Chapter 3

The lane behind the back gate is pitch black. Can't see a hand in front of your face.

Holt — the steward who always has a pleasant word for everyone — stands at the far end like a stone tower. Silent.

Three plain mule-drawn carts wait beside him, already piled high with bulging canvas sacks.

The mules have their hooves wrapped in sacking so they won't clatter on the stones.

He sees us and bows, his voice barely a breath. "My lady. All is ready."

Grace nods and passes him a heavy bundle. "Holt. I owe you more than I can say."

"You owe me nothing, my lady." He takes the bundle and loads it onto the cart. "The Earl lost his honor a long time ago. You've treated my family with nothing but kindness these twenty years. I'd lay down my life before I let anything happen to you."

His words are few, but every one lands like a hammer.

Now I understand how long Grace has been weaving this web. How deep it goes.

We climb into the middle cart. The compartment is small, crammed with goods, barely enough room to breathe. Grace, me, Bess, and Meg — four women pressed together in the dark.

The whole space smells of gold and dust.

"Holt." Grace lifts the canvas flap and leans out. "Take the river route, head for the southern coast. My contact will meet you there. Once you've sold everything, take your family and sail for the Continent. Don't come back. I've prepared all the letters you'll need."

"Thank you, my lady." He bows again. "God keep you safe."

He doesn't ask where we're going.

That's the kind of trust they share. No questions.

The carter flicks the reins. The cart moves without a sound. Wheels grind softly over cobblestones.

I lift the canvas and look back.

The massive silhouette of Ashworth Manor shrinks into the darkness behind us. A sleeping beast.

Three years of my life are in that house. Everything I once believed would be my home forever.

Gone now.

I drop the flap. My hands are ice.

Grace takes my hand. "Don't look back. We'll have a new home."

I nod and lean against her shoulder.

Neither of us sleeps that night.

The cart rolls on until the sky turns grey, then stops at a crumbling dock on the riverbank.

A small, flat-bottomed boat is waiting. A man in a wide-brimmed hat stands at the bow.

We climb down and haul everything from the cart onto the boat, trip after trip. Every sack is shockingly heavy. I try to lift a small one and nearly throw out my back. Gold or silver — I can't tell which.

By the time the sun is up, the boat is loaded.

The two servants kneel before Grace, then leave with the empty carts, heading in the opposite direction.

Grace pays the carter a bag of silver. He leaves too.

From start to finish, none of these people say a word more than necessary. They move like clockwork.

On the boat, the four of us squeeze into the tiny cabin. The boatman rows from the stern. The current carries us downstream.

Fog rises off the water. The riverbanks blur and fade.

"Grace — where are we going?" I ask.

"South. Somerset." she says. "I bought a small house there years ago, with my own dowry money. Nobody knows about it."

She looks at me. Her gaze reaches somewhere far away.

"Clara, when I married into Ashworth Manor, I was your age. My father traded me for Richard's alliance in the wars. Your father traded you for a connection to the nobility. We're the same."

I listen in silence.

"I endured it for twenty years. I watched him bring home one woman after another. I raised his bastards as my own. I let him bleed my dowry dry to pay for his soldiers. I told myself — just hold on until William is grown, until he's married, until my duty is done."

Her voice is perfectly calm. Like she's telling someone else's story.

"But then I watched William look at Agnes. And I saw Richard all over again. Same hungry eyes. Same rotten blood. This family will never change. If I stay, I'll watch you go through everything I went through. And I'd rather burn this place down than let that happen."

"I'm done."

She lets the word hang there, heavy as a stone.

"Twenty years I swallowed it. Twenty years I smiled and said nothing while he did whatever he pleased. Well, he's had his turn. Now it's ours. And if no one's going to hand us a way out — we'll damn well make one."

The cabin is quiet. Nothing but the oar dragging through the water.

I look at the grey streaking through Grace's hair, and suddenly I understand.

This isn't impulse.

She's betting half a lifetime of silence on this one shot at freedom.

"I'm with you, Grace." I say. "All the way."

She smiles. A real smile. The kind I've never seen on her before — light, unburdened.

"Good. Now — let me show you what we're working with."

She pulls a stack of parchment from inside her cloak.

"This is what we have." She spreads them out. "I've been converting the estate's assets into these for years."

Dozens of bills of exchange. Every single one worth a staggering sum. And underneath — land titles, property leases, scattered across the whole country.

"Holt took the gold and the tapestries. Those are bulky, easy to trace. What we carry is this." Grace taps the parchment. "Bills made out to no one by name. Once we reach Somerset, we take new names, and no one will ever find us."

"And this." She hands me one more letter.

I take it. At the top, in bold, furious handwriting, two words: LETTER OF DENUNCIATION.

This isn't Richard casting Grace out.

This is Grace bringing Richard down.

Below those words, she has laid out twenty years of his crimes. Stealing from the Crown's war chest. Selling favors for bribes. Smuggling. Abuse. Every charge backed with evidence. Any single one could bring him before the Crown and destroy him.

"I've had a hundred copies made." Grace's eyes go cold. "If we're left in peace, this letter stays buried. But if he sends anyone after us — " a thin, sharp smile crosses her face — "the Earl of Ashworth will find himself on trial for treason. And there won't be enough left of him to bury."

I hold the letter. My hands are shaking.

The woman in front of me is not a countess. Not just my husband's mother.

She's a strategist. A general.

Her battlefield was that household. Her army was loyalty and gold.

And she just won the war.