She paused. Also, because you did not deserve what Mirabelle did at breakfast. I do not particularly enjoy watching people be gutted over their eggs. It was, Nora thought, possibly the most feeling Delia Farrow had ever openly expressed. Thank you, Nora said.
Do not thank me. Just deal with it. Delia opened the linen room door, checked the corridor, and walked out. Nora stood alone among the folded linens for a moment, and thought about her father. About the quiet way he had moved through the world, careful and private, never drawing attention.
About the debt and the field and the 18 months of trying to understand what he had left. And now a trust account in Edinburgh that she had not known existed. It could be nothing. Old paperwork, a closed account, something already settled and forgotten. But Harwick had smiled, written it down, and went directly to Mirabelle.
She needed to get to that letter. She came out of the linen room and walked quickly to the library. Harwick was not there. Or the room was empty, the fire banked low, the chairs undisturbed except for one near the window that had been moved slightly to a better reading angle. She went to the writing table beside that chair.
There was nothing on its surface. She checked the small drawer beneath the surface. Empty. She stood back and thought, he would not have left it in a common room. He would have taken it to his guest room or given it back to his own man for safekeeping.
She could not go to his guest room, but she knew someone who could find out what was in it without going anywhere near it. She went to find Percival. He was, as always, in the small office off the main corridor, surrounded by the day's administrative reality. He looked up when she knocked. "Miss Vane," he said.
"Percival," she said. The reason she used his name plainly because she had noticed he responded better to directness than to formality. "I need to know if there is a trust account held in my father's name at any bank in Edinburgh. I need to know today. " Percival looked at her carefully. "That is a specific request. " "Lord Harwick has information about it.