Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“When I find this person, Leonora, I swear to you, I am going to make them regret the very day they learned how to hold a quill,” Seraphina Beaumont ranted, her voice hitting a pitch that threatened the structural integrity of the windowpanes.
The small, cluttered drawing room of the London townhouse had been reduced to a veritable marching ground.
Seraphina paced from the chaise to the sideboard, her slippers slapping against the floor with a furious rhythm that grew faster with every single turn.
She threw her hands into the air, her fingers twitching with a manic, unspent energy that looked entirely absurd given her petite stature.
“When I find this miserable, spineless coward, I am going to challenge them. I will track down their tailor and dye every single one of their pristine waistcoats a hideous shade of sulfur yellow. I will hide rotten river fish in the molding of their carriage. I will map out their entire family tree just to write a scathing, multi-volume satirical pamphlet exposing every single cousin who ever eloped with a chimney sweep! I will do it, Leonora! I am entirely capable of such malice!”
“You are not capable of that, Seraphina,” Leonora answered.
“Yes, I am!”
Leonora sat calmly by the hearth, a teacup balanced on her knee as she watched Seraphina blur past her. “Seraphina, please. Take a breath. If you keep pacing like a caged panther, you are going to wear a permanent trench into the rug, and we cannot afford to replace it.”
“I do not care about the rug!” Seraphina spun on her heel, her skirts twisting violently around her ankles as she marched in the opposite direction.
She was visibly frustrated, her breath coming in short puffs while a few rogue curls tumbled completely out of their pins from the velocity of her movements.
“You do not understand the absolute indignity of it all. I have spent five years in the shadows. Writing since I was twenty and one years old. Five exhausting years! I have ruined my eyesight by the light of tallow candles, suffered through endless ink stains that refuse to wash out of my fingers. I have practically lived like a ghost, writing for anyone willing to read it, all so some arrogant, anonymous blackmailer could casually stroll up to our stoop, drop multiple letters, and threaten to expose my entire life to the ton? I am tired of investigating every postmark in London. I am tired of looking at every innocent messenger boy like he is the harbinger of my social execution.”
“Calm down,” Leonora said softly, setting her teacup aside. “Don’t worry. We are going to find out who is behind this. We always find a way through.”
Seraphina stopped dead in her tracks, puffing out a breath that blew a strand of hair away from her eyes. “Are we? Because right now, my primary investigative lead is a piece of paper that smells faintly of expensive tobacco and impending doom.”
Leonora sighed, leaning forward in her chair. “But are you still going to see Lady Byron? At home?”
Seraphina’s shoulders dropped, the fiery agitation draining out of her for a brief second.
“Yes. I don’t have a choice. It is only Lady Byron who knows about the writing.
So, I am hoping she would know what to do,” she answered, then sat by Leonora’s side.
“I am hoping she might know who the person behind this is, or what they want. But at the exact same time... Oh, I cannot bear the thought of going back there. That is why I have been putting this visit off for so long. I do not want to disappoint her, Leonora. I never wanted to disappoint her. That woman has done so much for us, raising us when we had no one else in this world, and the only reason I even began writing these editions in secret was to earn enough to repay her. To ease her burdens. If she looks at me and sees that I have brought this ruin down upon our heads, I...” She trailed off, her throat tightening as she stared down at her hands.
“I understand, Seraphina. Truly, I do,” Leonora said softly then patted Seraphina on the back.
“But these letters threatening to expose you have been coming ceaselessly for months now. I will admit that I am worried for you. I know you love what you do, and you would want to keep publishing, so I truly would hate it if this person tells everyone your identity and ruins the column. We need help. Maybe Lady Byron can tell us what to do.”
Seraphina nodded. “You’re right. I should just… go back home and let Lady Byron know what has happened. Show her the letters. Maybe she can catch something that I have missed and we finally figure out who is sending them.”
