Sleep had been a stranger, a visitor who knocked once and then departed. Julia had spent the night suspended between the memory of a kiss and the chilling echo of Alistair's silence. The kiss had been a brand—firm, certain, a promise whispered against her skin in the cold corridor.
It was a single point of warmth in the sprawling, frigid map of Blackwood Hall. The taste of Silas, clean and wild, lingered on her lips, a stark contrast to the cloying sweetness of decay that seemed to permeate the very stones of the house.
But warmth could not banish the cold. Alistair's stillness as she'd left the music room was a far more potent memory. It was the calm of a predator, the deep, unsettling calculation of a man who did not lose, but merely postponed his victory.
The morning light that filtered through her window was grey and reluctant, doing little to chase the shadows from the corners of her room. Julia dressed slowly, her body still humming with a nervous energy that was part residual thrill, part raw dread. She chose a simple dress of dark olive, something that felt like armour.
Breakfast was a trial.
Alistair was already seated at the head of the long dining table, a newspaper folded neatly beside his plate. He looked up as she entered, and his smile was a masterpiece of civility. It held no trace of last night's frozen brittleness. It was a fresh, polite mask, and that was infinitely more terrifying.
"Miss Harrow," he said, his voice smooth as polished marble. "I trust you slept well."
"As well as could be expected, my lord," Julia replied, her voice steady. She would not let him see her tremble.
She took her seat, the distance between them feeling both vast and suffocating. Mr. Finch directed a maid to serve her coffee, his movements precise and silent, his expression as impassive as ever. He did not meet her eye. No one did. The silence in the dining room was a living thing, punctuated only by the soft clink of silver on porcelain. It was a performance of normalcy so complete, it was grotesque.
Julia forced herself to eat a piece of toast, the dry bread scraping her throat. She felt Alistair's gaze on her, not direct, but a constant, peripheral pressure. He was watching her, gauging her, waiting. For what, she did not dare to guess.
She escaped as soon as she could, murmuring a polite excuse and fleeing the oppressive dining room. The great hall felt no safer. Every portrait on the wall seemed to have Alistair's eyes; every shadow seemed to hold his form. She needed air. She needed a moment away from the suffocating presence of the man who owned this house and everything—everyone—in it.
She was heading toward the conservatory when a small, hurried sound made her stop.
Elsie.
The young maid stood half-hidden in an alcove, wringing her hands in her apron. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a familiar, frantic fear. Lately, Elsie had been distant, a polite but unreachable ghost, and Julia had felt the loss of their fragile alliance keenly. But this was different. This was the terror of a cornered animal.
"Miss Harrow," she whispered, her voice barely audible. She darted a look down the long, empty corridor. "I cannot… I cannot talk for long. He is always watching."
"He?" Julia asked, though she knew the answer.
Elsie nodded, a jerky, terrified movement. "Lord Blackwood. He… he asks me things. About you." Her voice cracked. "I tell him lies. I tell him you read books and take walks. I tell him nothing. But he keeps asking."
The confession hung in the air, a testament to the suffocating web Alistair wove around them. Julia's heart went out to the girl. "Elsie, you are being very brave."
A tear traced a path down Elsie's cheek. "I am not brave, miss. I am terrified. For you." She took a deep, shuddering breath and her hand shot out, pressing something small, cold, and metallic into Julia's palm. "This is why I had to find you."
Julia looked down. It was a key. Old, ornate, made of dark, tarnished brass.
"It was Marian's," Elsie whispered, her words rushed. "She gave it to me, a week before… before she got the fever. She told me to keep it safe. She said if… if anything happened to her, and someone came looking who had kind eyes, I was to give it to them." Elsie's own eyes, filled with tears, met Julia's. "She said it was for a place he did not know about. A place for her secrets."
"A place where?" Julia's pulse quickened.
"The library, miss. Behind the shelves of poetry. There is a loose panel, low to the ground. There is a drawer hidden there." Elsie took a stumbling step back, already retreating into the shadows. "Be careful, Miss Harrow. This house… it remembers everything."
And then she was gone, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the marble floor.
Julia stood for a moment, her fingers clenched around the key, the cold metal a stark reality in her hand. A place for her secrets.
