Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Window
Maren Cole had lived at Ashford Estate for twenty-two years.
She had iron-gray hair she wore twisted neatly at the nape of her neck, gentle hands that smelled faintly of lavender soap and old cedar chests, and a way of walking into rooms so quietly that people often forgot she was there until they needed tea, a blanket, a name from twenty years ago, or a truth no one else would say out loud.
She had also been the first person to hold Emily after Helena died.
That was why the torn note in Gabriel’s hand felt almost obscene.
Don’t trust Maren with—
Not a full sentence. Not a full accusation. But enough to stain the air between memory and suspicion.
Gabriel did not confront her in the middle of the night. He locked the torn note in his study safe, ordered Damon moved under guard to the old gatehouse until police arrived, and sat outside Emily’s room until dawn.
She did not sleep much. He knew because each time he heard movement inside, he almost rose and went in. Each time he stopped himself. Emily had been terrorized. If he crowded her now, even out of love, it would feel like one more pressure she hadn’t chosen.
At seven in the morning she opened the door herself.
He stood at once.
“Coffee?” he asked.
That earned him the faintest ghost of a look—the kind that said she could see what he was trying to do and loved him a little for trying, even if neither of them had the strength for ease yet.
“Tea.”
He nodded and led her downstairs to the breakfast room. The storm had passed, leaving the estate washed clean in a way that felt insulting after a night like that. Sunlight broke across the long windows, bright and indifferent.
Maren was already there arranging a tray.
Emily stopped in the doorway.
Maren turned, saw the mark at Emily’s throat, and went white.
“My God.”
The teacup in her hand rattled against its saucer.
She moved forward instinctively, then stopped when Emily flinched.
That small recoil altered Maren’s whole face.
“What happened?” she asked, though clearly she had heard enough of the night to know.
Gabriel closed the door behind them.
“That’s what we’re discussing.”
Maren’s eyes shifted to him. There was alarm there now. Not merely concern. Calculation? Fear? Or simply the terror of a loyal woman realizing the household had fallen into chaos around her?
She set the tray down.
“If this is about the police—”
“It’s about the west parcel,” Gabriel said.
Emily watched Maren closely.
A tiny pause.
No more than a breath.
Then Maren said, “Has something happened with the west parcel?”
Emily noticed it too. Gabriel could tell by the way her shoulders stiffened.
“Who is Damon Kade to you?” Emily asked.
Maren blinked.
Too quickly.
Gabriel looked at her sharply. “Answer.”
Maren lowered her eyes.
When she raised them again, twenty years of polished quiet had vanished. Not completely. But enough.
“He is my son.”
The room went still.
Emily stared at her.
That was the danger of secrets that had once seemed impossible. Once spoken aloud, they instantly rewrote years.
“You said your son died,” Gabriel said.
Maren’s face tightened. “I said I lost him.”
“Which is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Emily spoke very softly. “You never told me.”
Maren looked at her with something like grief. “Because he walked away from this house at nineteen hating it, hating me for staying, and hating every person whose last name was Ashford. There was no good version of that story to lay at your feet.”
Gabriel’s voice hardened. “And yet he ended up chaining Emily from a tree in my backyard.”
Pain crossed Maren’s face, real enough that for one reckless moment Emily almost believed it. Then she remembered the torn note.
“My mother wrote your name,” Emily said.
Maren looked at her.
“Under the oak. In the box. Something was missing, and in the box there was a torn corner of paper. It said, ‘Don’t trust Maren with—’”
Maren sat down as if her knees had failed her.
“No,” she whispered.
“Did Helena hide something on that land?” Gabriel asked.
Maren looked between them.
Then slowly, carefully, said, “Yes.”
Emily closed her eyes.
There was a curious sort of heartbreak in having suspicion confirmed only partly. It would have been easier if Maren had either denied everything or confessed to everything.
“What?” Emily asked. “What did she hide?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Then what do you know?”
Maren folded her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles blanched. “Your mother believed the west parcel contained the only place on this estate that was truly beyond legal reach for a certain kind of paper.”
Gabriel frowned. “What kind of paper?”
“The kind families bury rather than litigate.”
That sounded like Helena too. Evasive, poetic when angry, using language like a knife wrapped in silk.
Emily leaned forward. “Why would she write not to trust you?”
Maren’s eyes filled suddenly.
“Because the last time your mother hid something important, I begged her to give it to me instead.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought she was already in too much danger.”
Gabriel went still. “Danger from whom?”
Maren looked at him.
“You know exactly from whom.”
Something in the room shifted.
Emily turned to Gabriel at once. “Dad?”
But he was staring only at Maren now.
“Maren.”
“Don’t ask me to say it before you say it yourself,” she whispered.
Emily stood. “Enough.”
Both of them looked at her.
“My mother is dead,” she said. “Someone chained me to a tree to force me to sign away the last thing she protected. Damon is your son. My mother left a note warning me not to trust you. And both of you are talking as if we’re in the middle of a conversation that started ten years ago.”
Maren broke first.
She pressed her hands to her mouth and cried once, quietly, as if the sound escaped against her will.
Gabriel’s face had gone closed.
That frightened Emily more than either tears or anger would have.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.
Gabriel finally answered.
“Helena did not believe her death would be an accident.”
Emily’s breath caught.
Maren shut her eyes.
“No,” Emily said instantly. “No, that’s not—she fell. On the stairs in the east wing. Everyone said—”
“Everyone said what was easy to say,” Gabriel replied. “That she’d been weak. Dizzy. Exhausted from treatment. But the week before she died, she told me if anything happened to her, I was to keep you away from the west parcel until you were old enough to defend yourself.”
Emily stared.
“And you waited until now to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she also told me that if I went digging without proof, the people who wanted those papers buried would come for you next.”
Silence.
Then Maren whispered, “And now they have.”
Before Emily could respond, one of the house guards appeared in the doorway, pale and breathless.
“Sir—”
Gabriel turned.
“What?”
“The gatehouse is empty.”
Every muscle in Gabriel’s body hardened.
“What do you mean empty?”
“Damon’s gone.”
Emily’s stomach dropped.
The guard swallowed. “And he left something.”
He stepped forward and held out a folded page, damp but not rain-soaked, as if it had been tucked inside clothing.
Gabriel opened it.
His face changed.
Emily took one step toward him. “What is it?”
For a moment he said nothing.
Then he passed it to her.
It was not a note.
It was a photocopy of what looked like a legal registry page.
At the top, in old-fashioned type, was the designation:
Supplemental Estate Guardianship Record
Beneath it, two names were written side by side.
Emily Helena Ashford — minor beneficiary
Maren Elise Cole — emergency custodial appointee
Emily’s hand went numb around the page.
Her mother had once legally named Maren to take her if something happened.
And below that, in a space for authorization, was another signature.
May you like
Gabriel’s.
Except it had been dated three months after Helena died.
