Chapter 22 - Stephen #2
He pushed himself upright and looked around the study, trying to think past the panic.
The documents could be anywhere—hidden inside hollowed books, concealed behind wall panels designed to slide when the right spot was touched, tucked beneath loose sections of floorboard under the carpet.
But going through all those possibilities one by one would take time he didn’t have, not when he’d already wasted so much of the evening waiting.
How many minutes had passed since he’d entered this study?
Twenty? Thirty? The longer he stayed, the greater the risk became that someone would discover him, that Penrose would return or a servant might make rounds.
Stephen glanced at the mantle clock.
Half past seven.
He stared at it, confused. That couldn’t be right.
His father’s watch had shown nearly midnight when he’d entered the house.
Since then he’d made his way through darkened corridors, found the study, searched the desk drawers.
At least twenty minutes had passed, probably closer to thirty.
The mantle clock should read well past midnight.
His hand found the worn silver case in his waistcoat, pulling it out and holding it up to the moonlight.
Quarter past midnight.
The mantle clock was hours behind, its hands positioned with such precision at half past seven that it looked deliberately set rather than randomly stopped. Stephen’s gaze drifted between the two timepieces.
The ticking of his father’s watch filled the silence— steady, reliable, a sound so familiar he usually didn’t even notice it. But in this quiet room, with nothing else moving, it seemed almost loud.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Why keep a broken clock on display?
His father had been fascinated by timepieces, not the expensive kind but rather the mechanics of them, the precision required to make countless tiny pieces function together in harmony.
“Pay attention to what doesn’t move,” he’d said once while repairing a watch in their small room.
“The broken pieces tell you more than the working ones sometimes.”
Stephen approached the shelf and pocketed his father’s watch, cutting off its steady ticking. He bent close to the ornate brass piece, listening intently.
Nothing. No gentle ticking that should come from even the quietest timepiece, not even the faint whir of gears attempting to turn despite some mechanical failure. Complete silence, as though the case contained no mechanism at all.
He turned the brass piece in his hands, angling it so moonlight illuminated its back.
A winding key occupied its standard position, but the keyhole beneath it caught his attention.
The brass was completely unmarked, showing none of the tiny scratches or wear that should accompany regular use, the metal still bright where countless windings over months or years would have left visible traces.
This clock had never been wound.
His pulse picked up speed as he turned the winding key clockwise, the standard motion for tightening a clock’s spring.
But the mechanism stayed silent.
Stephen stared at it, thinking. If the clock wasn’t meant to tell time but to conceal something, wouldn’t it make sense to build the mechanism backward?
To require the opposite motion from what anyone familiar with timepieces would naturally attempt?
He turned the key counterclockwise, reversing the direction.
A soft click answered him, and the clock face swung open, revealing a hollow compartment where inner workings should have been.
Inside lay several folded papers.
He pulled them free and replaced the clock exactly as he’d found it before crossing to the window.
Moonlight illuminated the first page as it unfolded in his hands, revealing a header written in elegant script across the top: Registry of Lands - The Fairmont Family Estate, County of Kent, England.
Formal legal language filled the page, describing property boundaries.
Every measurement and marker was spelled out with meticulous detail that defined where the estate began and ended.
The second sheet was a surveyor’s report, recently completed based on the ink’s darkness.
Most of the technical descriptions meant little to Stephen—geological terminology and measurements he couldn’t interpret—but certain words caught his attention.
Coal deposits. Fairmont estate. Extraction potential of significant commercial value.
So the coal was what Penrose had been after all along.
Not Charlotte, but the wealth buried beneath her family’s land.
Resources significant enough to make the marriage worth all the effort he’d invested.
If the Fairmonts learned about these resources though, they could sell the mining rights and clear their debts without Charlotte marrying anyone.
But how could Penrose have property surveyed that he had no ownership of and couldn’t legally touch?
The question nagged at Stephen, refusing to settle into any logical answer.
Surveyors didn’t assess land without the owner’s authorization, and the Fairmonts clearly hadn’t known about the coal or they wouldn’t be facing ruin.
Penrose must have found some way to arrange the survey without their knowledge, though Stephen couldn’t begin to imagine the mechanics of how such a thing would work or what it would cost to convince surveyors to operate outside normal legal boundaries.
He stared at the technical language covering the page, searching for some explanation buried in the formal terminology, but understanding eluded him and he forced himself to set the question aside.
Whatever method Penrose had used to obtain this information, the crucial fact remained that coal existed beneath the Fairmont estate and these documents proved it.
The remaining papers were letters, three of them, written in elegant feminine handwriting. My dearest A., the first one began.
I find myself thinking of our last meeting, of your hands in mine and the words we spoke that I can never unsay.
My husband grows more distant with each passing day, retreating into his ledgers and accounts while I feel myself disappearing in this house.
You see me in ways he has not looked at me in years.
You understand the woman I am, not merely the wife I was meant to be…
Stephen’s chest tightened as he continued reading. The letter mentioned a husband, which meant the writer was married, and further down he found a name that made his breath catch:
I watched Charlotte in the drawing room today and thought of what we discussed, how she deserves better than the marriage her father and I have.
Charlotte. The writer had a daughter named Charlotte. Which meant these letters came from—
The second letter confirmed it, though he wished it hadn’t.
I should not write to you, yet I cannot stop when I think of the hours we spent together. Harold suspects nothing, he barely sees me anymore, but Charlotte grows more perceptive each day, and I fear what she might notice if I’m not more careful. The guilt of deceiving her weighs on me…
Charlotte’s mother had written these. Letters to someone she’d been involved with while her marriage fell apart around her.
The third letter was short, almost frantic.
We must end this. The risk has grown too great. Please, destroy these letters as I intend to destroy yours. We cannot allow any evidence of our indiscretion to remain…
The words blurred as Stephen’s pulse thrummed in his ears. An affair. The woman who had made Charlotte believe in love, whose marriage Charlotte held as the standard she wouldn’t compromise on—had written these letters to someone who wasn’t her husband.
If Penrose made these public, the scandal would destroy everything the Fairmont family had left.
Their name would be dragged through every drawing room in London.
Charlotte herself would become unmarriageable, tainted by association.
And worse, every memory she held dear would be poisoned by the truth of what her mother had done.
Stephen’s fingers tightened around the pages until the paper crinkled beneath his grip.
He could destroy them right now, bring them to a fireplace and watch them burn until Penrose’s weapon became nothing but ash scattered across cold stones.
Charlotte would never need to know what secrets her mother had kept, never need to carry the weight of this truth.
Except that would be making her choices for her, deciding she was too delicate to face reality, too fragile to handle information about her own life.
And Charlotte Fairmont was anything but fragile.
He’d watched her scale a wall in a storm-soaked gown, determination etched into every line of her face.
Seen her stand in a graveyard and face down a man twice her size without flinching.
She’d walked into Penrose Hall knowing she might be caught, risked everything for the chance at freedom, and never once complained about the danger or asked to turn back.
She was magnificent. Fierce and brilliant and brave enough to deserve the truth, no matter how ugly it was. She’d been fighting with both hands tied behind her back, and he’d be damned if he kept them bound by deciding what she could handle.
Stephen slipped the documents inside his coat. He spared one last glance at the hollow clock on the mantle— its empty face still frozen at half past seven—before turning toward the door.
Now he just had to get these papers to Charlotte before Penrose discovered they were missing.