The library was empty, dust motes dancing in the thin shafts of sunlight. The room smelled of leather and paper and time. It had always felt like a sanctuary, but now it felt like a tomb, lined with the silent, sleeping stories of the dead. Her footsteps were swallowed by the thick Persian rug. Her breath sounded loud in the stillness.
She found the poetry section easily, running her fingers along the leather-bound spines of Byron and Shelley. She knelt, her dress pooling around her, and examined the dark wood panelling beneath the shelves. Her fingers searched, pressing against the carved oak until, finally, a small section gave way with a soft click.
It was barely a hand's breadth wide. Behind it, set deep into the wall, was a small, dark wood drawer with a tarnished brass keyhole. It was nearly invisible.
With trembling hands, Julia inserted the key Elsie had given her. It turned with a rusty groan. The drawer slid open smoothly, silently.
It was almost empty.
There was no diary, no bundle of letters tied with ribbon. There was only a single, folded piece of notepaper. It was crinkled, as if it had been clenched in a fist, and on one edge, there was a dark, brownish-red stain that had flaked with age.
Julia's blood ran cold. She knew, with a sick certainty, that it was blood.
Her fingers shook as she unfolded the scrap. The handwriting was an elegant, masculine scrawl, written in black ink. The message was short, brutal.
"She would not listen. She wanted out. He made her stay. I made her sleep."
Julia read the words again, and then a third time. They didn't just suggest a crime; they confessed to it. I made her sleep. The euphemism was so chilling, so utterly devoid of remorse, that it stole the air from her lungs. This was not about a fever. This was murder.
Her eyes dropped to the bottom of the page. There was no full name. Just a single, stark initial.
O.
It was the same initial from the portrait in the North Drawing Room. Instantly, Silas's face flashed in her mind—the raw, unguarded pain as he'd looked upon Marian's younger face, his haunted eyes. His warning echoed in her ears, urgent and conspiratorial. That name, Julia… it was never meant to survive her.
It wasn't just a name connected to a mysterious painting. It was the initial of Marian's murderer. And Silas knew. He had known, and he had hidden it from her, warning her away from a truth he was clearly desperate to keep buried. The realization was a fresh betrayal, a cold confirmation that the secret of 'O' was far more dangerous than she had imagined.
A cold, methodical fury began to build beneath her shock. Finch. It had to be connected to Finch. He was the keeper of all of Blackwood's secrets, the loyal butler who saw everything, knew everything. His loyalty was not to the truth, but to the house. He would know who 'O' was. He had to.
She left the note and the key in the hidden drawer, closing the panel securely. She stood, her mind set. She would find Finch. She would confront him. She would not let him hide behind his stony silence any longer.
She searched the ground floor first, her steps quick and purposeful. The dining room, the drawing rooms, the study. He was in none of them. She found a young maid polishing silver in the hallway.
"Have you seen Mr. Finch?" Julia asked, her voice sharper than she intended.
The maid jumped, startled. "No, miss. Not since breakfast. Perhaps Miss Thorne knows."
Julia found the housekeeper, Agnes Thorne, in the linen closet, her severe face pinched with disapproval as she counted sheets. The faint scent of vinegar clung to her.
"I am looking for Mr. Finch," Julia stated.
Miss Thorne didn't look up. "The butler is not here."
"Not here? Where has he gone?"
"He was called away on an urgent family matter," the housekeeper said, her voice clipped and final. "He left an hour ago. We are not to expect him back for some days."
The convenience of it was staggering. A cold dread washed over Julia. He hadn't been called away. He had vanished. He had been sent away. Alistair knew she was getting closer, and he was removing the pieces from the board, one by one.
Defeated, frustrated, and more frightened than ever, Julia retreated to her room. The walls felt as though they were closing in. The note was a confirmation of her worst fears, but without Finch, it was a dead end. She was trapped in this house with a murderer, and her allies were disappearing.
She moved to her wardrobe, intending to change into something simpler, to think, to clear her head. Her hand closed around the cool brass handle. She pulled the door open.
And a strangled gasp escaped her lips.
It was lying on the floor of the wardrobe, nestled against her shoes.
A small bird. A robin.
Its neck was bent at a sickening angle, and its wings were splayed out, pinned to the wood in a grotesque, unnatural parody of flight. Its bright, beaded eyes were dull, staring up at nothing. It was a deliberate arrangement. A message. A threat.
You are prying into things that should be left alone.
You, too, can be made to sleep.