Chapter 1
“My mother was buried wearing this.”
Octavia stopped breathing.
My hand remained on the closed velvet case.
Across from me, Lisette pulled both hands against her apron as if afraid the bracelet might somehow appear around her wrist again.
I looked at Octavia.
“Try your story again.”
Her lips parted.
Nothing.
Good.
I had personally fastened that bracelet around my mother Helena’s wrist nine years earlier.
Not an undertaker.
Not a servant.
Me.
She had asked for it before she died.
Very specifically.
“Leave the emeralds with me.”
I had.
So either the dead had begun returning jewelry—
or someone had opened her resting place.
“Who gave you the bracelet?”
Octavia swallowed.
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“Your mother’s room.”
Wrong.
That room had been sealed after her death and reopened years later.
The bracelet was never there.
Lisette whispered:
“She brought the case from the chapel corridor.”
Octavia turned toward her.
Too sharply.
There.
I moved between them.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Lisette’s voice shook.
“I was carrying fresh linen to the guest rooms. Miss Octavia came through the chapel passage with another woman.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see her face.”
Octavia snapped:
“She’s lying.”
Lisette flinched.
I did not.
“What happened next?”
Lisette looked at me.
“She saw me.”
Then:
“She asked what I’d seen.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“And tonight?”
Lisette looked at the velvet case.
“She told me if anyone asked, I stole it.”
My jaw tightened.
“Then she put it on me.”
Exactly as I had watched her do.
A lie staged in front of witnesses.
A thief manufactured publicly.
I looked at Octavia.
“You didn’t accuse Lisette because you found the bracelet on her.”
My voice stayed low.
“You needed everyone to watch you put blame where you wanted it.”
Her face finally broke.
Then she whispered:
“You don’t understand what that bracelet means.”
Interesting.
May you like
I had thought it meant my mother.
Apparently Octavia thought it meant something else.
