Chapter 51
For several seconds neither moved.
Henrietta lay on her side, coughing against the cold ground while melted snow soaked through her sleeve. Beside her, Calvin was breathing in short, brutal gasps, one hand clamped around his thigh above the splint. The cashbox sat between them, half buried in white, its black iron sides steaming.
Calvin turned his head toward her.
His expression was murderous.
Henrietta managed, “You may shout after I stop coughing.”
“I have passed shouting.”
“That would be a mercy.”
“I am considering strangling you.”
“With what strength?”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out except a disbelieving breath.
Then his face changed.
The anger remained, but it collapsed inward around something much more frightening. He reached across the snow and touched her cheek with trembling fingers, as if checking that her skin was real beneath the soot.
“You went back into a burning building.”
“Yes.”
“For a box.”
“For what is in it.”
“For a box,” he repeated, and the words cracked. “Henrietta, I watched that roof come down.”
She pushed herself upright with both hands. Every joint in her body protested, but she ignored the ache long enough to pull the box closer. “And I watched you try to walk on a shattered leg. We can exchange accusations until spring if you like, but right now I need the key.”
Calvin stared at her.
“The key?”
“To the cashbox.”
His expression shifted from fury to confusion. “The ledger is burning.”
“I know.”
“You saw it.”
“I stepped over it.”
That stunned him into silence.
Henrietta wiped her streaming eyes with the cleanest part of her sleeve. “I did not go in for the ledger.”
The office window blew outward behind them. Glass hissed into the snow, and Calvin flinched without taking his eyes from her. “Then what in God’s name did you put in that box?”
Henrietta held out her hand.
“The reason Silas Vane has just burned down the wrong building.”
Calvin blinked once.
Then, despite his pain, he began to laugh.
It was not a happy sound. It was an exhausted, astonished laugh dragged from somewhere beneath months of shame, stubbornness, and fear. He fumbled at the leather cord around his neck, pulled a small key from beneath his shirt, and dropped it into her palm.
“You copied the books.”
“I copied the useful pages.”
“When?”
“When you accused me of rearranging your papers without permission.”