“Good.” Leonora said, then crossed her arms across her chest. “I still cannot believe that you kept it a secret from us all this while. That you were writing articles for the paper. Columns! I mean people speak of these columns and hold the writer in high regard. They even look forward to your next release. But even your sisters had no idea that you were the mystery writer.”
Seraphina flinched, the anger completely evaporating, replaced by a sudden guilt.
“I know. I am sorry. I can say I am sorry a thousand times, Leonora, but you must understand why I had to do it. I had to keep it an absolute secret so nobody would know. We were going to tell you both eventually. Euphemia and you. I swear it. I am just so sorry it came out like this, with a blackmailer knocking at our door. But please, let us just deal with this threat first before you and Euphemia decide to punish me for my silence.”
“I understand, Seraphina. Truly, I do,” Leonora said. “Still, I am terribly upset with you. I could have helped. I could have... read a few before you published them... we could have talked about your opinions.”
Seraphina gave her sister a knowing look. “Leonora, you have your own secrets, too. We are not getting into that particular ledger right now, are we?”
Leonora paused, a faint, telltale flush creeping up her neck. She offered a reluctant, wry smile. “Fair point.”
The tension in the room broke, and Leonora drew Seraphina into a brief hug, holding her tightly. When they parted, Seraphina sank back onto the chaise, the latest letter clutched tightly in her palm.
She tried to ignore the threats at first. When the first missive arrived, she had dismissed it as merely a disgruntled reader or an outraged gentleman reacting to one of her sharper, more critical pieces in the gazette.
But she had been receiving these letters for some time now, and this person seemed to have far too much information about their family.
They explicitly mentioned Euphemia’s name in this latest one.
They knew she was married to a Duke now.
They detailed exactly how a public scandal regarding Seraphina’s scandalous, heavily opinionated articles would drag her sister’s new household through the mud and destroy her standing before the court.
Seraphina stared down at the paper, her mind racing through every syllable of the threat.
She had been trying to trace the origins of the correspondence by focusing entirely on the material itself, spending all her hours visiting the library, poring over stationers’ records, and investigating commercial printing presses.
She had already ruled out the standard publishers.
She figured that the exquisite quality of the vellum made it undeniable that this belonged to a noble household of wealth.
Yet, identifying the exact estate from the paper alone had been a failure so far, as the blackmailer had been careful to send the missive with a completely plain, anonymous wax seal.
Slowly, almost subconsciously, she began running her fingertips across the corner of the heavy paper, smoothing her hand over the margins where the texture felt unusually thick.
Her fingers caught on something unusual.
It wasn’t the natural grain of the vellum, but a strange, subtle indentation near the edge.
Her brow furrowed as she felt a faint ridge that she hadn’t noticed in her earlier, frantic readings.
It was some manner of blind stamp... a microscopic, un-inked impression pressed directly into the fibers of the paper, though by what means or for what purpose, she could not begin to guess.
She had never encountered anything like it in all her years of handling correspondence.
Seraphina frowned, rubbing her thumb harder against the spot. There was a tiny, deliberate hidden flaw carved into the outer border of this invisible emblem that standard stationery never possessed.
“I need a microscope,” Seraphina muttered, her eyes widening as the mechanics of her mind began to click together. “Or a magnifying glass. Something to look at this closer. There is something hidden in the impression itself.”
Without waiting for Leonora to reply, Seraphina scrambled off the chaise, nearly tripping over her own hem as she rushed out of the drawing room and down the corridor toward the small library.
She burst through the double doors, heading straight for the desk where her research materials were kept.
She grabbed the heavy brass glass, holding the letter directly under the beam of the lamp.
She focused the lens, adjusting the angle until the magnified details of the un-inked, blind impression filled her vision. There, pressed into the thick fibers of the vellum, was a hidden mark.
Seraphina’s breath hitched in her throat as she made out what looked like a seal.
“That is a crest if I have ever seen one,” she whispered to herself, feeling a string of something tight and bright pull through her chest. Not quite relief. Not yet. But the sensation felt good. It was a lead.
“Now… whose house is this?”