Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Portia threw the newspaper on the bed. “Right, what’s all this about then?”
“F-F-Father l-l-left a ci-cipher in his l-l-l—”
“Letters,” Cordelia finished for her, lifting up one of the pages and holding it under the light. Her first thought was that the letters might contain some of the glowing paint that had been on the spine of Shakespeare’s tome. “The letters he’d written to Charles.”
“N-no,” Hermione said, and to her sisters’ surprise, she ripped the pages out of Cordelia’s fingers. “I-If you p-p-please, I c-can e-explain. I-I n-n-need your p-p-p—”’
“Patience!” Cordelia and Portia finished for her, the air thickening with collective frustration in the now cramped bedroom.
“Hermione, we don’t have time for this nonsense!” Portia nearly shouted.
“I-I-I h-haven’t b-been able to f-f-finish the c-cipher,” she explained, pushing her spectacles back up her nose. Her cheeks were ruddy with the effort of speaking. “W-we m-must w-w-work together,” she finally finished.
“Naughty,” Portia said, looking over the letters. “Nicked these out from under the duke’s nose, did you?”
Hermione was incredulous. “I-I… I was s-s-simply l-leaving him a b-b-book!”
“Of course you were, my dear. Then these just wandered into your hands?” Portia jeered.
Hermione smacked her sister’s good arm with the stack of letters. Portia yelped.
Cordelia’s heart began to flutter in her chest, giddy with excitement.
She laughed out loud to herself and without thinking, pulled her sisters into a crushing embrace, being careful to not upset Portia’s sling.
She could not believe how quickly she’d been resigned to her fate.
Never again, she promised herself, I’ll never again despair.
Portia and Hermione’s laughter, abundant and raucous, filled the room.
“What’s going on in here?” a small voice piped up. Cordelia pulled away to see Bea, arms folded tightly, regarding them with a severe stare.
“C’mere,” Portia ordered, holding her arms out.
With a cry, Bea rushed into them. Cordelia could have wept from the relief of seeing her sisters happy and together. It produced a feeling of fierce protection in her.
“Right,” she said, “Hermione still needs to show us how to decode these letters and what kind of riddle will be produced.”
Hermione nodded her head. “I-I-I a-already have the f-f-first part of it d-down,” she mentioned, gesturing to a piece of paper filled with her scribbles.
“The last piece…” Portia read aloud. She shrugged her shoulders. “If Father said this is the last piece, then I am going to believe him on that.”
“F-F-Father p-p-placed m-m-money in e-each p-piece of c-correspondence,” Hermione said. Her stutter always got a little better around her sisters, the more she spoke. “I-I n-noticed that h-h-he p-provided u-unusually s-specific amounts. S-see here?”
Hermione pointed to a line, which read, … enclosed you will find the sums of 246, 127, and 139 pounds. The sisters were all huddled over Cordelia’s dressing table, following along with rapt attention.
“I-It a-appears th-that the first n-number r-refers to the l-line, the s-second is th-the word and the th-th-third is the l-letter.”
Cordelia gasped, tracing her finger over the pattern. Sure enough, three letters emerged, spelling “the.” “My goodness, Hermione, how did you first notice such a thing?” she asked.
Hermione shrugged. “F-Father and I u-used to p-play th-th-these games with e-e-each other. Th-things he p-presumably l-learned in the w-w-war.”
“He always meant for one of us to have the inheritance,” Portia whispered to herself. The thought made Cordelia’s breath catch.
“What do we do now?” Bea piped up.
Cordelia glanced at Portia, whose brows were furrowed. “Well, we need to decipher the full message. Preferably before our guests start arriving. Which means we have,” she glanced quickly at the clock on her dressing table, “exactly seven hours.”
Portia let out a low whistle. “I’ll go and fetch some parchment and ink. That’s if I don’t run into that dreadful Mr. Peverill. He arrived back yesterday and has been tailing me ever since. For what reason, I can’t imagine.”
Cordelia wondered if she was being deliberately obtuse. It was obvious to everyone except Portia that Henry Peverill had taken quite the shine to her.
“No,” Hermione replied. “L-let me g-g-go. N-no one w-will suspect m-me.”
“Bea, you can make yourself useful by helping,” Portia added, and Bea saluted her, clicking the heels of her silk slippers together.
Cordelia glanced back down to the stack of letters and shook her head in disbelief. “I hope this will not lead us to another cache of correspondence. Because if it does…”
Portia squeezed her arm and grinned. “Keep the faith. No matter what happens, we will still be together at the end of this.”
By the time Bea and Hermione had arrived back, Cordelia and Portia had solved another portion of the mysterious clue.
Cordelia’s heart hammered in her chest. It was becoming more real to her now.
She was beginning to grasp that she would perhaps not have to accept Rhys, that she could be a free woman.
But there was more to it than that. She glanced around the room at her sisters and now knew that even if they lost Hollyhead, if they were forced from their home, if they had no dowries or money or futures that resembled those of other aristocratic ladies…
they had each other. And that would be enough.
It had always been enough for Bea, Hermione, and Portia.
She’d not seen it before, but she could see it now.
The concept made her feel dizzy. She gripped the edge of her desk.
“Don’t faint on me again,” Portia said, clapping her on the back.
“Rhys asked me to marry him,” she blurted out. There was a collective gasp from her sisters.
“A-and?” Hermione said.
Cordelia shook her head. “I-I thought I would say yes. At the time it seemed like a good idea. But now… now…” She could hardly get the words out.
“It’s okay, Lia,” Bea said, wrapping her arms around her neck. “We’ll love you anyway.”
Hermione squeezed her arm, and Portia tangled her fingers affectionately in Cordelia’s hair.
“You love being the one to always come to our rescue, but you know that we are older now, right? We can come to your aid every once and a while, too,” Portia said, at a reasonable volume, which was so unexpected that Cordelia burst out laughing, wiping the streaming tears from her eyes.