ghostly light, tears rained over her sunken cheeks, her hair a wild mass around her face. The pale light highlighted her hollowed eyes and reflected off the silver streaks in her dark hair. Mother circled the desk, blindly sifting through the papers.

"Tell me you forgive me." Pages fluttered to the floor as she continued her perusal and finally, as if defeated, quit her task. "Where? I must find it."

With those words, she stepped to the far bookshelf and escaped out the servants' entry in a wisp of white. Frederick followed her, entranced.

When they reached the dimly lit Great Hall, only the emptiness of the room greeted him. Grace's warm fingers slid into his. Had she been there all along? "I thought it was her, but I never imagined…"

"There's more than grief there." His voice came scratchy. "Regret?" He met Grace's gaze. "Guilt?"

She breathed out a sigh as she searched his face before bringing his hand to her lips. "Let's go to bed, Frederick. Rest. Pray. And discuss this in the morning. There's nothing to be done now that can't wait."

He looked up the stairway, fighting the inclination to run to his mother's room for immediate answers. Did she know something about Edward's death? Father's? She'd begged forgiveness for both. What did that mean?

"Let her sleep." Grace wrapped her arm through his, tugging him toward the stairs. "I doubt she even knows what she's doing, and drawing attention to it at the wrong time won't bring any answers."

"I don't understand this."

"We've uncovered something hidden for a long time, I think, and so dark it emerges in your mother's sleep. We must be very careful from here on out, Frederick. I fear we're nearing the end of the game, the darkest part of the story, and someone doesn't want us to discover the truth."

Frederick sat on the edge of the bed, his naked back turned to her as he stared out the window. At the sight of him, Grace's heart squeezed with a mixture of fascination, empathetic ache, and something deep she couldn't quite name. What they'd uncovered, the questions surfacing from their discovery, weighted the room with threatening possibilities. Why would Lady Moriah beg forgiveness of her deceased husband and son?

Grace swallowed a gathering lump in her throat. Or worse, what had she done?

"You said during your meeting with Parks you felt certain he knew something about Celia." Grace pulled the duvet up around her body and scooted closer to the edge of the bed. "Did she have the sort of personality to harm your brother?"

Frederick pushed a hand through his dark mass of hair and sighed. "It seems too harsh to speak aloud, but yes. Now that I consider everything. She chose self-preservation at all cost. At one point, she even had my father wrapped around her finger. That's the only way he would have agreed to Edward marrying a woman with nothing but her charm to recommend her."

"Did she foresee the financial downfall of Havensbrooke?" She slid her palm down his back, attempting to offer comfort. "Gain some sort of widow's allowance upon Edward's death?"

"She had to have known about the finances, and yes, she received an allowance, but also"—his head came up, gaze fixing to hers—"she met someone with more money. Gavin Campbell, a businessman who'd gained his sudden wealth through industry. Or at least that's what I'd heard a few weeks before I returned home."

"I suppose she won't be a widow for long then," Grace whispered, trying to conjecture the missing pieces.

"She'd wait for at least the mourning year or fear being cast out of all good society." Frederick's brow creased.

"Which means as a widow she's still desperate to keep her financial status."

"Widow." Frederick turned. "Edward's first will, the one Celia would have known about, provided financially for her and Mother, should the entail end. And when I married you, the will included you as one of the beneficiary widows. No other family member wanted the burden of Havensbrooke."

"What does that mean?"

"Should I die without an heir, the estate will be sold, and the proceeds split three ways, between the three widows. If only two widows are left, then—"

"The money will be halved." Grace squeezed close. "Frederick, the car accident? Your attack? Someone's been after you since you got back from the States. It must be her!"

"I don't know."

"I can't imagine losing you." She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and leaned her cheek against the spot. "I've only just gotten to know you so well."

He interlocked his fingers with hers and brought their braided hands to his chest. "I don't plan to go anywhere if I can help it."

"What would lead a wife to contemplate such deviousness?" Grace shuddered and closed her eyes. "Is money really that important to her?"

"Money is a powerful taskmaster, darling." He ran a finger down her cheek. "For good or ill."

She grinned up at him. "At least in our case, it was for good."

"Mercifully so."

But with such illintent, a dangerous weapon. "So how did she kill him and make it look like heart failure? That's what we must sort out."

"We can't be certain Celia did this, Grace. There seem to be a number of unsavory business choices, which could have resulted in—"

"Do you have all of Conan Doyle's works in the library?" She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder again. "Maybe a book about poisons or poisonous plants?"

"You truly are incorrigible, but I'm afraid the entire situation has become much darker than I expected." He turned his head so that his lips tipped close to hers. "I don't suppose I could convince you to stay out of this nasty business, could I?"

Her eyes popped wide. "Why on earth would you want me out of it? I'm your best advocate." She placed another kiss on his shoulder, peering up at him as she did so. In all honesty, it was a ridiculous question. He wasn't as well equipped with sleuthing knowledge as she was. "And we're very good together, you know."

"I don't want you to be hurt, Grace." He slipped his arm around her, bringing her into his lap. "We're not speaking of pretend ghosts and obscure letters anymore. We're talking of murder."

"Exactly." She snuggled into the warmth and strength of his chest, his arms a powerful force around her. "And I feel certain I know a great deal more about murder than you."

"I'll not win this fight, will I?"

She shook her head and grinned. "Indeed, you will not." With a sigh, she rested her cheek against his shoulder, breathing in the amber scent of his skin. The quiet surrounded them, their breaths a gentle hush into the late morning. The unnamed emotion in her chest pinched deeper as her thoughts spiraled into the idea of someone hurting him. Her Frederick.

His fingers smoothed through her loose hair and down her back, his chin resting against her head. "Is it exhausting to live inside your mind?"

"Oh no, quite the contrary. It's rather energizing. Though I think living outside my head may be exhausting for others. But since we're sleuthing partners, as you've said, we should have the best of both minds. Your clarity and shrewdness, and my…" She looked up to the ceiling in search of a proper description.

"Imagination and somewhat terrifying fictional ingenuity."

She laughed and slapped his chest. "Which you mean in the very best way, of course."

"Of course."

She sobered. "But you must think creatively too. Is there a place we can go that might provide more information? Somewhere important to your brother or Celia? A secret place?"

He paused, his gaze locking with hers and then turning away. "Well, there are the ruins."

"The ruins?"

"Celia and I had secret rendezvous there a long time ago, but of more recent note, I noticed an unfamiliar car driving away from the place when we visited the vista."

The very thought of anyone having a secret meeting with her husband turned Grace's stomach inside out—and made her want to play Beethoven's Tempest sonata quite loudly and with so little restraint Lady Moriah would pale in horror. "I think we should forgo an immediate confrontation with your mother to investigate these ruins."

"I can't imagine why they'd be important."

"Is it a place where unsavory people might hide?" She wrapped her arms around his so that there was barely any space between them. "Like the men who chased me?"

His body stiffened at her words. "It's an excellent place for something like that, I'm afraid." He groaned and pressed his face into her neck. "I should have investigated the ruins before I left for London. I put you in danger—"

"I am fine, as you see." She pressed a kiss to his frown before slipping back from him. "But we have time to search them now."

"But Piper is coming to discuss finances with me." He paused and slipped a finger under her chin. "With us over dinner."

"That's hours away." She stood up. "Oh, my dear sleuth, you have so much to learn." His grin crooked at her fun-loving reprimand. "If something curious is happening at the ruins at just the time so many other curious things are happening to us, then I do believe it's worth our direct investigation. I'm developing quite the portrait of Lady Celia in my mind, and I feel certain she's at the heart of this mystery."