The rain poured down onto Clara's bare, ragged hair, cold water running down her face and neck. In the doorway, a footman looked away in shame.
Lady Cecilia leaned forward, close enough that only Clara could hear her. "Did you truly believe," she whispered, "that nobody would discover what you were looking for?"
Then she straightened, smiled her lovely smile, and turned back into the warm house. The door closed behind her with a heavy thud.
Clara stood alone in the rain. She bent down slowly and picked the lace cap out of the mud. It was ruined; she held it anyway, pressed against her chest. Then she turned and began to walk.
She had reached the end of the stable yard where the gate opened onto the dark lane when she heard someone splashing through the puddles behind her. She turned, afraid.
It was old Mrs. Pike, holding a lantern with a sack over her head to keep off the rain, breathing hard. "Child," the cook gasped, "stop! Wait!"
She caught hold of Clara's cold hand, and Clara felt something being pressed into her palm—something small, hard, and made of metal. It was an old iron key with a little brass tag tied to it.
"Mrs. Pike, what is this?"
"Listen to me, there isn't much time." The old woman glanced back at the dark house. "The night before the old Duke died, he called me to his bedside. He was very ill. He gave me this key, and he made me promise. He said, 'Pike, one day someone may come asking about Thomas Hartley. When they do, give them this. Nobody else—not my wife, not even my son—only them.'"
Clara stared at her, unable to breathe.
"I waited three years," Mrs. Pike said, her voice shaking now. "Nobody ever came. Nobody ever asked. And then you walked into my kitchen two years ago."
"You knew," Clara whispered.
"Your father came to this house once, child, the summer before all that trouble began. He sat at my kitchen table and ate two slices of my apple pie, and said it was the finest he'd ever tasted." The old woman's eyes were wet. "I never forgot his face, and you have his eyes. You have Thomas Hartley's eyes. I knew who you were the first day."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I had to be certain. I had to see what you would do." Mrs. Pike squeezed her hand hard. "And when that wicked girl took the scissors to you, and you stood up and looked her in the face, I was certain."
She closed Clara's cold fingers tightly over the key.
"Now go," she said. "Go, and do not trust anyone. Not anyone. Your father trusted the wrong people, child; don't you make the same mistake."
Then she turned and hurried back through the rain toward the house, her lantern bobbing in the darkness.