Then, in a single month, everything was gone.
The Earl of Marlowe accused her father of fraud. The newspapers printed terrible stories. Old friends crossed the street to avoid them. Her father was taken to prison, and within a year, a fever killed him there. He never came home. The bank was closed; the tall white house was sold. Her mother, broken with grief, followed her husband to the grave the next winter.
Clara had been sixteen; Polly had been six. For years, Clara sewed shirts by candlelight in a cold London room until her fingers bled. When she was old enough, she wrote to the Duke of Ravenshire, just as her father had told her to. The letter came back unopened: the old Duke had died.
So Clara made a decision: if she could not ask the Duke for the truth, she would go and find it herself. She changed her name, found a position as a housemaid, and came to Ravenshire Hall.
That had been two years ago: two years of scrubbing floors, carrying coal, and emptying chamber pots; two years of quietly searching every room she was allowed to enter. She had found nothing. There was only one part of the house she had never been able to search: the East Wing, the old Duke's private rooms. They had been locked since the day he died by order of his widow, the Dowager Duchess. No servant was allowed inside, not ever. Whatever her father had left with him, Clara was certain it was there.
And now, there was something else—something that made her blood run cold every time she thought of it: Lady Cecilia Marlowe.
The daughter of the man who had destroyed her family was going to marry the Duke of Ravenshire. In six weeks, she would be mistress of this house. She would have the keys to every room, and her father, the Earl, would come and go as he pleased. If those papers were hidden somewhere in Ravenshire Hall, the Marlowes would find them first, and they would burn them, just as Cecilia had burned Clara's hair tonight.
Clara blew out the candle. Six weeks: that was all the time she had left.
The next morning, Clara rose before dawn, as always. She pinned a plain white cap over her ruined hair, pulling it down as far as it would go. It did not hide much; short, ragged ends stuck out at the sides and the back.
In the kitchen, the other servants went quiet when she came in. Some looked at her with pity; some looked away. One of the footmen smirked. Only old Mrs. Pike came over: she set a hot cup of tea in front of Clara without a word, then, very briefly, laid her rough, warm hand on Clara's shoulder.